Columnist Ron Kantowski: LV’s biggest hockey fan has given up on season

Friday, Jan. 21, 2005 | 9:52 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

The sides in the NHL labor dispute met two more (last?) times in Chicago and Toronto this week in an attempt to resolve their differences and perhaps salvage something of a mini-season. But by now, that's sort of like pulling the goalie with two seconds to play with the face-off in your end.

Besides, unless you grew up in Saskatoon or are a partner in a Tim Horton's donuts franchise, you probably stopped paying attention to these labor talks a long time ago.

Even Bobby Bryde has stopped paying attention. Bryde is Las Vegas' foremost authority on hockey. If you don't believe it, just ask him. Remember Phil Esposito's 76-goal season in 1970-71? If you give him 15 minutes, Bryde probably can tell you who Espo beat for each of those goals. And whether it was glove or stick side. And even he's fed up with the whole tawdry affair.

"Nah," he sniffs about the possibility of a 30-game season and a few rounds of playoffs. "The quality of play would be horrible. Half of the players are out of shape ... and it would be insulting to fans if they came back now."

Bryde makes 75 percent of his income betting hockey, so you can understand his disdain for current events. But long before the game became his livelihood, it was his passion. He played street hockey growing up on Long Island, where he followed the Rangers and always has, even after his family moved to Florida.

"The first time I got into a fight in Florida I pulled a guy's shirt over his head on the playground and started beating on him. They had never seen anybody fight like that. They thought it was the X-Files," said Bryde, who wrote the first book on handicapping hockey. He has been writing about the game and sports gaming in general since 1988 and has a tell-it-like-it-is Web site (hockeymeister.com) devoted to his favorite pastimes.

All those things brought me to Bryde's doorstep Wednesday afternoon. I figured if there was anybody around here suffering from chicken pucks, he might have a terminal case.

I even thought about getting my official 1986 Denis Savard Chicago Blackhawks jersey out of mothballs in an attempt to impress and/or cheer him up. While that wouldn't have been necessary -- after all, they're still playing college hockey -- you know from the moment you walk into his home in northwest Las Vegas that both of Bryde's feet are still planted firmly in the crease.

Visitors are greeted by an inflatable dinosaur wearing a Philadelphia Flyers jersey. (So that's what Bobby Clarke looks like with teeth.) Turning to your left, there are giant posters featuring Bobby Orr, Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe, hanging from the rafters like the championship banners at the old Montreal Forum, and a couple of book cases jammed to the blue line with hockey books and artifacts.

But that's nothing compared to the rest of the living area, which looks like the director's truck during Hockey Night in Canada. There are six regulation-sized televisions, each wired for satellite hockey.

"I could go seven if I have to," Bryde said about adding another monitor if, say, one of the cable networks was showing "Slap Shot."

There are miniature replicas of the Stanley Cup, Vezina Trophy (top goaltender), Hart Trophy (most valuable player), Art Ross Trophy (top scorer), Conn Smythe Trophy (playoff MVP) and another cup I didn't immediately recognize on the top of the primary TV. I thought it might be the Norris Trophy (top defenseman) but Bryde said it was the Adams Trophy, which goes to the NHL coach of the year.

There's more hockey stuff, including a library of more than 1,400 old games on VHS tapes, as you make your way from center ice at Bryde's place into the attacking zone, which would be his office. He's got so much hockey memorabilia in there that you feel guilty not paying admission to see it.

Then Bryde opens the closet door where he keeps his good luck charms -- a pitchfork (Devils), a Beanie Baby that loosely resembles a wild animal (Panthers), a photo of Bob and Doug McKenzie (Canadiens) -- that he pulls out, depending on where his money lies during hockey night in Las Vegas.

"What do you use when you bet on Columbus?" I asked, not spotting a Blue Jacket among the trinkets in Bryde's closet.

"I don't bet on Columbus," he said. "Unless it's the over."

In that all of his stuff is still on display and not packed away in a storage shed the size of Maple Leaf Gardens, you get the idea that Bryde hasn't totally given up on the NHL. But like most New Yorkers, sentimentality isn't something Bryde wears on the sleeve of his Rangers jersey.

After all, this is a guy whose high school classmates voted him "Most Likely to be Found in a Canal."

So Bryde went into a mini-rant about the evils of fighting -- "Every time I got into a fight I got fired, so why can they get away with it?" -- rampant expansion that he believes has watered down the quality of play and, of course, the greed of the owners and players that has darkened those six TV sets in his living room, although the last one is getting easier to take with each passing day.

"I mean, there are only so many Anaheim-Florida games you can watch," Bryde said. "I don't miss that part of it."

It was about then I noticed a poster of Wayne Gretzky, promoting one of those Frozen Fury exhibition games in Las Vegas, tacked to the side of one of Bryde's file cabinets.

On the crest of Gretzky's sweater was one of those metallic placards used in sports books, probably a souvenir of Bryde's ticket-writing days at the Plaza or El Rancho.

"POSTPONED," it read in block letters colder than a Calgary winter.

Wayne's World is closed, and even in Las Vegas there are fans none too pleased about it.