Here’s my latest from nhl.com.

Read it here, or below.

Heroes, stand up

I may be too old to have any idols, or at least too old to admit it. That said, I’ve been too old for that stuff for about thirty years. See, it was OK to have a cool poster on the wall of your room – and I sure did have those – but quite another thing, not as cool, to carry a photo of your idol with you.

There were two ways around the uncoolness, though. One was to have a wallet, because being 13 and having your own wallet was cool. Add some money, and you were the king of the schoolyard. Buy a Coke on the break, or play it all on the pinball machine at the gas station across the street, and you were the one others wanted to hang around with.

That was an option, but I never really carried a wallet. The little money I had was in my pocket (still is). What I did have, though, was a bus ticket, a monthly pass you just showed the bus driver when you got on the bus. Still, carrying a photo of Wayne Gretzky with me had not been cool, had I not come up with a great explanation.

I put it on top of my own photo and told my friends I was trying to see if the bus drivers even looked at the ticket. Sticking it to the man was cool.

There it was, the long-haired Kid, readily available when I needed guidance, strength, or, well, a bus ride.

But Wayne Gretzky was my last idol. From the bus pass to the posters on my walls, to my playing with a Titan hockey stick, to learning to do that strange-looking Canadian G in his name (faking the autograph), to wearing 99, to tucking the sweater down in my pants on the right side, to letting my hair grow, to doing the same goal celebration moves, to skating behind the net, to never getting big-headed or acting larger than life. In public, anyway.

I was lucky. Gretzky was a great idol.

Before Gretzky, I wanted to be like Soviet great Valeri Kharlamov. He was fast, he was small, he was flashy, he was the best. He was modest, he didn’t celebrate his goals too much, he respected the opponents, and he had shown great perseverance by coming back to the top of international hockey after breaking his legs in a bad car accident.

Having good idols is important. Having a good role model is like having a great goal to aspire to. We learn to shoot like the stars, by imitating those who shoot for the stars, and we learn to never give up, by imitating those who never do. We also learn to be sore losers when our idols are, and we learn to take a cheap shot when we see somebody else getting away with it.

Finding idols seems so much harder these days, and basically, I think it’s partly because the stars just have so much money that there’s no limit to their extravagance, but also because we simply know too much of the people that we’d like to look up to.

Sure, Kharlamov showed great perseverance – but the car accident was caused by his driving under influence. My little eight-year-old brain didn’t register that. My 14-year-old brain did when he died in another car accident.

I’m never going to make it to the NHL – it’s official now – and I find it hard to have idols that are young enough to be my kids. (Tuukka Rask is a cool kid, but, hey, he’s still a kid!) Yet, I still find myself looking for heroes to cheer.

I’m reminded of the words of my first and biggest idol who about thirty years ago told me something a famous man had said. My father told me that Walt Disney had a sign on his desk, and it read, “Always be yourself.”

So, here I am, just being myself, but with a huge thanks to the Kharlamovs and Gretzkys of the world.

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A housekeeping note here. Inspired by Paul Kukla’s call-in a few weeks ago, I have decided to do the same. So, next week, probably on Wednesday, you can call me and talk hockey. I’ll post more details early next week.