As you may have seen or heard on the Internet, I recently realized my months-long goal of playing the national anthem on guitar at an NHL hockey game, what critics are already calling the greatest national anthem playing of all-time basically. At least far as I’m concerned.
The idea came to me shortly after my new book The Awesome Game: One Man’s Incredible Globe-Crushing Hockey Odyssey, what critics (different critics from the ones mentioned earlier) are already calling the greatest hockey book ever written, was unleashed on an unsuspecting public this past October. Since I no longer had my publisher’s money and influence to throw around in my efforts to get closer to the only sport I have any real interest in, I realized I needed to come up with a new plan to gain unfettered access to hockey. And, what with my love ripping guitar solos and all, I figured playing the national anthem on guitar before a game would be a great way to combine two things I love and hopefully get free nachos and stuff while I’m at it.
I got things started by asking people on Instagram, the popular app, for help. And much to my delight, there were no shortage of people willing to help me realize my goal whether they had any connection to an NHL team or not.
“Are you available to play the anthem at a Nashville Predators home game?” one person wrote.
“Of course!” I replied. “Do you work for the Predators?”
“No,” they wrote back. “I just figured I’d ask them for you.”
I got a lot of messages like this and I was grateful for all of them. Then my friend and hilarious comedian Raj Suresh told me he had a friend who worked for the Cleveland Monsters, the AHL team that just so happened to be playing a home game against the Toronto Marlies over Thanksgiving weekend, right when I’d be back in my hometown of sunny Cleveland visiting family.
“We just so happen to need someone to play the anthems at our game the day after Thanksgiving,” they told me.
“I’m in,” I told them right back.
The idea of starting off with a minor league game excited me as this way I could work my way up to the big leagues just like an actual hockey player might. This would be life imitating art. Or art imitating sports. Or something. I’m still not sure. But I do know it’s awesome.
My AHL anthem debut went reasonably well. They did take me out of the PA before I got to the “…home of brave” part of the American anthem, but people were screaming for hockey and also America by then anyway so whatever. And even though I screwed up the Canadian anthem a little bit, that didn’t stop my new friend Wil Burns, equipment manager for the Marlies, from hooking me up with all sorts of awesome Marlies swag, some of which I am wearing as I type this. I suppose this is as good a time as any to add that the Monsters gave me nothing, but that’s okay because of that thing about how you can never come home. Anyway, the important thing is I spent the rest of the night enjoying the game, drinking beer, and high-fiving at least half the people in attendance as a result of my super sick anthem playing, which felt great.
With a solid minor league hockey win under my belt, I set my sights once again on the big leagues, the Big Show, the NHL. Dammit.
As fate would have it, my friend Beth’s boyfriend Steve played hockey with Shaun, one of the guys from Violent Gentlemen, the excellent hockey clothing brand that I was wearing on top of my Marlies swag just now until I got too hot. Shaun had some friends who worked for the Anaheim Ducks, some emails were exchanged and the next thing I knew I was scheduled to play both anthems once again, this time in Anaheim when the Ducks were to play the Toronto Maples Leafs the very same week I just so happened to be coming to Los Angeles for a few shows followed by several extremely high-powered show business meetings and celebrity hangs.
I headed straight to the Ducks home ice at the Honda Center in Anaheim as soon I got the behind the wheel of my rental car, which, as long as I’m on the topic, smelled of Polo cologne, which is to say awful. The Ducks staff were extremely welcoming, even gifting me with my very own Ducks jersey, complete with my name and number (77, chosen because I think it looks cool mostly but also because it’s Phil Esposito’s number twice) on the back. Adding to the fun, they also gave me a handful of tickets for the game, so my friends Beth and Steve (mentioned earlier) and my buddy Dan all came down from LA to join in the hockey mayhem. You’re probably wondering if we had awesome seats right down by the ice and were also allowed to go to a special private club were we could help ourselves to free stuff like sushi, coconut shrimp, and even an elaborate bread pudding and the answer is yes, yes we did. And it ruled a lot.
I should mention at this point that my original plan was to play the anthems while skating around the rink and then, once the anthem was finished, grab a stick and gloves from some sort of stick and glove valet and fire a few pucks into the net, top left corner to be exact. But, most likely because the players would have been intimidated, it was agreed in advance that I would just play the anthems while wearing shoes like a totally regular person and then just go sit down afterward while most likely fending off offers of sex.
I was nervous, but when the time came, I dug deep, stepped out onto the carpet they put in the corner of the rink for me so I wouldn’t slip on the ice even though I wouldn’t have because I am 1/4 Canadian and played both anthems in what I believed to have been a flawless manner that at once honored America and Canada while also invoking Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Dimebag Darrell, and Satan himself. Then I went and watched the game with my friends while enjoying more snacks and high-fiving strangers the rest of the night, just like I did in Cleveland, including what I believe to have been one, long-since-banished member of the Blue Men Group.
“Thanks so much and come back anytime, Dave,” one of the Ducks staff members said to me before I headed off for the night.
“Oh, I intend to,” I replied while fending off further offers of sex from strangers as I headed for the exit.
I honestly didn’t expect to hear much about my national anthem playing after that night. I figured I would check “playing the national anthem at an NHL game while having a nice time with my friends” off the list and set my sights on some other life goal, like running a 5k or making guacamole from scratch or something. But, as I soon learned, my anthem playing had actually been quite polarizing and, despite that thing I said before about how critics had said it was greatest anthem playing of all-time, that wasn’t really true because while, sure, I did receive literally hundreds of messages and comments from people saying how much they enjoyed my anthem playing, at least as many other people absolutely hated it, like most of Canada, as just one example. And thanks to the fact that Maple Leafs star forward William Nylander was caught on camera laughing during my performance, the Hockey News (the same magazine I used to read religiously as a kid) and no shortage of other hockey sites wrote about my anthem performance. Oh, and Ducks forward Trevor Zegras was also caught on mic talking smack about my anthems before a faceoff, which is awesome.
But it didn’t end there. Breakfast Television, the Canadian equivalent of the The Today Show did a four-and-a-half minute segment on how awful they thought my anthem playing was (Watch above! Look at their faces! They are freaking out!). One of the hosts, Sid Seixeiro, the one on the right dressed like a car rental office manager, even called me a “kid,” which was flattering (Get glasses, Sid!), and also said I “wasn’t a name,” which seemed a bit weird since I have been a guest on Breakfast Television twice, most recently this past October. They even gave me free water and coffee both times, which isn’t exactly the sort of thing that happens to someone who “isn’t a name.”
Even so, I absolutely loved the Breakfast Television segment, so thank you, guys (and Canada in general), if you are reading this. And while I didn’t like the guy who DMed me on Instagram to insult both my guitar playing and my mother, who, from a biological standpoint anyway, is dead, I truly loved how polarizing my anthems ended up being. This is because I believe art in all forms, when done right, should be either loved or hated, nothing in between. If someone merely likes or dislikes something you have done, you have ultimately failed, you are vanilla ice cream. Or maybe the hit TV series Two and a Half Men.
I’m headed to Edmonton in a couple weeks to do a festival and the organizers had been asking the Edmonton Oilers if I might play the anthem at a game while I’m in town. But it turns out, since the Anaheim vs. Toronto game was on national television in Canada, the Oilers happened to catch my performance and have since politely declined to have me perform the anthems.
“Dave didn’t help his case with us,” an Oiler representative wrote.
I was disappointed at first, but soon after I was contacted by a minor league team in Canada about performing the anthem at one of their games.
“Are you sure you want me to after what I did at the Anaheim game?” I asked.
“Definitely,” they replied.
That’s when I realized that playing in the minors, making it to the NHL, and then getting sent back down to the minors immediately after is the most hockey thing that could have possibly ever happened to me. And that totally fucking rules.
Welcome back to Substack! Its been a while
Rock on, Dave 🤘