COLUMBUS, Ohio -- It’s not uncommon to see bare-chested men parading through the Penguins’ locker room after a game. Those bodies, however, typically belong to shredded hockey players, not an overweight assistant trailer park supervisor who’s more synonymous with cheeseburgers than Phil Kessel.
As a grinning Pat Roach sat at the feet of Sidney Crosby with his belly proudly protruding for a photo-op, it became abundantly clear this wasn’t an ordinary visit from fans lucky enough to score locker-room access.
“Wherever we go, people want to see Pat take his shirt off,” actor Mike Smith said. “Some of the players wanted to see his gut.”
The picture of a mustachioed Crosby with cast members from the Trailer Park Boys -- the Canadian mockumentary chronicling the misadventures of three petty criminals -- has been featured on hockey and mainstream media websites throughout North America. The photo, taken about a half hour after the Penguins’ 6-3 win over the Avalanche on Dec. 4, 2018, captures one of those quirky pop-culture moments where the worlds of pro sports and entertainment collide:
Sid the Kid meets the most recidivist residents of the Sunnyvale Trailer Park.
At its heart, the snapshot serves as a celebration of Crosby’s hometown, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. The show’s three creators, actors Robb Wells and John Paul Tremblay, who play Ricky and Julian, and director Mike Clattenburg, all hail from the same Maritime municipality as the Penguins captain. Same is true of Avalanche superstar Nathan MacKinnon, who’s made two appearances on Trailer Park Boys’ episodes, which stream on Netflix.
"It was great to have them at the game (and) obviously playing against Nate and the way it worked out was nice," Crosby wrote in an email response.
It's remarkable a town the size of Cole Harbour (population: 27,000) has produced two No. 1 overall NHL Draft picks, Crosby in 2005, MacKinnon in 2013, and one of the most popular Canadian sitcoms this side of Schitt’s Creek. Civic pride swells like the stomach of Roach, who plays the oft-maligned and shirtless trailer-park deputy Randy.
“Our ‘Welcome to Cole Harbour' sign has ‘home of Sidney Crosby’ on it,” said Trish Purdy, the newly-elected municipal councillor of Cole Harbour. “One of my first emails a few weeks ago came from a constituent who was saying, ‘Trish, we really should incorporate Nathan MacKinnon on our sign.
“ . . . Then, you have the Trailer Park Boys. When the show was most popular, you would have people stopping them in stores to take pictures with them. They are celebrities.”
For one night, two years ago, they all came together in Pittsburgh for a photo that spawned the headline: “Most Nova Scotia Thing Ever.”
Courtesy of Trailer Park Boys
Ball hockey is a reoccurring theme on the show. Here Ricky (Robb Wells) fires a slap shot.
’TOTAL FLUKE’
Crosby has known the cast members for more than a decade, but Smith said they have never pressed the three-time Stanley Cup champion and Canadian Olympic golden boy to make an appearance on their show, which debuted in 2001.
The off-ice image of Crosby stands in sharp contrast to Ricky, Julian and Bubbles, played by Smith. In the Sunnyvale Trailer Park, set in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, the fields are filled with marijuana plants and the driveways are lined with hash.
“I think Sid is (a fan), but he’s also been a little leery of being associated with the heavy weed content of the show,” said Smith, whose character wears coke-bottle glasses and tends to the park’s feral-cat population. “So he shies away from it but, you know, he gets it.”
The Trailer Park Boys series and their three movies have featured the likes of Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Kimmel, Alex Lifeson and Gord Downie, the late lead singer of The Tragically Hip.
MacKinnon has been the only NHL player to make a cameo. The cast admits to never having asked fellow Nova Scotian bad boy Brad Marchand, who would seem right at home in Sunnyvale throwing bottles at Bubbles as he rides his go-kart through the park.
“I grew up on that show — maybe not grew up on it because it's pretty vulgar," the 25-year-old MacKinnon told NHL.com. "They're so huge there. Bubbles had his own bar called ‘Bubbles Mansion.’ It's closed now, but it was huge. Those guys, they're legends where (I’m) from, and it's great to see them do well. It's always good to see Maritimers out there. . . .They have Snoop Dogg on their show. So when you get Snoop Dogg on your show, you know you made it.”
The Trailer Park Boys cast, which also does stage productions, has made numerous stops in Pittsburgh, attending Pirates, Steelers and Penguins games. Wells said he loves the city and its passionate fan base.
Two years ago, the ensemble played the Benendum Center on Dec. 3 and had a day off before their next show. They couldn’t believe their luck when they saw Crosby and MacKinnon were pitted against each other the next night. Smith texted both players, and Crosby provided 10 tickets for cast and crew.
“It was a total fluke,” Wells said. “We were in Pittsburgh and we saw they were playing the Avalanche. I don’t know what the chances of that are, but they are pretty astronomical. Sid really came through.”
Maybe it was just payback for Ricky and Bubbles shooting a 2016 video asking Crosby to bring the Cup to Sunnyvale.
Crosby didn’t tour the trailer park set, but he’s afforded other Cole Harbour residents many chances to meet him and see hockey’s most famous chalice.
“Sid grew up playing at Cole Harbour Place, and he’s hosted a hockey camp there for many years for the community,” Purdy said. “I have been a fitness instructor there for 26 years, and one day after step class I see these guys walking around carrying this big, shiny object. I don’t follow hockey, but I quickly found out it was Sidney Crosby with the Stanley Cup. All of us got our pictures taken with him. He was so gracious and kind.”
BEERS, RUM AND LOWELL MacDONALD
A few hours before the game, the cast was at a bar across the street from PPG Paint Arena when suddenly copious amounts of alcohol arrived at their table. Fans of the Penguins and Trailer Park Boys swarmed from all corners of the establishment.
It’s the kind of booze-fueled party Randy and park supervisor Jim Lahey, played by the late John Dunsworth, tried to squash in Sunnyvale with no luck.
“All at once, everyone in the place figured out who we were,” Smith said. “We’re sitting at this big boardroom table and we had like 5,000 drinks in front of us.”
Penguins fans continued to ply the boys with beverages at the game every time they stepped into the concourse. By night’s end, Smith was as toasted as Olli Maatta at the 2017 Stanley Cup parade.
Tremblay’s character is famous for holding a glass of rum and coke in every scene. Pittsburgh fans were in on the joke.
“Yeah, they definitely bought some rum,” he said. “But it was mostly beer, which was just fine.”
Tremblay, Smith and Wells all grew up playing hockey in Nova Scotia. They remain passionate about the sport, which occasionally finds its way into Trailer Park Boys scenes. In their first movie, Ricky accuses prison guards of arranging for his early release so he can’t play goalie in a ball-hockey tournament.
In between drinks, the boys remained laser focused on Crosby and MacKinnon, who both somehow remarkably failed to register a point in game with nine goals.
“It was incredible to watch them and know they’re from your hometown,” Wells said. “Something could happen on any shift they are playing. You’re always paying attention.”
After the game, Smith said he received a text from Crosby inviting them to the locker-room area, where they visited briefly with MacKinnon before getting to spend about 30 minutes with the Penguins.
“It seemed like most of the hockey players had watched the show and recognized us,” Wells said. “A lot of the guys were throwing out different quotes from the show.”
Wells’ description was corroborated by a former Penguins defenseman.
“I actually didn’t watch Trailer Park Boys when it was popular, (but) I remember all the guys that did being really excited about it,” Jack Johnson said in a text message. “I was more excited (about the time) when Tom Hanks came in.”
The visit to the Penguins’ locker room delivered an unexpected treat for Smith. He grew up in the coastal hamlet of Thorburn, Nova Scotia, which birthed one hockey player of note. It was Lowell MacDonald, the former Penguins winger who won the Masterson Trophy in the 1972-73 season.
“I had one of his old Northland sticks as a kid,” Smith said. “I made sure to take a picture of his name on the wall.”
MIKE SMITH
Mike Smith, who plays Bubbles in the show Trailer Park Boys, poses with Avalanche center Nathan MacKinnon, who has made two guest appearances on the show and is shown here dressed as Bubble.
CONTRASTING WORLD VIEWS
On Monday afternoon, the teleconference featuring three actors began with an unusual opening line.
“Ricky, Julian and Bubbles here,” Wells said.
For a moment, the interview seemed ready to start with the Trailer Park Boys in character. Oh, to get the thoughts of the irascible Ricky LaFleur on subjects such as Gary Bettman, Tom Wilson and the Flyers’ Stanley Cup drought.
But the actors settled into a conversation about Cole Harbour, the Crosby-MacKinnon connection and that memorable locker-room photo.
Wells, Smith and Tremblay appreciate how much reverence MacKinnon pays to his hometown hero. The two stars are friends and drive-thru window teammates for a Tim Horton's commercial.
It might seem strange to dedicate an entire story to an obscure locker-room meet up two years ago. But in the middle of a global pandemic, when Crosby isn’t quite sure when he will play again and the Trailer Park Boys don’t know when they will tour again, everyone needs a reason to smile.
"They are a great group and we had some laughs, showed them around and we ended up getting a really good group shot in the room which was incredible," Crosby wrote.
The actors have spent nearly two decades painting trailer-park life with nuanced strokes of hilarity and humanity, while also burning a few six-paper joints along the way. It’s why nobody is holding out hope for a Crosby cameo.
“Sid’s at that Gretzky level now,” Smith said. “He probably has to go through a battery of (public-relations) people who say, ‘What’s the show about? Oh, it’s got weed in it — maybe not.’”
It’s what gives the locker-room group picture such lasting appeal. Two Nova Scotia icons representing contrasting world views. As staff writers from BarDown observed, it’s “a photo-op that we think belongs in the Hall of Fame.”
Smith never imagined the photo he attached to his Twitter account that night would still resonate with the hockey community.
The overall experience, to quote his character Bubbles, was: “De-ee-cent.”
