I'll try to go through the WC games in the order I went to see them (except that's already messed up a bit because I went to see Switzerland-Canada before Russia-France) but I had to share this thing that's actually probably only exciting for me because I love books and I love when real life things connect to books. A while ago I made an entry (that's no longer FO) about reading a book about NHLers who came over to the NHL from behind the Iron Curtain back when the Iron Curtain existed. One of the first chapters, if not the first, was about Peter Stastny and his brothers and how they were basically the first players to defect from Czechoslovakia to play in North America. I got to see his son, Paul, play twice. The first time when the US played France I didn't connect the name to the book, it sounded familiar and I just figured I must have heard/seen it while following some random NHL game because I figured he wouldn't have been named team captain if he wasn't good… I mean I know about as much about the Avalanche team as the next person who doesn't really follow their division (i.e. "what do you mean Long story short, during the second USA game I went to see (USA-Germany, tbh I only went to see that because it was one of the three cheap games they had in Helsinki and who says no to that level of hockey for cheap on a Sunday afternoon?) I didn't really care who won but during the whole time I kept on thinking that there was this connection between this dude on the ice in front of me and this book I read and my mind was totally overwhelmed. I almost want to say that it was more impressive and overwhelming than seeing Eric and Jordan Staal play (and Skinner and Eberle and Hall and Duchene and Ladd and the rest of team Canada, which is the one team on which I knew most of the players and have more or less followed their results on their respective teams for a decent amount of time). I bet if I ever got to meet Paul Stastny on the street my first reaction would be "I read about your dad in a book, how cool is that?" and that would be embarrassing. I still cannot understand why I formed this deep emotional bond of sorts with the people in that Breakaway book. The book itself wasn't even all that great, it was rather superficial and left me wanting to know more about the people mentioned… and yet… and yet… Anywho. Have yourself some Paul Stastny before a face-off. ![]() |