Auston Matthews was circling the offensive zone like a shark, stalking the puck as time wound down in the second period. He struck in an instant, taking a pass and snapping a shot past the goaltender’s elbow to give the Toronto Maple Leafs a 3-2 lead in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference playoff series.
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The crowd erupted. The Air Canada Centre goal horn blared. In the press box, way up in the rafters, Joe Bowen, the radio play-by-play announcer, thundered into his microphone.
“Auston Matthews!” he boomed. “Big Papi is in the house!”
Big Papi?
Matthews was raised in Scottsdale, Ariz., about six hours north of Hermosillo, Mexico, where his mother had grown up. As ESPN highlighted earlier this season, he grew up in a bilingual household, with English and Spanish, and the family gave him a nickname: Papi.
“Well, that’s when you earn the ‘Big Papi’ designation, in the playoffs,” forward James van Riemsdyk said with a smile on Wednesday. “We’ll see how it goes the rest of the way.
“I don’t mind it,” said fellow forward Connor Brown. “I think it’s cool.”
“Big Papi?” winger Kasperi Kapanen asked with a chuckle. “For Auston? I don’t know if that’s a good nickname for him. Obviously, if people want to start calling him Big Papi, then go for it. But I don’t see that.”
For one thing, Big Papi, as a nickname, has already been claimed. David Ortiz, the retired Boston Red Sox slugger, was known by that name for years. It even figured into the title of a book he published in 2008: Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hit.
Joe Bowen (@BonsieTweets) calling out Auston Matthews goal tonight, listen for yourselves … pic.twitter.com/NKGZ2YkPPP
— Ad (@yagirldin) April 17, 2018
Hockey players have become notoriously bland with the nicknames they give each other, and the Leafs are no different. Their dressing room is filled with “ie” and “y” and “s,” from Bozie (Tyler Bozak) and Mitchy (Mitch Marner), to Gards (Jake Gardiner) and Babs (Mike Babcock).
There have been exceptions, where creativity has been permitted and nicknames have been allowed to bloom. In 2002, for example the Leafs enlisted a rookie defenceman from the Czech Republic as they headed into the playoffs.
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His name was Karel Pilar, with the surname pronounced something close to “pea-lash.”
Darcy Tucker, the veteran forward, was credited with creating the rookie’s nickname: Ricer, after rice pilaf.
“It’s a side dish,” Pilar told a reporter that spring.
More than a dozen reporters encircled Matthews at his stall inside MasterCard Centre on Wednesday, a day before the Leafs host the Boston Bruins in Game 4 of their first-round series. The goal he scored in Game 3 on Monday stood as the eventual winner, and the Leafs can tie the best-of-seven with another win on Thursday.
Around the room, Matthews is usually called Matty or Mats.
Big Papi?
“I don’t know, I guess we’ll leave those things up to Joe,” goaltender Curtis McElhinney with a smile. “Maybe he can sell that to everyone. I don’t know if, in-house, we’ll be calling him by that name.”
McElhinney is usually called Mac. Neither he nor van Riemsdyk could name the teammate who had the most creative nickname.
Brown, who goes by Brownie, said he has seen signs for Big Papi.
“We just call him ‘Mats,’ usually,” he said. “Sometimes, we call him ‘Juicy.’”
Wait: Juicy?
“Yeah,” he said with a smile. “I don’t know why. Hey ‘Juicy.’ You also call a lot of guys a lot of things that don’t mean anything, you know? A lot of things get thrown around.”
Veteran forward Matt Martin paused for a moment to think of the most creative nickname he has heard over his career. He came up mostly empty. He has played with a Campbell, he said, which meant he has played with a player known as “Soupy.”
Players can spend hours with each other every day, in the dressing room, at meals and traveling on the team charter. That should leave plenty of time to develop familiarity, followed by familiarity’s progeny, nicknames.
“When you’re out on the ice, it’s Gards, it’s Matty,” Martin said. “You’re not yelling Papi when you’re on the ice together.”
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Off the ice, and behind closed doors, he suggested players might be known by something different.
“There’s a lot of different ones for guys,” Martin said with a smile. “Some of them, you’re not allowed to say. They’re more, like, insulting nicknames than they are nicknames.”
So there might be a few creative nicknames on the roster, after all?
“That you could print?” Kapanen said. “Probably not.”
(Top photo by Mark Blinch, NHLI via Getty Images)
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