The Art of the Chirp: An homage to the masters of NHL trash talking

We are talking about a man best avoided, a dangerous, sharp implement of a hockey player upon which you’ll only bloody yourself.

Nothing good could come of poking this individual. So of course the mouthy rookie singled him out for some verbals – to his teammates’ delight and mild horror.

The first-year player’s name: Brad Marchand.

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“I remember some of the guys looking at me like, ‘Who’s this kid chirping Chris Pronger?’” Marchand recalled. “That was the first one I remember.”

And what exactly did young Marchand say to the legendarily mean future Hall-of-Famer?

“I don’t remember now,” he said. “I was yelling from the bench and guys were looking at me, saying, ‘What are you thinking?’ It was fun.”

Now, the definition of ‘fun’ is largely a matter of perspective, but Marchand did survive to tell the tale. And when it comes to talking on the ice, the Boston winger clearly enjoys himself as much or more than anyone in the league.

If the NHL kept a leaderboard for devastating one-liners or most cutting remarks per 60, he would be at or near the top. But it would be a very crowded and competitive field.

Every sport has trash talk; insult culture and verbal gamesmanship are as integral to modern competition as trophies and uniforms.

Only hockey has chirping.

The word ‘chirp’ has its roots in 600-year-old Middle English terms, chyrpynge or possibly the even more archaic chirken (or to ‘twitter’, a coincidence about which no more need be said); in other words I checked and it does actually date back to before the era of the loser point and the current divisional playoff system.

According to the dictionary, it signifies a short, sharp sound usually made by small birds. Applied to a hockey context, as it has been for essentially the entire history of the game, the chirp usually involves profanity. It can hit so far below the belt it qualifies as subterranean. It provokes. It enrages. Also, it is frequently hilarious.

Like the time in the late 1980s when Maple Leafs and Islanders legend Steve ‘Stumpy’ Thomas bellowed at an opponent “you look like you did a 100-yard dash in a 50-yard gym.” Both benches burst out laughing at that one, as did the intended target.

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Or when Brendan Shanahan, at that point a member of the New York Rangers, did a fly-by of the L.A. bench and reportedly yelled at pesky Kings forward Sean Avery “lose my number, don’t ever call me again, because I’m tired of listening to you criticize your teammates all the time.”

There are countless stories, although some themes reappear throughout each era. The old don’t-listen-to-what-all-those-nasty-people-say-about-you appears to be one.

Three or four years ago Steve Ott, a first-ballot Hall of Chirper who is currently an assistant coach with the St. Louis Blues, was skating back to his bench after slugging an opponent in a post-whistle scrum.

He shouted at the other team, “Guys, I know you hate that guy, it’s okay, I got him for you.”

“That might be the best chirp of all time,” said Ray Ferraro, a chirp artiste in his own right as a player and now a TSN broadcaster who hears and sees all from his perch between the benches.

When Ferraro was a member of the New York Islanders, he played a game at Madison Square Garden against the hated New York Rangers on Halloween eve. In the midst of a post-whistle skirmish he pointed at Blueshirts enforcer Tie Domi and told him with a head like that he should be on someone’s porch, not playing hockey.

The linesmen may have saved a life that night.

“I don’t know why I felt I needed to say that,” Ferraro said. “I must have been having a bad game.”

Oh, here’s where we get into the crux of the matter.

Frustration and anger are frequently cited as the wellspring of chirp energy, but it appears there’s more to it than that.

There isn’t a ton of scholarship on trash talking writ large, and even less on hockey’s bespoke version. But there is some, and it describes a surprisingly complex phenomenon.

Several studies suggest it can hinder performance; others arrive at exactly the opposite finding.

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Perhaps the most relevant recent study is one published in 2016 by a team of researchers at the University of Toronto. The focus was actually injury prevention (the lead author is a neurosurgeon), but it also considered the root causes and environmental influences of aggression and violence in youth hockey.

And what is chirping but non-physical aggression and violence?

See if this passage sounds familiar: “In general, the culture of hockey appears to encourage a sense of loyalty, which includes using aggression to defend teammates in order to protect the team’s cohesion.”

And that cohesion is one of the earliest lessons a hockey player learns: Stick up for your teammates, play as a unit, accept whatever role you’re given to achieve the greater good. Chirping is a part of that mix.

“It’s kind of what we all did growing up, myself, my buddies, my teammates,” Marchand said. “I don’t know if it was the way our generation grew up and it was part of our team. That’s how our whole team grew up playing. It was natural and something I enjoyed doing.”

So that’s the academic, evidence-based piece of the equation. There are also more prosaic explanations as to why hockey players tend to lob invective at one another.

Collision sports tend to be competitive and intense, which means even the slightest advantage must be discovered and leveraged. If an opponent is terrifically mad at something you said, he may be shifting his attention from the matter at hand. Conversely, he may have just decided the best revenge is to pump a couple of pucks past your goalie.

Then there’s the uniqueness of hockey’s physical environment among other contact sports.

“It’s a confined space, right?” Ferraro said. “And if something happens to you that you don’t like, nine times out of 10 you’re going to end up right in front of the person who did it to you within a few seconds of it happening.”

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Couple the glass-enclosed bubble with an ethos of ‘what’s said on the ice stays on the ice’ and you have all the incentives anyone could ever need to say whatever springs to mind.

About that…

Chirping is often light-hearted, or easily ignored. Occasionally it is neither.

Transgressive-ness is one of hockey’s basic conditions; there are rules, some written and some not, they are regularly broken and/or ignored, and miscreants face consequences that can vary from a two-minute vacation in your nearest all-modern-conveniences penalty box, to a punch in the face or worse.

Aggression in hockey can sometimes take a darker turn in its verbal terms.

If there were to be an agreed-upon Line That Shall Not Be Crossed, it’s probably kids. But wives? Girlfriends?

Early in his career former Canadien, Devil and Avalanche Claude Lemieux famously chirped L.A.’s Charlie Simmer about his then-wife Terri Welles, a former Playboy Playmate of the Year.

He reportedly used crude enough language to prompt immediate and severe retaliation not just from the Kings, but a stern talking-to from veteran teammates.

It’s axiomatic that the kids who are just coming up have no respect; if you play long enough, whatever you have wrought unto others shall be wrought unto you.

As his career was winding down, Lemieux himself bore the brunt when an opponent tormented him mercilessly over his impending divorce.

There is no bottom to this, of course, which means situations can get rather explosive in a hurry. Every once in a while, the insults and foul talk even spill beyond the glass.

In 2009, Avery, then of the Dallas Stars, was suspended six games for an egregiously inappropriate remark he made about the relationship between his former girlfriend Elisha Cuthbert and Dion Phaneuf, then of the Calgary Flames (which we don’t need to repeat here, but you can find it easily enough).

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He was waived soon after, and was out of the league 18 months later. As an aside, Avery was also involved in perhaps the most famous chirpus interruptus in NHL history. He was with the Red Wings at the time, as he stood to yell at Colorado’s Joe Sakic, Brett Hull grabbed him by the jersey and said “you are not allowed to speak to Mr. Sakic.”

Veering into excess hasn’t stopped at NHL players digging into their peers’ matrimonial and love lives. There are plenty of insidious examples of players crossing a line from creatively cutting to verbally abusive.

Been suffering through addiction issues? Someone might throw it in your face in the heat of the moment.

There is also a long, unfortunate tradition of players using racist or homophobic epithets and other forms of unacceptable language to bait one another.

The NHL hasn’t always dealt with such incidents well, but the standard has been raised; language that was once common is now expressly verboten. Not everything that’s said on the ice stays on the ice, which is as it should be. The league is more enlightened than in the past on social issues.

Nationalities, languages and creeds have been, and continue to be, wantonly insulted. The honour of spouses, parents and siblings is gratuitously impugned on a nightly basis. Ad hominem attacks on physical characteristics and slurs against personal foibles are probably happening right now on a rink near you.

There are enough vicious rumours floating around the NHL to inspire a hundred sequels to Mean Girls.

As one veteran player said, “I don’t have any trouble finding material.”

Sometimes an NHLer says something hurtful and reprehensible to someone and a few weeks later they get traded to your team or you get shipped to theirs (as happened to one former player who recounted suddenly having to share a dressing room with a guy a short time after saying scurrilous and despicable things about his loved ones.)

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Awkward.

Here’s the other thing about chirping: it’s surprisingly democratic.

Teammates constantly chirp one another; being a superstar or the highest paid guy in the room is no hedge against wisecracks and put-downs.

“I think it keeps it light on the ice, I think it’s a great part of the game,” said San Jose Sharks centre Joe Thornton. “In fact, I don’t mind doing it myself a little.”

Thornton, discerning readers will note, isn’t exactly a goon, or a grinder.

In other words, this isn’t strictly the purview of the role player, the ‘rat’ or the ‘pest’, although those sub-types do tend to be better at it. There is also a hierarchy of chirping: those who talk from a safe distance and refuse to suffer the consequences are at the bottom of it.

It’s also something that’s practiced by, well, pretty much everyone in the game, not just players.

In the mid-1980s, the Edmonton Oilers were in their pomp, en route to another Stanley Cup championship, but on this occasion they were getting the stuffing ripped out of them by the Blackhawks at Chicago Stadium.

Glen Sather, a talker of considerable repute as a player, was behind the bench, and Kerry Fraser was the official in charge. Let’s turn it over to the ref:

“The Oilers were just getting smoked, it was ugly, and Kevin Lowe broke his stick over a guy in frustration. Obvious penalty,” Fraser said. “So I’m putting him in the box and I turn around, I see a commotion in the Edmonton bench. Everyone’s on their feet and I realize they’re trying to get at a fan.”

So he raced over to try and calm the Oilers’ ardors (“all I could think of was ‘I’ll be writing reports for a month if they get over that glass’”). He then offered to get arena security involved.

“And then Glen just steps in and stops it, he gets his guys to sit down, he’s like the maestro in an orchestra. And he says ‘No, we’re okay, that fan at the back was yelling terrible things at you about that horseshit call on Lowe and we were defending you’,” Fraser said. “All the players started to laugh. (Sather) did exactly what he wanted, he defused the situation and took the pressure off his guys.”

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Fraser raises another interesting nuance there: verbal barbs as pressure valve. There is a long and proud tradition of coaches and players saying zany, untrue or slanderous things to draw attention away from the topic du jour. Remember the P.K. Subban mouthwash caper with Sidney Crosby in the 2017 Stanley Cup Final? Until that point all anyone could talk about was Nashville’s goaltending. Fine, that’s a better example of chirping having backfired, but you get the drift.

Some players feel yapping is a way to remain more engaged in the competition, and to spur oneself into action. If you keep telling people how much better you are than them, it helps for it to actually be true.

For some, there’s a direct correlation between exercising one’s cake-hole and results.

“I enjoyed it, it was fun for me,” said Ferraro. “I had coaches ask me — tell me, really — to tone it down. And whenever I did I felt like I was almost outside the game.”

There are clearly lots of current players who feel similarly.

“Sometimes for me it gets you into the game a little more, you get yapping and it gets the bench fired up – the other bench,” said Montreal’s Nick Cousins, another devotee of the genre. “Sometimes you can even throw them off their game, the good players. But sometimes they have no time for you, it goes in one ear and out the other. But if you can get them fired up or frustrated that’s a win, right? I think it’s funny when guys overreact. Kinda makes you want to chirp them a little more.”

You could also include Max Domi of the Canadiens among those who feel invigorated by talking.

Consider this little gem from last season:

Max Domi taunting Zack Smith with "waivers". Smith cleared waivers earlier this season. pic.twitter.com/eCqjlh19g7

— Brady Trettenero (@BradyTrett) December 7, 2018

Oh, and this, from Oct. 6.

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https://twitter.com/HeresYourReplay/status/1180870082710429697

Which was the continuation of a simmering feud that began last season, and may have had something to do with this.

Kap with the signature "violin arm" to end the night. pic.twitter.com/3DGcGj6pXy

— Flintor (@TheFlintor) February 24, 2019

(Domi’s mouth, it should be noted, has gotten him into trouble in the past; in 2017 he caused a stir by arguing for stricter immigration controls in light of a terrorist attack in Edmonton. He later clarified his remarks to insist they weren’t intended to be anti-immigrant.)

So where do they come up with this stuff? How do the NHL’s pre-eminent chirpers perfect their skills?

For most, spontaneity is key.

“I just think you’ve got to be on your toes, you’ve got to be really witty and have pretty good one-liners,” said Cousins. “You can’t think about it for a while, you’ve got to come back right away. Usually you catch guys off guard in that aspect . . . I just try to come up with them on the top of my head. Although sometimes I laugh at my own jokes, I chirp a guy and start laughing. Then he’s like ‘What the fuck’s wrong with this guy?’ Some guys take the game really seriously.”

The unspoken corollary: those are the guys the consummate chirper likes to go after.

Generally the chirper selects a target of opportunity, but the advent of the shootout has provided a perfect platform to bring the show to a wider audience. Every unsuccessful shooter has to skate past the opposing bench, you see.

Thus, they are sometimes complimented on the oven mitts they wore for their attempt, or sportingly invited not to wear rollerblades next time out.

But not everyone shoots from the lip, improv-style.

Ott was famous for his meticulous research – why content yourself with saying generic louche stuff about a guy’s family member when you can refer to them by name? Why swear at someone in English if you can do it in his native Russian, Slovak, Finnish, Swedish, or whatever else is required?

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He also proved you don’t need to use filthy language or even say much at all to get the message across.

Hey, it’s a gift.

And there are other master practitioners of physical comedy out there, too.

It is Vern Fiddler’s curse that he will probably be remembered more for his Bieksa impression than for the 877 games he played at hockey’s highest level (in fact, he has said this himself).

But the fact is, he will be remembered.

One of hockey’s harsh truths is non-star players seldom are. Here’s another one: being a really great hockey player at another level doesn’t mean jack in the NHL. The league is full of minor and junior hockey superstars who are called upon to do the scut work.

The job typically involves driving the superior skill players to distraction by punishing them physically or at least deploying copious amounts of incivility.

It’s a lesson Marchand learned early.

“Once I got here and they told me I was going to play fourth line, I had to try to find a way to be different than other players and I think that was the biggest thing I was trying to do at the time,” he said. “I had to do something to stand out, something different, something that made me valuable as a fourth-line player. If I could draw penalties and give our team an advantage then maybe it would allow me to stay (in the NHL). It was just something that allowed me to be a little bit different from the guys I was competing with at the time. Sometimes that’s all you need, something a little extra, a little bit different that gets you that opportunity.”

The Nova Scotian has now reached the exalted status of being so good and so successful that he doesn’t need to chirp to get noticed (his peers report that he still does it for fun, though).

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But another of modern hockey’s particularities has to do with the fact so-called ‘role’ players are only on the ice for marginally less time than the first-liners. It’s a star-driven league, but every team still needs a few guys who can bring a little bit of funny/sandpapery/nasty. Ideally they’re franchise-type players like Matthew Tkachuk and Drew Doughty. More often they’re marginal, almost interchangeable talents. It goes without saying there are more applicants than jobs in the NHL.

Hockey players may chirp because of pleasure and inclination, but the ability to be the burr under the opponents’ saddle is a skill teams have been willing to pay for since players first started drawing salaries.

Chirping is as ingrained in hockey culture as playing the right way, getting pucks deep and ‘Who owns the Chiefs?’

If there are indications that’s about to change, we haven’t found them yet.

(The Athletic’s Joe McDonald and Joe Yerdon contributed additional reporting)

(Top photo of Marchand and Tyler Seguin: Brian Fluharty-USA TODAY Sports)

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