Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
And here comes number 9, charging up the ice, he slips past the defence, passes the puck,
back to Richard, he SCORES! Maurice “the Rocket” Richard has just scored his 50th
goal in 50 games! He’s the best hockey player in the world! That was quite a long time ago.
In fact, my grandfather knew Maurice Richard. Well, not personally, like a friend or anything,
but as the best player on the Montréal Canadiens hockey team. Even my grandmother knew him.
They say that, when he was a kid, once he put on a pair of skates at the start of a
season, he didn’t want to take them off for the whole winter. He skated every day
on a frozen lake or on the river close to where he lived — sort of like us with the
Rideau Canal Skateway. He went to school on skates, he begged his mother to let him eat
with his skates on, and he played hockey with his brothers and his father. I bet he even
tried to sleep with his skates on! Anyway, he really loved hockey a lot, and his greatest
dream was to play for the Montréal Canadiens. His father taught him to never give up and
to always keep trying. He played for five different teams all at the same time. It didn’t
take long for him to get noticed as being a really good hockey player, and he was recruited
to play for the Montréal Canadiens when he was 21 years old. His dream had come true,
and he soon became a hero — and not just in the world of hockey — everyone loved
Maurice Richard. He was always nice and polite. But, on the ice, that was a different story.
He was called “the Rocket,” because he skated really fast, just like a rocket. Look
at the size of him! They say that, when he looked his opponents in the eye, they were
afraid of him. See the look on his face? He seems to know exactly where he’s going.
It’s like he’s thinking: “You better get outta my way!” He wanted to win so badly
that he often played even when he was injured. Hockey was his life — like it is for so
many Canadians. It’s our national sport. Everybody either plays hockey, watches hockey
or knows somebody who plays hockey. The Rocket scored so many goals that he was entered in
the record books, because no one before him had ever done what he did. He helped win eight
Stanley Cups, and scored a total of 626 goals over his career. He even played in the NHL
with his brother Henri, who was nicknamed “Pocket Rocket,” because he was smaller
than Maurice. His parents must have been so proud of their kids. Early in his career,
he wore number 15. But, see the number he’s wearing here: it’s number 9. He changed
his number when he became a father, because his daughter weighed 9 pounds when she was
born. And “9” became his lucky number. I wonder if he would have kept 15 if his daughter
had weighed 15 pounds! Maurice Richard — what a great hockey legend!