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 smyth260
Messages: 1046
Registered: November 2007
1 Cup
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Lots in there. Concussions are brutal man, and it's clearly having some lifelong effects on him.
As a kid who played hockey, I always would have wanted mine to play. But the more stories you hear, the more I think I should guide them to safer physical activity.
I found this a pretty interesting reflection:
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I’ll never forget how Kevin, who won six Stanley Cups as a player, called me into his room before my first playoff. We sat down and talked for an hour about what was to come so I'd be ready. It was as if he was talking to his son. He didn't try to force something on me; to tell me that they expected goals from me when they drafted me in the first round. He told me because he cared about me playing my best game. He cared about me feeling good.
I know that’s how he worked with everyone on the club. He was a good leader.
When you read the news about how bad things were with the Oilers, you thought, 'Those people have no idea what it’s really like.'
I should have left anyway. Five years before I left. I should have done it like Ryan Smyth, who just decided to go and left. I could have. The options were there, but I told myself I couldn’t do this to them. I was grateful to all of them for helping me in the beginning and making me happy. It was my first club. I didn’t know anything else.
To be such a good guy in the NHL is not a good thing. Not when you’re playing a lot of games which don’t really matter and you know that you need something else.
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He speaks really fondly of Lowe and MacTavish, but in the same breath says he should have got outta there. I feel bad for the guy, taking all that abuse over the years and not getting to play much playoff hockey.
Clean house or bust
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