Doug MacGregor, of The Constantines is not only a brah but he's a hell of a stick handler (on the drums). We first met each other in 2001 when Oneida opened for the Cons in our first (and last) extended foray into Ontario in support of Anthem of the Moon. Our discovery of our shared love of puck followed soon after. I've got a restless relationship with the world of professional hockey because I think the players don't give a shit and there's too much fighting. I wanted to try to figure out what the hell was going on with the sport so I thought I'd get down to it with The Duge. Truth be told this interview commenced some time in 2005 and then I thought I lost it. Recently I did a quick email search in yahoo and found it. So here it is — the famous "Lost Duge Interview (about Hockey)." We added some shit within the last month.


Kid Millions: What position do you play? Tell me your personal hockey philosophy.

Doug MacGregor (aka "The Duge" of the Constantines): I play left-wing. I don't know if I have a particular philosophy of play, but I do think it is dictated to you by your position. If you aren't very good at defense, or you aren't a natural at scoring goals, then you play wing, and you kind of have to be guided by a near suicidal impulse to go into the corners and do what it takes to get the puck out in front of the net to the players who have the scoring touch. It also means you are the natural drop-back man when your defensemen goes on a rush, and you find your man (the opposite team's right-winger) and stick to him when your team ain't got the puck. I guess my philosophy would be best described by an approximation of the emergency care givers' maxim: "First do no harm."

Kid: White tuuks or black?

The Duge: I prefer white tuuks.

Kid: Cooperalls?

The Duge: God no. Go down in Cooperalls and you slide for an eternity and getting up is like the proverbial turtle on its back.

Kid: Also what about aluminum sticks? I also felt this was gilding the lily - I was a wooden bro from the heart. Victoriaville sticks. What did you use?

The Duge: As for sticks, I started with the Wayne Gretzky edition red & white Titan sticks, but as they grew older I learned to love the Christian Brothers sticks [sadly they no longer make sticks]. I have had the same aluminum stick I used when I was 13 or 14, and I grew to love it. This caught be my surprise. It's kinda like finding yourself surprised that you fell head over heels for the girl in your office with the bleach blonde hair and the fake boobs.

Kid: Shoot?

The Duge: Left. Poor wrist shot, decent slap shot and snap shot.

Kid: What are your feelings on fighting in the game? It's the most offensive part of the NHL for me.

The Duge: It does not bother me. The game is fast and tense. Tempers flare. I would rather see two guys duke it out fast-to-face than to see tempers expressed via spearing or high-sticking. Dirty stick work bothers me, fighting does not.

Kid: Has playing hockey ever gotten you laid? Is that like owning a pair of shoes in Canada? Do any of the arty girls like hockey in Canada?

The Duge: I suppose if you are good at hockey, it would get you laid. That's why I switched to drums when I was 13. I realized if I was ever to get rich and meet a lot of girls, I was gonna need to find a brand new bag. Some of the arty girls like hockey here, and they are the best to hang with while the Montreal Canadiens are serving up an ass-whipping on the Rangers. [Brah — there are more efficient ways to get rich and meet women. Speaking from hard experience — KM]

Kid: What's your first memory on the ice?

The Duge: Wearing bob-skates when I was around three years old on the pond behind my parents' house. The stick was imperative to help me hold my balance on the ice. I learned to skate there.

Kid: Thoughts on pros in the Olympics [I realize the decision to allow professional athletes into the Olympic Games was made over ten years ago but it still rankles - KM]?

The Duge: Fifteen years ago when it was 16-18 year old kids from Canada, USA, Sweden etc. playing teams like the Red Army from the Communist countries who were pros in all but name, I woulda been all for it. Now I am ambivalent. I am no Olympics purist, but I do like the amateur spirit. I do like seeing the best players from all over the world play, and see the clash of styles. In the hockey match ups you can see the Canadian physical play versus the European passing model versus the American hybrid of the two.

Kid: Hysteria about hockey being the lamest pro sport out there?

The Duge: Cough. Nascar. As my dad says:"Step on the gas and turn left? Fuck that."

Kid: What's the fucking deal with loafing in the NHL? Any given Division 1 college game has more fire than most NHL games during the regular season. I think it might be the worst in all of pro sports.

The Duge: Man, Reggie Jackson had this all figured out when he played for the Yankees in the Seventies. When he found out how many teams make it to the playoffs in the NHL, he asked the Rangers"Why do you even bother in the regular season?"The end result is that no one really bothers unless it's a regional rivalry. The only NHL that matters is the playoffs and the regional rivalries. Montreal versus Nashville? Who cares....but Montreal versus Boston is going to be a good one. Bringing it back to baseball, in the regular season, most hockey players are content to be left-fielders, the loafiest position in the league.

Kid: Tell me what we have to do to bring hockey back to its rightful place at the top of the pro sports heap. Wait it never was on top - BUT tell me anyway.

The Duge: I don't know. See above. Less teams in the playoffs. And let's do away with settling games with a shoot-out after 5 minutes of overtime. Come on, at least give us at least ONE full period of overtime before resorting to this shit. I do like that they got rid of the center-ice line for two line passes, as it breaks The Trap, which wins games, but is ultimately BORING to watch. I don't know what needs to be done. But you are talking to a guy who is ravenous for the NFL and the CFL, but can't watch MLB or NBA. What do I know about the top of the sports heap?

Kid: Any close encounters with legends?

The Duge: The closest I got to a legend was Bobby Orr when he was at the unveiling of the Chevy Lumina minivan prototype in the GM Plant in London, Ontario in 1988 or 1989. I also got Mario Lemieux's autograph at a charity baseball game when he had long hair in the summer of 1988.

Kid: When you're up there bashing away at the drums about how many times a show are you thinking about puck?

The Duge: I thought about this a lot since you asked me, and sadly, the answer is almost never. I am more inclined to catch myself thinking"Oh shit, I gotta fill out my tax forms as soon as I get home." Lame.

Kid: Can you tell the readers some awesome hockey books? My personal fave is Open Net by George Plimpton (believe it or not). Did you read the Larry Sloman book, Thin Ice? He just ghostwrote the Antony Kiedis autobio which happens to be terrible.

The Duge: I read the Larry Sloman book. It was rad. That was where I got the Reggie Jackson quote above. I loved "Tiger: A Hockey Story" by Tiger Williams. Prairie boy goons are the toughest. I also loved The Game by Ken Dryden. Any book by Stan Fischler is the stand-by for classic books about hockey from the 60's and 70's and 80's. He wrote a controversial book called Hockey's 100: A Personal Ranking of the Best Players in Hockey History in the mid-80's that caused a lot of controversy as Wayne Gretzky barely cracked the top 10 [he was actually listed as number 10 — but the book was published in 1984. Gretzky had another 15 years in the NHL yet to play.]

Kid: In the USA the so called Miracle On Ice figures so massively in our hockey lives. I watched the Russian game with my Dad on a tiny black and white TV back in 1980. I was seven years old. To me it's one of the great sports stories of my lifetime because it was a team of amateurs and we just aren't the ice hockey powerhouse that Canada clearly is. Can you comment on this? I'd like to hear not only your thoughts on the so called"Miracle"but maybe you could enlighten us as to how hockey is a part of your daily lives up there in a way it can never be for us"southerners."

The Duge: That game at Lake Placid holds a special place in my heart. In fact, I once traded my hockey team's pin for a pin commemorating that game with a hockey dad in Detroit. What I love so much about those old games is the clash of systems it represented. You can clearly see the rigid systematic nature of Communism reflected in the Soviet style of hockey contrasted with Herb Brooks brilliant melding of the Soviet style crisp cross-ice passes and emphasis on positional play with the North American more physical and individualistic style. The Americans won for the same reason that Team Canada won in the famed 1972 Summit Series: they were able to understand and defuse the Soviet system while utilizing individual intuition and one-man efforts that were too alien for the Soviets to counter. There may be a Ph. D. thesis out there for someone on how the events of 1972 and 1980 were emblematic of the eventual events of 1991.

It's also of no small importance to recall that at the time with Soviet team was THE powerhouse in international hockey, having been a well-oiled team of professionals in all but name facing junior teams cobbled together from the best of each nation. I think this also figures so largely in your hockey lives as the idea of the plucky maverick underdogs struggling against all odds to win against the monolithic force because it is such a perfect crystallization of that great national myth: the American Dream. Similarly, I think perhaps the idea that hockey is so revered here is best reflected in the 1972 Summit Series and how it pertains to one of our national myths: the idea that the closest we came to a Cuban Missile Crisis with the Soviets was not fought over nuclear warheads, but over a puck. Plus, when your only neighbor is the biggest, most bad-ass cultural exporter in the history of the world, you have to be better at something. The more I think about it, the Miracle On Ice is so allegorical it almost reaches the proportions of a classic Greek drama.

Thanks for The Duge for going into the corners with me. . .at some point we'll both have to step out from behind the kit and hit the ice.