What Are The Chances? Yes - Fragile Where I come from every kid plays hockey. Which means you play ice-hockey, boot-hockey, street-hockey, ball-hockey and no frikin' horse hockey! I have to wonder about my Dad as I think back. I played on the school team, the city team the park team and if I had free time I would play as much pick up hockey at the local park or the little rink next door. I think Dad wore out three cars driving me around to hockey this or that. Late one grey winter afternoon me and a bunch of friends were playing some boot hockey with a sponge puck. This was at the little rink next door. It was getting dark and I think most of the kids had gone in for dinner but I stuck around to take some shots on Brad with my new Super Blade. Hockey sticks are not cheap so some genius came up with the idea of a Super Blade. This was a plastic blade that would fasten to the shaft portion of an old broken hockey stick. You would fasten it by heating the tubular part of the plastic super blade over a red hot element on the stove. Then you jam the shaft into the Super Blade and that would fasten it. No kid was happy however until he had a ridiculous curve on his plastic blade. This too was achieved by holding the blade over the stove. So there I was taking shots on Brad and he was wearing the standard ball hockey pads to protect his shins, a baseball glove as a catching mit and one of a pair of hockey gloves to protect the other hand. No mask, in those days helmets and masks were for chicks! Brad's Mom gave one last shout for supper so I suggested that this would be the last shot. Indeed it was. I wound up and drilled that sponge puck from about 15 feet away. The puck left my stick and hit Brad in the side of the face. At the same time the Super Blade also left my stick and hit Brad in the forehead. I would say there was no more than one second between the two. Brad rolled around clutching his face for five minutes and I tried to console him and kept asking the classic "are you ok?" Finally he calmed down and we determined there would be "two" bumps on his head. Then we began to laugh because... What the hell are the chances of that happening again? I'll bet that is what Eric Lindros was thinking on Friday May 26, 2000. Poor bastard!