NHL Players were Chillin' at the Entourage Season 5 Premiere!

Working for NHL.com for nearly a year now, I’ve gotten to do and see some amazing things. I was in Buffalo for last season’s Winter Classic, I covered the All-Star Game, the Scouting Combine and the 2008 Draft.


And Wednesday night, I got to attend my first red-carpet premier, for the fifth season of Entourage. I wanted to go because I knew Kevin Connolly and Jeremy Piven, who star on the show, are hockey fans. But selfishly, I wanted to go because I’m a huge fan of the show, and I thought getting to interview them would be neat. Later on, I found out Marty Brodeur, Vinny Lecavalier and Henrik Lundqvist would be going, also, so I had my story. Hockey’s best join the Entourage.

So I get to the red carpet – actually, it was gray, with a white star in a black circle, part of the show’s logo, on it. There were little signs taped to the carpet to tell each media person where they should stand. NHL.com was at the end of the line, right next to Canadian E! I guess somebody figured let’s put the hockey folks and the Canadians right next to each other.


I started flipping through the press handout from HBO, which included photos of all the people who would be walking the carpet. Some I recognized, some I didn’t. Included were the three NHL players. 


We know this guy.





And this guy.





But something looks a little strange about this photo of Lecavalier. 
 

Maybe because it’s actually Coyotes captain Shane Doan. Oops.


(An aside – I showed Vinny the photo Thursday afternoon, and he got a pretty nice laugh out of it.)


The players all said they were huge fans of the show, and while travel and games made it hard to catch the show live every Sunday, they either owned the box sets or had their DVR’s programmed.


I tried to convince Lecavalier to do a Johnny Drama “Victory!” scream when he scores this season.


While waiting for the stars of the show to arrive, I saw a few people I recognized. Mark Wahlberg, whose life Entourage is loosely based on; Jamie-Lynn Sigler from The Sopranos; Leighton Meester who was on the show a few seasons ago and is on the Gossip Girl show; Louis Lombardi, who will play Cousin Ronnie this season but who I best remember as geeky computer analyst Edgar Stiles from a season of 24; Ultimate Fighting Champion Randy Couture; and Lee Tergesen, who was on another great HBO show, Oz.


Finally, the big stars arrived – an hour late or so. But finally, here came Kevin Connolly, and I had a few questions for him about the Islanders and the work he’s done with them. I got two questions in when some “reporter” from something called OK magazine started asking him fairly stupid questions about him and Jennifer Aniston. At that point, Connolly’s publicist dragged him away, and I was out of luck.


I used some language with the “reporter” I wouldn’t repeat on a family Web site, letting him know just what I thought of him sabotaging my interview. He said something about having a job to do, also, but I’m not sure what kind of real work goes into putting out those garbage gossip rags. He slinked away, and for a moment I thought about chasing after him, but my professionalism won out. 


I did find Doug Ellin, and if he reads this, I’d like him to know just how appreciative I am of the time he gave me. If my story on the site is any good, all the credit goes to him. 







Ellin, the show’s creator and executive producer, is a huge Islanders fan going back to the dynasty days, and while his show was the star, the person he was most looking forward to meeting was Mike Bossy, who was there as a guest of Connolly. The two have done charity work for the Islanders in the past. 
 

Ellin told a great story of himself, Kevin Dillon (Johnny Drama), Jerry Ferrara (Turtle) and Connolly playing golf with Wayne Gretzky last year.


“He was as nice a guy as you can imagine,” Ellin said of the Great One. “Playing with him was pretty cool. Connolly will tell you how he holed the ball form 90 yards out with Gretzky holding the pin. Which I think we’re all bitter about.”


Ellin said that led to an invitation to a Coyotes-Kings game. Ellin told how Coyotes forward Daniel Carcillo wanted to have a night out the Entourage guys.


“Danny wanted to get a night out with Kevin Connolly and Kevin said mix it up, get into a fight, and Danny went out and got into a fight about 30 seconds in,” said Ellin. “From my seats I thought I saw Wayne Gretzky say, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ It was pretty unbelievable.”


Ellin said he’d love to have the boys attend a hockey game, or at least get somebody from the NHL to make a cameo. Ellin said Gretzky would be a good choice, but he’d love to have some players from his favorite Isles teams on the show – Bossy, Bryan Trottier and Denis Potvin would be on his short list.


Hopefully something like that will happen in Season 6 – Season 5 already is wrapped, with the season premier this Sunday (Sept. 7).

 

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