THE OTHER SIDE OF PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES

With all the bad press regarding professional athletes it is good to hear a story about athletes doing the right thing


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 heads 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 the 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. It's 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.

GO BLACKHAWKS!!!!