Sugar Boo? Fishy? The Springfield Rifle? It's another weird nickname quiz

 Big Dumper, we hardly knew ye.

Yes, I know I’m a hockey columnist, and we’ll get to that. But the big news up in Canada these days is all about baseball, with the Blue Jays dramatic Game 7 win over the Mariners on Monday sending them to the World Series, which starts tonight in Toronto.

It won’t shock you to learn that I’m a Blue Jays fan and have been since I was a little kid, so I’m obviously thrilled to see the team make it back to the top of the mountain after three decades. But I have to admit that part of me was sad to it happen at the expense of the Mariners, a team that entered the league alongside the expansion Jays way back in 1977 and has never made it to World Series. A long and agonizing championship drought, you say? It's possible that some of us up here can relate.

But there’s another reason to love the Mariners: Their nicknames. I’ve always loved a good nickname, and baseball is unquestionably the greatest nickname sport that there is, with the Mariners having had plenty of near-perfect ones. Ken Griffey Jr. as “The Kid”. Randy Johnson as “The Big Unit”. Felix Hernandez as “King Felix”. They even had a guy nicknamed “Death to Flying Things”, which was admittedly recycled by is still an all-timer.

And then there’s arguably the best of them all: Cal “Big Dumper” Raleigh, their slugging catcher who earned the nickname because… well, you can probably figure it out. As far as widely used nicknames go, is “Big Dumper” better than anything the NHL has to offer today? I’m pretty sure that it is.

Of course, you caught that “widely used” qualifier, which brings us to today’s quiz. Yes, as I find myself on the verge of being overwhelmed with envy for Raleigh’s Big Dumper, I think it’s time for another round of “ridiculous nicknames that you’ve probably never heard of but that hockey-reference insists are real”. The go-to site for hockey research added nicknames a few years ago, and let’s just say they’re not especially picky. If a nickname is famous, like The Great One or Mr. Hockey, they use it. If it’s something nobody has ever actually used, like calling Sidney Crosby “Darryl”, they still use it.

We had some fun with this two years ago, with current players. Last year, we were back at it with some historical greats, including the immortal Satan’s Wallpaper that made its way to an episode of Jeopardy. Today, we’re back to the present, with 20 more current stars.

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