What’s in a name? Everything. Perhaps no sport like hockey uses nicknames more creatively. The Utah Mammoth have several nicknames they use for their teammates. They consider it a badge of honor to …
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 Sports) – What’s in a name? Everything.
Perhaps no sport like hockey uses nicknames more creatively. The Utah Mammoth have several nicknames they use for their teammates. They consider it a badge of honor to have a good nickname.
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“Oh, you want to have as many nicknames as possible,” said center Kevin Stenlund. “It’s always good.”
“It’s part of the game, part of the culture, part of being in any any workplace,” said defenseman Nate Schmidt. “You start to feel like you belong. I don’t know, I love it.”
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Schmidt comes up with more nicknames than almost any player in the NHL.
“Sometimes I give out bad nicknames, but I beat them into submission so that everyone has to enjoy them,” he said.”
Rarely do players call each other by their actual first name.
“I think if I call them by their first name, they look at me like, who?” said defenseman Liam O’Brien.
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“Sometimes I call them by their first name on purpose,” Schmidt said. “Like Michael Carcone, I only call him Michael. He’s like, ‘wait, only my mom calls me that.”
The classic Mammoth nickname is goalie Karel Vejmelka’s “Veggie.”
“Veggie is great,” Schmidt said.
“Veg, yeah, yeah,” said defenseman Ian Cole. “Except he can’t pronounce his “V’s” so it’s Wedgie.”
Then there’s Liam O’Brien, AKA “Spicy Tuna.”
“Way back when, I gave Liam O’Brien the nickname Tuna when we were playing in the American League,” Schmidt said. “He adapted it to Spicy Tuna.”
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“He’s claiming that?” questioned Cole. “We’ll have to check the records. Let’s go to the Library of Congress and see what they got.”
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But the newest nickname that has taken the NHL by storm is Russian rookie Daniil But, AKA “Cheeks.”
“Cheeks is great,” said Schmidt, who came up with the name.
“It’s unbelievable,” said O’Brien. “It’s sticking, too. It’s not going anywhere.”
“It’s smart, it’s simple, it’s funny,” Cole said. “It’s to the point, and everyone gets it.
Well, almost everyone.
“I still don’t know what does it mean?” said But, who primarily speaks Russian. “It’s hard to explain in Russian, but [Mikhail Sergachev] says it’s one of the best nicknames in the NHL, so that’s good for me.”
Sometimes, nicknames are inevitable whether you like them or not.
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“We tried giving [Sean Durzi] a new nickname, but he didn’t like it,” O’Brien said. “You can fight against your nickname, but sometimes it just is what it is.”
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Source: Utah News