On Friday, Sovetsky Sport’s Pavel Lysenkov published the second part of a Russian-language interview he had with 2012 first overall pick, Nail Yakupov. Yakupov spoke mostly about things we marginally care about like the Russian National Team and his dog. Then Lysenkov asked Yak if he had any good stories to tell from his time in Edmonton so far.
Yes, he did, and it involved former paralyzing Capital/wagon, Matt Hendricks!
Igor Kleyner has your translation.
When Todd Nelson came [to Oilers], he introduced a tradition. After a practice, we form a ring, and someone selects three stars of the session. And the first star – whoever took it easy in training. He gets to run a lap in full gear.
So, it’s my turn to hand out stars. Ben Scrivens is 3rd. Taylor Hall is 2nd. And the 1st star, with help from Andrew Ference, I give to the veteran Matt Hendricks. His eyes just popped out: “Kid, are you crazy?”
Hendricks runs the lap. We laughed, I apologized. Matt just nodded, “No worries, it’s all good.” So I skate for another half hour, return to the locker-room, and my shoes… the soles are glued together! I also saw he tried to nail them to the wall, but didn’t have enough time.
I spent two hours trying to pry the shoes apart. Nobody helped. In the end, I ripped them apart so that one shoe had two soles, the other none. That’s how I went home. And Matt said, “Don’t mess with veterans!”
Yeah, that sounds like Hendy.
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