Each NHL team’s most memorable hockey name
By C.L. Kohuss
Boston Bruins: P.J. Axelsson
The Boston Bruins have been around since the Genesis, so there’s no doubt they’ve featured names aplenty that could get the ol’ whiskers twitchin’. Sprague Cleghorn, Bill Goldsworthy, the great popcorn meister Phil Hergesheimer. Actually, that last one was used on Breaking Bad at some point, we’re almost sure of it.
Yet nothing makes us tenser than when we hear the name P.J. Axelsson said out loud. No doubt, Axelsson is a familiar name to Bruins fans everywhere. He played with them his whole career, from 1998 to ’09 with spurts of time over in Frolunda.
But if he had never made it to the NHL and you told us he was instead an evil mechanic in some foreign B-movie? Hell, we’d believe it. In fact, we’d probably buy 10 copies of it.
We’d also believe he was the weird half-brother of Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop, that guy who sues Axl Rose for name infringement, or a dude who just wants to be called P.J. but everyone keeps talking mad noise about how odd/totally awesome his last name is.
Axelsson had some moves as well, like this nifty deke he pulled on Chicago. And he used to pot goals with Tim Taylor, though we question how Taylor found the find to both play hockey and blow stuff apart on Home Improvement.
“Want to grab that rebound for me, Ax?”
“Hmm. I don’t think so, Tim.” Or something like that.
Honorable mentions: Emory Sparrow, David Pastrnak, Bill Goldsworthy, Patrice Bergeron, Phil Hergesheimer, Bob Beers, John Blue, Bruce Shoebottom, Peter Skudra and Alf Skinner