Hockey nicknames have been a hot topic of conversation at The Athletic lately. In October, our Thomas Drance asked Canucks defenceman Chris Tanev to unpack their nicknames. Earlier this month, the inimitable Down Goes Brown looked at how to make hockey nicknames more interesting.



I can’t help but agree with both Drance and DGB: Hockey nicknames generally follow a time-tested pattern of adding a “-y” or an “-er” to the end of a last name, or, the nicknames are so obscure they require heavy research to understand them.



Take Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Martin Marincin, for example. He goes by a few nicknames. One is a play on his name, Marv. There are others though, including The Onion, Revis Island, The Gangster and another recently unearthed one The Specialist.



Inside the Toronto Maple Leafs dressing room, there are examples of both. Rarely does a day of media availability pass without a reference to Mitchy, JT ...