The Night Andy Murray And I Compared Johnsons...

How can I pass up that opportunity? While in the Verizon Arena during game three, I saw a number of people I had either previously met or emailed over the years. Fans, Friends and Monarchs employees - I had the chance to see my friend Dan, known as Dano to some, Bill, Katie, Paul, Noelle, Gerry, and MJ, who are all friends of mine on Facebook, and active members of the Monarchs Booster Club, Jason Bergeron, who provided my seats, and Jason LaBossiere, who has sold me a few Monarchs game worns over the years, as well as Cheryl Abbott, SVP of the Monarchs, who once sold me some Ryan Flinn bobbleheads. Anyway, it was great to see so many people I have met over the years visiting Manchester, but the big surprise was running into someone I knew from Los Angeles... Andy Murray was in the house, watching his son's playoff performance. Andy and I had met on a few occasions, both in LA where I had interviewed him once, and in Nashville, where I attended the 2003 draft that brought the younger Murray to the Kings organization. I re-introduced myself as we stood in the concourse between periods, and while it was easy for him to justify his being there, he did wonder what I was doing there, and I had to admit, it was pretty odd to say that I was there to watch playoff hockey because living in LA, I knew it was virtually impossible to get any post season love as a Kings fan. (I didn't go into the fact that I had only missed one Duck post season game in the past three post season runs...) "Well," he said, "You're probably going to see some playoff hockey in LA pretty soon with that group of kids." Now Andy, come on... pretty soon? How about the fact that among the 14 other teams in the conference, you have Chicago, Edmonton, St. Louis, and Vancouver among the teams that called it quits after 82, and all have reasonable optimism for the future based on their young talent as well. Then we can talk Columbus, who I always seem to have a love-fest for in the pre-season. In fact, I don't see too many of the 8 teams that DID make the playoffs in the West falling that far out of position, so unless the NHL decides EVERYONE makes the playoffs come next April, pretty soon doesn't mean 12 months from now to me! While Andy didn't disagree with me, I also moved the topic over to rookie defensemen named Johnson, and stated that I thought he had the best rookie Johnson in the league. "Well, your Johnson is pretty good too, you know," he replied. Personally I would have preferred my Gleason to my Johnson, but I know that the story hasn't been written in its entirety yet. My Johnson might turn out to be rock solid. Andy's Johnson however is already quite the stud. He knows it, and anyone who watched Blues hockey this season knows it.

We shook hands and got ready for overtime, and I went back to my seat thinking about our respective Johnsons. If Andy is correct, and Jack can truly shoulder the load, I might not have to fly almost 3000 miles to watch post season hockey, but if I have to fly anywhere, New England is a beautiful place to be.

A group of about 15 of us went out for a post-game meal and a splendid time was had by all. Bill drove me back to my car, and I headed back to the hotel, where I crashed immediately upon impact with my pillow. Driving to Portland in the morning.