The Greatest Hockey Music Ever Written - Part I

I know when I made the introductory post to this series, there was an implication that all the music was going to be awful, but we're going to start this thing off with a song that isn't that bad at all (unless you listen to it fifteen times in a row while you're trying to write about it to block out the noise of your family being crazy all around you, in which case it snakes its way into your brain and NEVER COMES OUT AGAIN).

Stompin' Tom Connors was born a poor black child Charles Thomas Connors in New Brunswick in 1936. He spent the bulk of his youth wandering itinerantly and writing spectacular folk songs that, as an American, I have never heard of. His lasting contribution to hockey music occurred in the early 70s:

Stompin' Tom Connors - The Hockey Song

Love it or hate it (and I've actually met people who really, really hate it), it's the consummate hockey song, and we really couldn't write about hockey music without mentioning it.

Of course, if the original really doesn't do it for you, you can try this Swedish version, which is in English with heavy accents, and has Peter Forsberg scoring the first goal instead of Bobby Orr-Hull-Clarke-Whatever. If Don Cherry hasn't heard this yet, I want to be there the first time he does, with a wheelbarrow, so when he shits bricks over its existence I can take them home and build myself a garden shed.