Songs Of Faith And A Leafs Victory

05/09/01 11:00am

by Aaron Brophy (CHARTattack)

Tonight a good portion of Canadian lads won't be checking out any bands or jiving the night away in the nearest nightclub. That's because it's Game 7 in the Toronto Maple Leafs vs. New Jersey Devils NHL playoff quarter-finals!

Now we at ChartAttack generally try to keep our secret jock past, well, secret, but in times like this we just have to let our freak flag fly. And our banner. And our tin foil Stanley Cup replica. And our cardboard Jiri Crha mask. Anyway...

We understand that everybody in Canada hates Toronto in general and the Maple Leafs in specific, but for the sake of patriotic pride, now's the time to get all xenophobic and jump on the Bud Bandwagon, projecting your hatred at the New Jersey Devils (and, yes, I do realize the irony of playing the "cheer Canadian" card when New Jersey has as many Canuck players as Toronto).

Now every noble victory requires a soundtrack. We're pretty well certain that all of you are just as tired of Queen, Gary Glitter and Snap as we are so it was off to good ol' Napster to find some hockey-related music we'll be able to blast out of the car stereo as we cruise up and down Yonge Street screaming, "Leafs win! Leafs win!"

Our first search was to hunt down the Glenn Anderson-sung classic "Leafs Are The Best." Novelty song encyclopedia Mike McCann has actually played this for me so I know it's out there, but sadly, I couldn't find it.

Next up was a search on Wendel Clark, "Wendy" to his detractors and the toughest man ever according to the knuckleheads who call in to Toronto sports radio stations. Wendel seems to be something of an artistic muse. The Rheos track was old news, but we also found a track called "Wendel" by The Zambonis (who have quite a number of hockey tunes by the way. Our fav is "Johnny Got Suspended"). Still, we couldn't find the sinister parody that some Vancouver radio station did a couple years ago called "Mr. Wendel Clark."

From there it was a search for Cujo info. We didn't find any songs titled "Randy McKay's Moustache Makes Him Look Like A Big Gay Cruiser" or "Bobby Holik's Face Is A Potato" but we did find this cool trip-hop band called, oddly, Cujo.

Lanny McDonald, Allan Bester, Mats Sundin and Tiger Williams turned up nil.

Some more: Napster-ites seem to have renamed The Hip's "50 Mission Cap" to "Toronto Maple Leafs," so more power to 'em and if I was eight years old the "We Want Stanley" version of cheese-tacular '80s tune "I Want Candy" would play in a non-stop loop on my tape player.

From there, it was on to Tie "Brainscrambler" Domi. Now I'm not one to condone a cheap shot elbow to the head in the heat of battle, but if I'm skating one way with my eyes closed and my elbows are moving like this, and this and this, those elbows can't be held responsible for their actions. Anyway, typing "Tie Domi" yielded some Swedish punk song which we suspect wasn't about Tie at all, but if it was we hope it translates to "Ulf, I Got You Good, Didn't I?"

So there you go. Put away that Helix record and hop on that bandwagon. And, hell, if the Leafs lose we've still got The Raptors, and that's more than I can say for Vancouver.