The great Glenn Hall used to deal with the pressures of being a goalie in a unique way.
He’d make himself throw up, then he’d man up.
“I always felt I played better if I was physically sick before the game,” Hall once said. “If I wasn’t sick, I felt I hadn’t done everything I could to try to win.”
Hall, inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame 41 years ago, worked between the pipes for 906 NHL games, way back when the term “shootout” was only used to describe a high-scoring game. Now it is a tie-settling process in an era where parity has teams either making or failing to make the playoffs by a single point — and those that do sneak in having a legitimate shot at winning the Stanley Cup.