Each NHL team’s most memorable hockey name
By C.L. Kohuss
Columbus Blue Jackets: Krzysztof Oliwa
Do you remember back in kindergarten when the teacher started off your turbulent education by having you master writing and spelling your own name?
It was somewhere during the first few weeks, between learning that your parents weren’t coming back for you and that you were being raised now by wolves, and that moment you realized chocolate school milk is awesome.
Well, we’re here to doubt so much that Krzysztof Oliwa ever made it beyond actually pronouncing his name, much less learning how to spell it. Trust me I’ve had to check it about 18 times already to make sure every letter is actually in its proper place. Even the announcers didn’t know how to say his first name. Nope. Didn’t try once. They just resort to calling him “that guy,” “chief,” “buddy” or “monster.”
Oliwa had a decent amount of seasons in the NHL, playing from 1996 to ’06 when he ended his career with the New Jersey Devils. He also didn’t score many points because that obviously wasn’t his role. If you’ve ever grown up with a name that nobody believes is from actual earth, you learn real quickly that children resort to other tactics, like tying you to the tetherball pole during recess. So we can understand that he’d grow into someone that takes his frustrations out on a dude’s melon. And he was pretty good at it, too. For one, he’s about twelve feet tall. We also have to imagine he didn’t feel like being hit so hard that it rearranged the letters in his name. Imagine having to relearn a jumbled mess of ‘K’s and ‘Z’s.
Honorable mentions: Sergei Bobrovsky, Artemi Panarin, Laurie Korpikoski and Nikita Nikitin (why do parents do this?)