GREAT STORY !!

Not sure if you have seen this story,

But it's worth repeating. It was sent to me by Chris Pollock and Kelly Markwart:

Subject: Great Hockey Story In the middle of a grueling six game road trip where a very young hockeyteam 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 forthe short flight home. They could be home by midnight.

This plane departson schedule, but without a single member of the hockey team on board.

Earlier, back in the locker room, a vote was taken after the game 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 team's general manager who is there attending his father's wake. After a few emotional hours, this team boards the buses and head back for a two hour trip back to Toronto.

On the way they ask the bus drivers to stop in a tiny Canadian town because they are hungry.To the shock of the patrons and workers at this small hockey towns 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 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 hourslater, giving one day of their time to their general manager.

Have I made this up? Is this an excerpt from some fictional book? No this a true story of the Chicago Blackhawks last Saturday night as they decided to attend Dale Tallon's father's funeral.

It's amazing that such agood story can be found nowhere on the Internet, and not even mentioned inthe 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 papersand the television.This being said, it's 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 abig hockey fan, and another reason I am excited about this Chicago team. Ithought I would share this story as it appears to have gone unnoticed.What a Great Hockey Story.

Most of the players on the Team are Canadian kids. Born and raised with the values that we all sometimes forget.Remember that we are not all destined to play hockey in the NHL but , weare all destined to take pride in our Canadian way of life and the way weare looked at for being respectful, polite, hardworking and most of allHOCKEY FANS and HOCKEY PARENTS.

at 1/07/2009 1 comments
Posted by Riders 2009 at 5:37 AM 0 comments