At Random
11 months ago
With another candle to blow out on the birthday cake Wednesday, it’s not like I need any more reminders about how time flies, but they come along anyway.
The latest came courtesy of Leon Draisaitl, who jumped in on an interview Edmonton Oilers’ captain Connor McDavid was doing with James Duthie and Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger at the Boots and Hearts music festival Monday. Duthie asked Draisaitl, who is just a pup at age 27, if he was a Nickelback fan.
“Are you a Nickelback fan as well?” Duthie asked. “Uh, yeah,” Draisaitl said. “Growing up in Germany, my dad was a big fan of Nickelback, so I used to listen to it in the car a lot.”
Leon’s dad is Peter Draisaitl, 57, a former player and now coach of Krefeld Pinguine. With me being a fossil, it doesn’t seem that long ago that Kroeger and his bandmates were being shown around the Oilers dressing room before their concert at Skyreach Centre on the Silver Side Up tour as they were just beginning to break.
Looking it up and taking a glance at a photo of Kroeger and I this morning, that was January of 2002. Draisaitl was six years old then and I was, ahem, nevermind . . .
RADIO GA-GA
Between Sports 1440 on the radio dial starting up Sept. 5 and Edmonton Sports Talk, sports fans in this town will be well-served moving forward when it looked in June like the end of TSN1260 after Bell Media pulled the chute would leave a huge void.
It’s a sign of changing times in the sports content delivery biz and one for the better that offers listeners more options. Here’s hoping Stingray Radio, Just A Game Productions and The Nation Network enjoy nothing but success.
THIS AND THAT
- Happy Birthday to former Oilers’ coach Craig MacTavish as he turns 65 today. Mac-T, a three-time Stanley Cup winner in Edmonton as a player, has a history with the Oilers including stints as an assistant coach, head coach, senior VP of hockey operations and general manager. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2009, but that hasn’t prevented him from taking multiple hockey-ops gigs since then.
- And I’m wishing a very Happy Birthday to my son Sam, who turns 17 on Aug. 16, the same day I turn . . . nevermind.
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