Franzen’s Play Not Pretty, But it’s Pretty Important to Red Wings

Ice hockey, the world’s fastest sport, is played at blinding speed by powerful men gliding along the rink on razor-sharp blades fastened to their boots, swinging fiberglass sticks at a vulcanized rubber disc.It’s polo played on ice, sans the horses.The thrills and chills come from the long, effortless strides of a puck-carrier as he bores down at the goalie from the wing, at some 25-30 miles per hour. Until he loses the puck, and the same thing happens, going the other way.It’s a sport whose stoppages of play can come in rapid-fire fashion or as few and far between as an apology from Rush Limbaugh.The typical rink is 200 feet long by 85 feet wide. That’s 17,000 square feet of frozen fun.Yet despite all that area with which to work, an Italian-Canadian named Phil Esposito made his living operating within a fraction of it.Esposito was a center man, or, to be true to his Canadian roots, a centre man. But he played the position as if he was employed by the Boston Celtics instead of the ...