If I had a nickel for every time someone said to me, ‘Thanks, won’t forget this,’ I would be rich as Artemi Panarin.

Not that myself, I can claim to be as altruistic as, say, Karl Dykhuis could be with the puck in his own end. In the case of Ilya Bryzgalov, still collecting $1.6 million a year from the Flyers until 2026-27, charity definitely begins at home. As once put by an old coach named Michel Bergeron when asked by a reporter for one additional piece of candor: “I give you the gun, you want the bullets, too?”

Indeed, there are limits to everyone’s largess. But while in the NHL Christmas technically comes on July 1, ‘tis not the season to look at everything as quid pro quo, the relative bang for the buck the Devils are receiving from P.K. Subban illustrating our point.

So, in the spirit of the season, we’re going to suspend our usual sarcasm for the next 15 paragraphs or so and remember the kindnesses extended to me in 44 years covering sports. No overnight visits from any Christmas ghosts were required to wake up this Scrooge. Yeah, I needed a column but still am in the mood for reflection.

Everybody whose paycheck depends on the public’s interest has some obligation to feed it by talking to the media. Still, I always have looked at every interview granted to be at least to some extent, a courtesy. And every once in a while, things have been done for me beyond the minimum standard.

Sorry, my thanks must leave out those who gave me story tips and unattributed insights, sources to be protected to the deathbed. But at my end, I also hope to remember examples of thoughtfulness bestowed upon me. The majority came from fellow journalists providing quotes missed in severe deadline situations where I couldn’t be in two places at once, background information shared, etc. But there also some recognizable names in this game, past and present, who you should know are really good people.

I thought long and hard about writing this piece at the risk of it seeming to be more about me than them. Ultimately, I decided it was not. There is a good chance these persons don’t remember doing these things. As the recipient, it’s more important that I do.

The nicest man I ever met in hockey was the late Sid Abel, the general manager of the team, the Kansas City Scouts, that was my first beat. Sid unfailingly answered the phone with a cheery and exaggerated “and howwwww’s Jay?’ whenever the inexperienced and insecure 24-year-old kid reporter would call, never condescending to his shortage of knowledge.

There might be 100 people tied for second on my list, among them being Brad Marsh. The Greenbergs, two pre-teen daughters included, were relocating in Toronto in 1992 and having breakfast at a hotel there before a day of house hunting when Marsh’s Ottawa Senators were in the same coffee shop. Marsh chose to eat with the family of the guy who had covered him for seven years as a Flyer and, being a recent Leaf, offer what he knew about the market.

The year of my Elmer Ferguson Award honor by the Hockey Hall of Fame was coincidentally the same as Fred Shero’s induction. Ed Snider chartered a plane to bring the Broad Street Bullies, and out of courtesy I also invited them to the luncheon for the media honorees, Harry Neale and myself.

What an honest reporter wants from athletes is not really friendship but and acknowledgment of his fairness and professionalism. Human nature and decency, however, blur the lines sometimes on both sides. It was overwhelming to me when practically all those Flyers I had covered attended, and apparently not because the event was in Toronto and they might have a chance to beat on Borje Salming again, just for old time’s sake.

“I think you guys like me more now than you did then,” I said to Don Saleski. “Oh, way more,” he laughed.

I offered Mark Howe, a Flyer of a later generation whose autobiography I had written, a seat either at the table with the Bullies or the one with my family and me. Mark, fair to call him a friend now, not just a subject or business partner, chose to sit with the Greenbergs.

Big honor, made that much larger. Trust me, the grander things like this becomes in the retrospection of someone soon to enter his eighth decade.

There is no defining explanation for some of the stuff you remember against the stuff you don’t, but the level of embarrassment probably factors in. At a Super Bowl interviews session, I tipped a coffee cup onto the sleeve of Cowboy receiver Michael Irvin and he could not have been nicer about it. By contrast, I once knocked over a couple of the meticulously stacked bats of Alex Rodriquez, and while short of irate, he left me uncomfortable.

The confessions of my life as a klutz continue with a story that may surprise you. During a year when John Tortorella, for whatever reason, turned from engaging to a total media miscreant, I forgot to mute my cell phone going into a post-playoff game press conference. Such interruptions were his ultimate pet media peeve. Sure enough, my wife called.

Mortified, my cape waived before the bull, I fumbled to mute the ring while Tortorella went into a rant on camera about professionalism, or lack of same. You can watch it today in a Tortorella compilation on You Tube. Yep, it was me who set that one off.

That night, as soon as I had made deadline, I texted John: “I have been around too long to let something like that happen and it never will again.” Within seconds he texted back. “Had no idea it was you. I am so sorry.” He apologized again in person the next day. It’s Hanukah, too, so it’s okay to use the word mensch in a Christmas column, yes?

I once sought the phone number of a player agent from a fellow New York media person, who accidentally gave me Brian Leetch’s home number instead. Having no idea the voice message I left was on the wrong phone, it would have been waiting for a callback never to come had Leetch not taken the time to call and let me know.

Common courtesy? Do this as long as I have, waited out enough athletes taking long showers while the clock ticked toward my deadline, and this was uncommon, a little thing that meant a lot in a world where the vast majority of my subjects assumed their time to be more valuable than mine.

Part of the job has always been asking question that, myself, I probably wouldn’t want to answer. On the first anniversary of the horrific deaths of pitches Steve Olin and Tim Crews in a spring training boating accident I arrived at the camp of the Cleveland Indians, assigned by The New York Post to do a lookback.

The Indians were talked out on the subject, their grief too personal and their healing too far along to want to rehash it publicly for a compete stranger. Following reject after rejection, not all of them polite, a pitcher named Derek Lilliquist could not have been more gracious or expressive. Saved the piece and me from an abject failure early in a new job.

A lot of sports people are nice. And then there are some especially gifted with a greater sense of their surroundings. Wayne Gretzky had time for the media in a way that Mario Lemieux never would, No. 99’s efforts resulting in more favorable press that created jealousy/cynicism in Pittsburgh. The realities of life on the pedestal had been pounded home by Walter Gretzky from his earliest realization that he had a special child. But to those who knew Wayne the best believe it was a complete insult to suggest all his kindnesses were self-serving.

Gretzky had incredible peripheral vision off the ice, too. His first handoff of the Stanley Cup won in 1987 was to defenseman Steve Smith, whose own-goal blunder a year earlier had sent the Oilers down in a Game Seven against Calgary.

On the August 1988 morning that the unbelievable news of Gretzky’s trade to the Kings was confirmed, I called Mike Rathet, my sports editor at the afternoon Philadelphia Daily News “Press conference in LA tonight, too late for the Inquirer to do anything with it,” I said. . (Remember, this was pre-Internet days) “I could get there in time.”

“Go,” he said. Ran for a plane and five hours later walked into an LAX hotel ballroom to much more party than press conference, all the beautiful people gathered to fawn over Hollywood’s new star, the media getting essentially shut out of time with him.

The story had been in Edmonton, where Gretzky had cried in front of the camera before getting on the plane to LA, so practically all I had to write was the same thing I could have written by staying home. Waste of hustle, waste of travel budget until, this very disgusted and discouraged reporter was leaving for his hotel to write who-knew-what and he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“Wayne wants you to have this,” said the guy, I opened a note to find Gretzky’s LA phone number and “Call me tomorrow.”

Thanks for coming was saying the greatest hockey player who ever lived to a familiar face–but hardly to the point a confidant–he perceptively had picked out of the mob during one of the most wrenching/exhilarating days of his life.

The Great One, ndeed. So sorry was Gretzky about bad arrangements that were out of his control. So considerate as to want to make good. And so thankful do I remain during a holiday season all these years later for kindnesses both large and small.

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