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Pranksters in Crime: Cammalleri and Kostopoulos With some Trade Talk on the Side Last weekend, in XM’s Saturday show, “Live from Wayne Gretzkys”, Tom Kostopoulos came on to talk about his season with the Canadiens, life in the NHL and some dirt since he is known as a prankster.
Lucky for me, I had my Dictaphone with me and taped it for everyone’s mutual enjoyment – especially since the examples he gave were from when he was with the Kings. (He did say that as to the Canadiens, he would never try a prank on Koivu – something to the effect of he would never go there with his Captain.)
While there are current doubts as to how good a teammate Cammalleri actually is and how long he will remain a King (fans want to clock it through the draft – the Kings are silent on the matter). Once upon a time, Cammalleri and Kostopoulos pulled a sweet prank on Crawford and Cammalleri got Kostopoulos pretty good.
Enjoy:
“Two summers ago, Marc Crawford gets hired as the coach of L.A. and I (Kostopoulos) get a call on my cell phone. “Hi Tom, this is Marc Crawford. I am calling I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about the year and stuff...” (Tom responds) “Hi Marc, how is it going?” I am trying to be nice, talk to him, have a good voice, trying to turn down my car radio. I pull over. So we talk, and he is asking me about the players, their training, my training, my role, where I think I should play. (We) have a 20 minute conversation. Just when I am about to ask another question, he starts laughing his head off! (I ask) “What is so funny Marc?” Mike Cammalleri was on the other end laughing. (He says to Tom) … “You’re an idiot.” (Tom continues) I was just laughing it up.
“When we got back to camp that year that got around the room pretty quickly. It was funny. I had to laugh it up. He had me going for a good 20 minutes on the phone so it was pretty good.”
As to one of Kostopoulos’ physical pranks:
“One practice, we all know how particular Marc Crawford is about his hair. He has a bottle of gel right beside his gloves that he has at every practice. His hair his perfectly spiked. It never moves.”
“One day a few of us switched the gel for shampoo. We forgot about it because we hadn’t been home for awhile. We hadn’t practiced at home. We come home from a road trip and we went out for practice and his (Crawford)’s hair was flat to his head. None of us picked up on it. So he comes out and he tells us the first couple drills and all of us are chuckling because of his hair but we don’t realize how it happened.”
“We go through all practice laughing and laughing about his hair. After practice he comes up and says, ‘The So and So that put shampoo in my gel …#%!@!!!’ I was dying laughing. It was pretty funny.”
My Take:
Speaking solely for myself, I knew Crawford and referee, Kerry Fraser, were probably considered some of the most particular about their hair in the NHL. As to Crawford, who knew that he kept gel with him at all times…. Egad!!
Anyway, with all the seriousness of my blogs from the Town Hall Meeting, I wanted to provide a bit of levity.
Question of the Day:
Near all fans see Cammalleri gone. That is a no brainer about if, the only question is when. After him, who is the next King(s) you want gone, and what do you realistically think any King will bring in return?
As to Eklund's source and rumors about Spezza and Pitkanen, I don’t see either happening. The former makes $8 million per year and those dollars are reserved for Kopitar and Johnson’s extensions. As to the latter, no way do the Kings give him the $5 million per annum he is demanding. It makes no long term cap sense.
Have at it!
Carla Muller
Carla.hockeygal@att.net
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wngr2552
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