And here’s my latest from nhl.com. The entire column after the jump.
The Last Mile
I had my birthday last week, and I guess I have reached the age where I really don’t want to talk about it. However, I did have a birthday, and it was duly celebrated with a trip to Boston, and a dinner with friends.
It also seems to me that I have reached the age where all the players seem like kids – which they are – and there are now players in the NHL that I have seen play as even younger kids.
Now, they’re great kids, the whole bunch of them, but still just kids.
A few years ago, I was trying to find the stars of the next Finnish hockey generation, so I called around and talked to scouts, national team coaches, Finnish Elite League coaches, agents, and GMs, and compiled a list of the ten (or so) hottest 16-17-year-olds in the country.
All of them said Tuukka Rask. Every single one of them.
He’s twenty now, lives in Providence, and enjoys life as a hockey pro. I met him last week in Boston, at the Four’s, a sports bar across the street from the Garden. He was wearing a nice black suit, not a track suit like the time I interviewed him for the first time, sporting a nice watch, and a mischievous smile.
Rask looked around at Four’s, with all the jerseys of Boston sports heroes hanging on the walls, from Craig Janney to Ted Donato. To him, they’re just names that he may or may not have heard before.
Make no mistake, Rask is a great kid, and the real thing. When his junior team won the Finnish championship three years ago, Rask had five shutouts in nine games. He’s big, he’s got the goalie temper, he hates losing, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes make it to the top.
A few years ago, let’s say nine, Tuukka’s team played an end-of-the-season game against the players’ dads, and lo and behold, they lost the game. That didn’t go down well with Tuukka who pushed the net down, and kicked the boards in frustration.
It didn’t get better when his skate got caught in the boards, and he had to wait for his father to come and help him to pull it out.
But now he’s matured. He still hates losing, but he has his eyes on the big picture. He knows his time will come, if he just works hard here and now.
Like a couple of nights before our meeting, when Boston got covered in snow. When a snow storm brought 15 inches of snow in just a few hours, and only 1,500 people made it to the Garden to see the Bruins lose against the Devils.
It was close that Rask wasn’t there, either. He left his apartment in Cambridge 40 minutes early, just to be on the safe side. Just 15 minutes before he was supposed to be at the rink, he was still a half a mile away, sitting in his car, and not moving very fast.
He pulled over, jumped out of the car, left his keys on the rear seat, and called his girlfriend (who was visiting from Finland) to come and pick up the car. Then he buttoned up his coat, and ran the rest of the way to the Garden – and made it on time. (His girlfriend couldn’t find the car so Tuukka had to go dig it out after the game).
Now he’s back in Providence, his first games in the NHL under his belt, almost, almost there.
He’ll be back in the NHL. He’ll run if he has to.