Around the web

On this American holiday weekend, I thought I'd spend a little time looking around the web and point out some hockey history related articles of late.

The Boston Bruins have had some of the game's greatest defensemen wear the black and gold. Bobby Orr, Raymond Bourque, Brad Park, Flash Hollett Dit Clapper. Now Zdeno Chara is trying to continue that tradition. But as Boston Bruins.com reminds us the first great defenseman to wear the spoked B was The Edmonton Express Eddie Shore.

Speaking of great defensemen, while this site focuses on retired players almost exclusively NHL.com's Larry Wigge's recent column on Chris Chelios is too good to ignore. Besides, Chelios has seemingly been around since the days of Eddie Shore. Okay, not quite, but he's almost 45 and will soon be eligible for his NHL pension plan even though he's still playing the game, and playing it well.

My favorite hockey history website for quite some time now has to be Hockey Draft Central.com. They're trying to profile every NHL player ever drafted from 1963 through now. They do this using exhaustive research and compiling newspaper articles and team media guides. The result is as a complete of a biography of any player you'll find, be it first overall Guy Lafleur or the many players who never came close to playing pro hockey. Every player from 1963 through 1984 is currently profiled. Hockey Draft Central.com is an invaluable resource.