When Blue Rodeo's baby-faced Jim Cuddy walks into the Corel Centre Friday, he'll be thinking about what it would be like to play here.
Not music. Hockey.
On the road with Blue Rodeo, he travels like one of hockey's old soldiers, packing his skates, stick and helmet for a little pick-up wherever he can find it.
He's got ice in his blood. If he isn't singing in an ice rink, he's hanging around the bleachers, watching the kids play. Or getting a game of pick-up shinny together.
Yeah, every time he walks his sound check at the Corel Centre, the Bell Centre or Toronto's ACC, his first thought is how the sound is.
His second is, how's the ice?
Cuddy's been playing recreational hockey, shinny really, with a bunch of other hockey-loving rock 'n' rollers since forming Blue Rodeo with Greg Keelor 17 years ago.
ROAD ROUTINE
It's become a part of his road routine. Every time the group lands in a new city, one of the first things Cuddy does is line up a casual game.
Last week, he played with the women's team at St. F-X in Antigonish. Before that, he joined 70-year-old former Winnipeg Blue Bombers for a game. "It's a fantastic experience and 100% pure fun," he endorses. "It's great respiratory exercise. It loosens you up and because most people know I'm playing that night, nobody touches me. Nobody checks me hard and if they do, they say 'Oh, sorry.' I feel like Rocket Richard." It must be working. Cuddy's only had to cancel one show in his 15-year career with the band.
Cuddy isn't the only music man who's as good with a hockey stick as a guitar.
Rheostatic Dave Bidini documented his obsession with hockey, and his run-in with Cuddy, in his hockey diary, Tropic of Hockey.
Cuddy's team, The Black Strokes, had a reputation for being hotheads and went head-to-head with Bidini's band, The Morningstars.
"We were in the playoff series together, when Bidini speared me," Cuddy recalls. "Then he did it again. Later on, I skate into the boards and he punched me in the face. I lost it. This is seniors' hockey. No one even has the balance to actually stand up and fight. The fights are Three Stooges ridiculous.
"So we had a fight and he's lying there like he's hurt and I scream at him 'You're the dirtiest, effin player in this league.' He kept taunting me, saying, 'Oh Jim, you have to try, just try.' We shook hands, said 'sorry, heat of the moment' and that was it.
"I didn't hear from him. Then, I got the galleys of his book. You should read this fight. I was squeezing his head into the ice like a grapefruit in the chapter about how otherwise nice, normal people turn into assholes, and he's using me as the example.
'DREAMS OF REVENGE'
"Bidini had dreams of revenge, where I get electrocuted onstage or he beats me to death with a tire iron. So, I tried to contact him, but he pulled his team out of our league and let it be known he'd never, ever be seen on the ice with me again.
"Then, at last year's Leaf's playoffs, I see Bidini," he recalls. "He put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'It's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me in hockey.' Then he laughed and I realized that he's just playing it for his book, his career."
Finally, I ask Cuddy if he'd be interested in buying the Senators. That suggestion makes him laugh because he believes the club's already in good hands.
