Hockey and Figure Skating Nicknames

The big excitement here recently has been the return of Connor McDavid to the Edmonton Oilers lineup after he broke his collarbone. I laughed aloud when the radio called him Connor McBroken, and that started me thinking about the cool nicknames we give to athletes.

In hockey, it’s very common. In fact, it’s more uncommon NOT to have a nickname. Some players just get shortened squishy versions of their names, and some players get really cool nicknames. Every great hockey player has been given a nickname.

Here are some of the good hockey ones:

• Wayne Gretzky: The Great One
• Mario Lemieux: The Magnificent One, Super Mario
• Eric Lindros: The Next One
• Sidney Crosby: Sid the Kid, The Next One
• Connor McDavid: Connor McSaviour, Connor McBroken, McJesus
• Pavel Bure: The Russian Rocket
• Teemu Selanne: The Finnish Flash
• Nikolai Khabibulin: The Bulin Wall
• Domenik Hasek: The Dominator
• Alexander Ovechkin: Ovie, The Great Eight
• Curtis Joseph: Cujo
• Johnny Gaudreau: Johnny Hockey

In figure skating, I really don’t see much of this happening. Maybe it’s more of a team sport thing or maybe just a North American thing to do. Here are the only ones I could think of in the sport of figure skating. Oh and by the way, when I say “nicknames”, I’m not talking about what an athlete’s name means in their culture, I’m just talking about fun names that special athletes are given by their peers, fans or the media:

• Yuzuru: Yuzu, Mushroom, Mushy (see below), The Prince
  • The easy one is Yuzu, but that is just a shortened version of his real name, so I don’t really want to call that a “fun” nickname. Now, when he was younger, Kanako used to call him “Mushroom” due to his mushroom style haircut that was inspired by his idol, Evgeny Plushenko. As far as we know, Yuzu didn’t really like this nickname, however the nickname “The Prince” seems to fit him perfectly!!!

• Nam Nguyen: Namnamnoodle
  • Nam calls himself Namnamnoodle as his twitter and instagram handle but I haven’t been able to uncover what this is about, maybe just being tall and skinny.
• Javier Fernandez: Javi, just a shortened name, no special nickname
• Denis Ten: D10
• Evgeny Plushenko: Plushy, The King
  • The cutest names I have seen are “Plushy and Mushy (yuzu)” used together in reference to the 2 mushroom haircut styles, but the “mushy” never really stuck on Yuzu.

Other skaters that have or have been given nicknames:

• Brian Orser: Mr Triple Axel
• Yuna Kim: Queen Yuna
• Maia and Alex Shibutani: Shibsibs
• Andrew Poje and Caitlin Weaver have been given a squishy name: Weapo

I’m sure there are a few more, if you have any that you want to share, please send me a comment!! Johnny Weir has one, but I didn’t want to put it here.

In an unrelated topic, I just received my Worlds tickets, and am SOOO super excited!!! Cannot wait to see Yuzu in person again!! What a dream!

Go Yuzu Go!! Doki Doki!