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An Important Letter from a LIFER NHL Fan: "And if the NHL can lose me....." |
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I don’t usually blog (in fact, I never have), but I thought I would share my deepening disillusionment with the direction of our beloved game.
I am without a doubt one of the luckiest guys who has ever loved this great sport of hockey. I have been blessed to have been the beneficiary of the kindness, generosity and passion that has always defined this game and set it apart from anything else – from players, owners and management. I have played with The Great One, been defensive partners with Paul Coffey, Larry Robinson, Lindy Ruff, and Theo Fleury, and knocked heads with Grant Fuhr after he back stopped us to a win (okay, this was Gretz's fantasy camp, but still ...). I scrimmaged and “checked” – to his great amusement – Bob Probert into the boards (really, I fell) during a team scrimmage that I was invited to attend. I spent a weekend with the Stanley Cup.
I have gotten to travel with an NHL team to road games with my son on the team charter, hotel, etc. three times. I sat and watched a Super Bowl with an NHL head coach and team President over a couple (dozen) beers at the team hotel before a game in Montreal – and the next day watched my son fetch 80 meat sandwiches with that same coach for the team bus ride to the airport. I watched my son shoot on a current NHL goalie by himself during a pregame skate, and had a Conn Smythe trophy winner hug my daughter in the locker room after a game.
I have skated and golfed with HOF players. I listened to an NHL owner tell stories over drinks of being bugged at the hotel in Russia during the 72 Summit Series. My kids have an inkling of what it was like to be on the 1980 USA Olympic team because they heard the stories from one of the team’s stars players over a BBQ in our backyard. I count a current GM, two coaches, a trainer, an owner, and more than a dozen current and former players among my friends. I play hockey (badly and usually painfully, to me or someone else) twice a week – outside, no less. I pay $25K a year for 4 season tickets – and have for 10 years.
I say this not to boast or because I am trying to impress anyone. I am not. I am not rich or particularly important, nor by any means influential. I recount this, Ek, because I truly LOVE this game. And because at every turn, my family and I have been treated so kindly by players, coaches, management and owners alike that it defies description. Hear what I am saying. Players, coaches, owners, management – together, all of them, to a man, they have all been great to me and my family, I think because they all loved the game and could see what it meant to us. So, I understand and empathize with both views in this lockout and will not pretend to take sides.
So it is with a heavy heart that I say I think I have finally had it. I fear I am done. I used to get so excited for the upcoming season that I would actually go to the preseason games! I know, sick. But now, something has turned this time. I am not so much angry, as I am heart broken. How can anyone allow any part of a season to be lost, again? No blame. Just the sad feeling that a vital piece of what made, at least to me, everything and everyone associated with this great sport so different, so special is lost. And no one seems to care. Or at least they do not care enough to place the love of the game and it's meaning to our lives above their own personal gain. And if the NHL can lose me .......?
FANTASTIC LETTER.
I will be back in a bit with more for you all... been talking to folks all day as I try to get the current temperature of both sides...
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