There are lots of great hockey stories out there, but this one has always resonated with me. It is another of those that was passed around in emails, from an anonymous author. But it’s a true story, and one that all hockey fan should read. So if you happened to miss it, here is the story of Blackhawks compassion . . .
In the middle of a grueling six game road trip where a very young hockey team is away from home, the third game of the trip ends late on a cold Canadian Saturday night. This is the only break on the trip and the three days between games allow them the only break to get back home in their own beds for a couple of days before going back on the road. A scheduled commercial flight waits for them at Toronto’s International Airport for the short flight home; they could be home by midnight. This plane departs on schedule, but without a single member of the hockey team.
Back in the locker room a vote is taken after the game was complete, and a unanimous decision is made by this young team to skip this flight and stay one more day. They make arrangements to check back in the hotel and on a frozen Sunday morning charter two buses that have no heat and begin a journey two hours straight north into a sparsely inhabited Canada, but where hockey is its passion. They arrive at their destination to the surprise of the teams general manager who is there attending his fathers wake.
After a few emotional hours, this team boards the buses and head back for a two-hour trip back to Toronto. On the way they ask the drivers to stop in a tiny Canadian town because they are hungry.
To the shock of the patrons and workers at this small hockey town McDonald’s, a professional team walks out of two rickety buses and into the restaurant, which just happens to have pictures of two members of this team on its wall. The patrons know every single one of these players by sight being fanatic fans of hockey in these parts. One can only imagine their amazement of the locals seeing and entire professional hockey team sit down and have a meal in their tiny little town in the middle of a hockey season. After a while they board the buses and catch their same flight 24 hours later, giving one day to their general manager.
Have I made this up, is this an excerpt from some fictional book? No this a true story of the Blackhawks last Saturday night and they decided to attend Dale Tallon’s fathers funeral. Its amazing that such a good story can be found nowhere on the internet, and not even mentioned in the Chicago papers.
Had one of the Blackhawks got into a fight and punched some drunken loser in a Toronto bar it would be plastered all over papers and the television.
This being said, its hard to imagine any professional football, basketball or baseball team doing this, but the members of the Blackhawks claim any “hockey” team would have done this. This is one reason I continue to be a big hockey fan, and another reason I am excited about this Chicago team.
I thought I would share as this story appears to have gone unnoticed.
Hockey players are special athletes. I created this design in honor of hockey players everywhere.
Jun
2009
Can’t Wait Until Next Hockey Season
You know, I wasn’t always a hockey fan. I grew up in Ohio, about 30 miles from Pittsburgh – before the Mario Lemieux days. It was a relatively poor little coal mining town and nobody had the money to play hockey. So I wasn’t really exposed to it. It was football country, Steeler country, and that’s what I played.
My exposure to this outstanding game didn’t really happen until 1999. I was 39-years old. My son, who was about 7 at the time, used to watch the Mighty Ducks movies over and over again. In between screenings he would go onto our screened-in back porch and slap a hockey puck into the door of my daughters big plastic play house. When he missed, pucks tore through my screens letting all the bugs in Florida in.
I signed him up for an outdoor roller hockey league when he was 8 and the rest is history. Nine years of inline and ice hockey, traveling to tournaments around the country. He’s 17-years-old now, my screens are all fixed, and I’m a huge hockey fan. It happens that way when you are immersed into a magnificent sport that you’ve missed out on much of your life. Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could turn back the clock and play the game myself – one of the few regrets in my life.
What frustrates me now is that so many people are missing out on this wonderful sport. Hockey’s popularity hasn’t exactly grown by leaps and bounds in this country. But it’s certainly no secret to the rest of the world. If they could only get past the notion that it’s just a bunch of fighting and see the beauty of the game. The speed and the grace that these athletes display is nothing short of astounding.
It’s June and I just saw my beloved Penguins win the Stanley Cup. I’m still on a hockey high. There really is nothing quite like the Stanley Cup playoffs, is there?. Now we’ve got months of nothing but baseball and it’s steroid-ridden players lulling me into summer slumber. I’d almost rather watch golf – or the grass grow.
So here’s to hockey, and waiting for next season, when we can all wake up and witness the excitement and raw fury of the this most magnificent sport once again.
Now, in the spirit of self-promotion, I must mention that one of the best ways to keep the hockey spirit through the long, boring Summer is to score yourself a hockey t-shirt from Hockey Shirt Shop! So stop on in, where it’s always hockey season.
Tags: hockey, hockey season, mario lemieux, mighty ducks, next hockey season, penguins, pittsburgh, stanly cup, youth hockey
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