One day last week, I suspected a friend — a life-time Montreal Canadiens fan — was playing a joke when he sent me the National Hockey League standings in an email.

Not long before that, I had complained in a column about daily newspapers no longer publishing sports statistics, no longer running hockey or other scores and schedules,

My comments weren’t a joke.

I’ve religiously studied those columns and columns of mathematical facts for nearly 80 years. The habit included checking everything from professional leagues across Canada and the United States to kids leagues from Sydney Mines to Yarmouth.

I felt informed.

During the decades I spent in the sports department in Halifax, good people, faithful readers, repeatedly told me how they loved seeing the standings and schedules on a daily basis. They brought it up in grocery stores, restaurants, at sports arenas and fields,

I didn’t need to be a journalist to appreciate the numbers.

When I was eight years old, I was running to the front door before breakfast to get the paper before anybody else.

I was already tossing the comic pages aside and grabbing the sports section. I wanted to know the scores from the previous night before going to school. New Glasgow still didn’t have a radio station but that was OK. I knew where to find statistics.

There was no television then. No games to watch on school nights or weekends. Yet I could go to class, way back in grades three and four, and tell the Montreal Canadiens fans that the Leafs beat ‘em the night before.

At 12, I was publishing a family newspaper, Hugh’s Chronicle. I printed my grandmother’s bridge party results — complete with standings. Of course, I also ran the standings of all six NHL teams.

Then real life started.

I began covering sports for CKEC, the new radio station. At 15, I was writing for the Evening News.

When I became a Maple Leafs scout in the 1960s and brought stars Frank Mahovlich, Kent Douglas and Jacques Plante to the county, even the youngest fans had the players’ goals and points totals on the end of their tongues.

In 1972, I became The Chronicle Herald’s sports editor. The same year, the Canadiens moved their farm club to the Halifax Forum..

For 13 years, much of my writing was on the Nova Scotia Voyageurs, interviewing many of them, being around them when they won three league championships.

Before many games, I watched and listened with amazement as young boys and girls asked Vees to sign this and that. I heard them telling future NHLers that they had pictures of them from the paper.

Years later, I read a book, Now Back to Dick, authored by Hockey Night in Canada announcer Dick Irvin. I particularly noticed this comment by Dick: “It is impossible not to become emotionally involved in some of the events you cover.”

I smiled to myself when I read that he knew NHL players’ statistics from his school days. Rather familiar.

If Dick were alive today, he’d still be firing numbers back at anyone, still tossing trick questions into conversations.

I was with him for a few minutes before a Canadiens game at the Montreal Forum when the Vees were in the organization. I was impressed with the speed he gave replies. I’d need more homework to do if I wanted to compete in his league.

Before winding down on this statistics thing, I phoned my friend — in Pictou County — the one who sent me the up-to-date NHL standings that showed the Canadiens on top in the Atlantic Division, the Leafs next to last, ahead of only the Buffalo Sabres.

A question I threw at him, giving him one minute to answer: How many years have the Canadiens and the Leafs — combined — been skating around without the Stanley Cup?

I never got an answer. The “combined” got him.

The correct answer was 90 years — 32 seasons for the Habs, 58 seasons for the Leafs.

Statistics, I fully maintain, are important and necessary, but they can also be a lot of fun.

Hoping the conversation remained on a friendly level, I reminded him that if either of our teams wins again in our lifetime, we can both celebrate.

He didn’t catch my drift.

It would mean, I explained, that the Stanley Cup would be back home in Canada.