We're in a poor era for nicknames in sports, with athletes more self-possessed and relentlessly marketed than ever before. Even in hockey -- the last refuge of goofy nicknames -- we're nearly bereft of creative nicknames.
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Not only have individual players been known better by their nicknames than by their given names -- the league was once populated by guys known as Gump, Ace, Hap, Boom-Boom, and Terrible Ted -- but there's also a tradition of nicknaming teams' forward lines: The Kid Line, The Punch Line, The Production Line, etc.
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The best of recent vintage was in Vancouver during the year that Anson Carter played with the Sedin Twins; the line was sometimes referred to as "The Brothers Line." Nicknames like "The Downtown Line" and "The Center City Line" have been thrown around in reference to the Flyers' current second line of Jeff Carter, Scott Hartnell, and Joffrey Lupul, because all three players live in Center City Philadelphia rather than in the South Jersey suburbs, where Flyers players have traditionally lived.
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(Yes, I hotlinked Anson Carter's name so I didn't have to point out he "happens to be black." Oh, wait -- he's Canadian, so we don't have to use that idiotic language. He's black.)
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After the lockout, when Blues winger Keith Tkachuk showed up at training camp looking rather like Terry Forster, some joker suggested that, whomever he played alongside that season, the unit should be called "The Buffet Line."
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And it is in that spirit that I attempt to coin a line nickname, based on the recent ape-like pugilistic actions of Capitals winger Alex "BABALOOOOOO!" Semin.
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Semin centered by Sergei Fedorov with Tomas Fleischmann on the other side: "The Nairobi Trio."
If you're not familiar,* The Nairobi Trio was a bit performed by Ernie Kovacs, one of the true geniuses in television history and a writer for MAD Magazine in its early days. Kovacs was a pioneer of sight gags and oddball characters, and had the first early-morning show in television history (in -- where else? -- Philadelphia), which proved that people would, in fact, watch TV early in the morning and prompted NBC to create "The Today Show."
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*If Kovacs hadn't been killed in a car crash at age 42, you would definitely know who he was. Seriously. He may be the one who discovered the universal principle, Monkeys = Comedy. An all-gorilla rendition of "Swan Lake"? That's gold, Jerry! Gold!! Within the technical constraints of TV in the early 1950s, he managed to pull off sketches involving office supplies coming alive to dance to a symphony, and of himself apparently smoking a cigar underwater. Light years ahead of his time. The ceremony in which he married Edie Adams was conducted entirely in Spanish -- in New York City -- even though neither of them spoke or understood a word of it.
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