There is a new book out about Buzz Deschamps, which after reading it and talking to Buzz Deschamps about it leads to an inevitable question: What took so long?
And another question: How about a movie? That already happened, sort of.
When “Slap Shot,” the notoriously raucous 1977 film about minor league hockey starring Paul Newman, came out, hockey journalist Stan Fischler took Deschamps to the premiere.
Two things about that: First, it all rang true to Deschamps. “I’d seen everything in that movie happen – but not in an hour-and-a-half,” he said.
Second, he got into “a little bit of an argument” with Newman over the depiction of players’ wives in the film.
That’s Deschamps in a nutshell.
At 83, he might know more hockey people, past and present, than anyone alive, and he has a story to tell about all of them – from Paul Newman to John Brophy, widely considered the real-life model for Newman’s “Slap Shot” character.
Hence, “A Stick in the Window: The Hockey Life of Buzz Deschamps,” by Joseph Rossi, which seeks to tell as many tales as possible about a sprawling life, more than half of which has been lived on Long Island.
Some of the only-in-hockey characters – even their names and nicknames – seem like fiction. But they’re real.
Former Islander Bryan Trottier, who wrote the foreword, told Newsday, “Buzzy wears hockey in his heart, on his sleeve. He bleeds hockey. He’s an encyclopedia, but he’s also a wonderful mentor.
“All the kids he’s helped in the game of hockey at St. John’s and on Long Island in general, he’s just a special human being . . . There’s only going to be one Buzzy, and we all love him.”
Deschamps has yet to read the book. “I lived it,” he said. But he trusted Rossi, who retired as a teacher at Babylon Memorial Grade School, to get it right. (Deschamps promised to read the book eventually.)
Deschamps now works as a “hockey ambassador” for the Town of Oyster Bay at its…
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