That’s Mr. Gump Worsley to you.

In my contribution this month over at The Blog of Funny Names, I look at the life and times of hockey goalie Gump Worsley, a piece of work if ever there was one.

Drop the puck!

That means something in certain sections of our world.

It’s a phase that rolls off the tongue of English-speaking ice hockey fans. I can’t say I’m fluent in the Russian or Scandinavian equivalents. Nor the French, even though a good portion of my neighbors to the north might shout “déposer la rondelle!” (I’m trusting Google translator to capture the nuance) when the skating zebras are too slow on the draw when the players are waiting for them to toss the hard rubber sphere from their hand to the ice so they can swat their sticks, strategize and generally begin the organized mayhem mixed with artistic beauty that is their sport.

Which brings me to a goalie from the past, a man who was called by a funny name made famous decades later by a fictional savant who did many things well in a movie, not one of them playing hockey.

Gump Worsley was his name. Lorne John “Gump” Worsley, to be most formal, actually.

Click here to read the rest of the story.