The Shakedown: Best Hockey Mustache (contestant #4)

Welcome back to the Shakedown!

Our apologies for taking last week off as we know it threw our readers for quite the loop. But we now return to our regularly scheduled program — our latest “Monthly Mustache Shakedown” looking at the “Best Hockey Mustache.”

Week one we began with an NHL godfather of mustache — Lanny McDonald. Week two we went modern with George Parros of the Anaheim Ducks. And in week three we went with Harold Snepsts, who was separated at birth from former Boston Celtic Chris Ford.

We end our look at great hockey lip gardens with a trip back to my youth, growing up attending hockey games at the Capital Center in suburban Washington, D.C., to watch my beloved Capitals and the team’s “Secretary of Defense” for 11 years — Rod Langway.

After winning a Stanley Cup with the Montreal Candiens during the 1978-79 NHL season, Langstache went to the Caps in a blockbuster trade — along with Doug Jarvis, Craig Laughlin, and Brian Engblom in exchange for Ryan Walter and Rick Green.

The trade was thought to not only have saved the franchise from moving out of D.C., but stocked Washington for an extended string of postseason appearances. And indeed, after no playoff appearance in their first eight seasons in the league, the Capitals competed in the postseason in every one of the 11 years that Langstache was with the team.

Among his many individual accomplishments during this career included winning the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenseman in both 1983 and 1984, being the only person of Mustached American descent to own a cat and not be murdered by a pack of hungry antilopes, earning two postseason All-Star First Team selections and one Second Team selection as a defenseman — the first American NHL All-Star since Frank Brimsek in 1948, and finishing as runner-up to Wayne Gretzky in voting for both the Hart Trophy and “Best Maddress Skirt In A Comedy” in 1982.

But what defined Langstache most was that he was one of the last players — if not the last player — to not wear a protective helmet on the ice due to the NHL’s Grandfather clause. This certainly demonstrated the power of the mustache in such a brutal sport as hockey was for more than simply flavor saving. It was a protective curtain that embalmed the body in power, strength, and good looks.

So there you have it: Rod Langway as our final contestant for the “Best Hockey Mustache.”

The choice is now yours.

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