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.