![]() Three years, and then I’ll go back to the real world. I made her a promise: give me three years. “Hey babe … I got an offer to play in the American Hockey League … in Houston.” They literally used to set up a boombox as you walked into the final that blared Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.”īut, somehow, I made it through. Freshman year, 50 percent of the students would fail out of the intro chemistry course. If you think this is like Joke Athlete Engineering - no. So the last thought in my mind was, S ome day, you’re going to be an NHL All-Star. My buddies are yelling out Sandler lines. The bus is cold and dark bumping up and down. Please calculate the terminal velocity of …. Question 5: A gun fires a bullet at the velocity of X, through a stack of five mattresses with a thickness of X. These knuckleheads are watching Billy Madison, and I’m trying to answer: I remember being on these 10-hour bus rides - down single-lane roads in rural Minnesota, snow flying around everywhere, heater broken - and all the Business majors are watching movies and goofing around.Īnd I’m sitting there propping my engineering book up on my knees, taking a thermodynamics test. This was the old Western Collegiate Hockey Association - home of the 10-hour bus ride to road games in Minnesota and North Dakota. By 30, I’d be sitting in an office at GM back in sleepy Ontario, in my suit, and happy as hell about it. The way I saw it, I would never make the NHL, but I’d have an engineering degree. And I did just enough to get myself a scholarship to play hockey at Michigan Tech University. I was like, too big? What the hell am I supposed to do about that? I got cut from every Junior B team I tried out for. Everybody’s first question is always, “Were you beating kids up back in youth hockey?” I remember being so mad that they wouldn’t let us pick numbers past 30 in Squirt hockey. All my buddies loved the Leafs and Canadiens. I guess I’ve always been a bit of a contrarian. I was all about Ray Bourque, even though I lived in St. Growing up, I always made sure I had the Sherwood TP-70 stick. Well, let me tell you something that might surprise you: I never wanted to be a fighter. Or at least the stereotype of John Scott. How he texted me, “Dude, you’re 30th in the All-Star fan vote,” one night, out of the blue. Or about how my teammate called it - literally called it - way back before all of this got crazy. I try not to think about how I don’t want to leave.Īnd I try not to think about how I should have known. Or about the fondness I feel for the guys in Phoenix - our group that no one believed in - and the pride I feel for what we’ve accomplished together. Or about the stress it will place on my wife, who is nine months pregnant with twins. ![]() I try not to think about how young my daughters are, and how much they’ll hate the move. I throw them in my bag, then place it in the trunk of my car, and begin the long drive home. I walk back down to the gym, and grab my gloves - still sitting there, brand new, where the guys and I had been. I pack up my stuff: my sticks, my skates, my gear. Can you even get a flight from Phoenix to Newfoundland? Well, actually … they already sent me down to the minors. She hears me perfectly the first time, but needs to hear it again. I can sense her mind racing a mile a minute, just like mine had. When I get to my car, I immediately call my wife. It is, as we say in this business, emotional. I’ll keep the rest of the conversation private, because I’m a professional. We had a chance to get a player, and we took it.” If you know the league, you know that it just doesn’t happen. I know exactly what’s happened.Įnforcers don’t get traded midseason when their team is winning. I hear him perfectly the first time, but I need him to say it again. We head down the hall a few steps, into the stick room of all places, and he shuts the door. It’s a cool moment.Īs this is happening, I see our GM open the door. Everyone’s taking their turn, trying my gloves on. They’re giving me some crap about it, too (of course), but it’s all in good fun. ![]() The guys are all genuinely happy for me, and they’re letting me know it. But even still: there’s just something about gear, you know? I, John Scott, from Michigan Tech, at 33 years old … have All-Star gloves. I’ve seen my name in the news, on the press release, on the official rosters. We’re getting some stretches in, and passing around my new gloves. I’ve been gone for a couple of days - but now I’m back in Phoenix, at the Coyotes practice facility, catching up with the boys. I’m in the weight room, hanging out with the guys, when my GM asks me to take a walk. But I have absolutely no idea what’s coming. ![]()
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