Nigel,

Thanks for that reminder.

My kids both play Hockey & Lacrosse, both pretty physical, tough games where injuries can occur even when playing by the rules. But some of these kids are taught to play dirty and that drives me crazy.

Perspective. What a concept. A couple of weeks ago my ten year old son was playing a playoff game that if they won would have advanced them to the next round. With about two and half minutes to go and us leading two boys collided, it was a complete accident but their player went down hard and hit his head, hurt his neck and was taken away by ambulance. The game was resumed and we won. One of our parents said, boy that sort of dampens the victory. I guess my thought was would she have cared one way or the other if it was her son who was being loaded into an ambulance with a neck brace on. Fortunately it turns out that the boy was fine, just some strained muscles.

I played hockey my whole life and at a level higher than most, I was recrutited by several U.S. Colleges, tried out in a Minor Pro league etc. Over the years I played with and against some very good players. Some of them made it to the NHL. But I want to take all of these parents who think that their son is the next Wayne Greatzky and show them pictures of all of the teams that I played for saying "See that guy? the best defenceman in Toronto up until the age of 13, he didn't grow", see that guy? lead the league in scoring for a number of years, apparently he's the town drunk in a northern Ontario town etc., etc. I could do that with every team picture that I have from my days in the MTHL and the OHA.