Buffalo Sabres fans, please indulge me for a quick second:
My 11 year-old son plays hockey for a small association here in the state of New York. It’s not a big team when everyone is healthy – they skate six forwards and four defensemen, so they log more minutes than the majority of the teams that they play – and the last few weeks they have been playing down a kid, which typically forces the coaches to move a blueliner to forward and roll out just three defensemen over the course of a game. This weekend, his team headed to five-game tournament, with one kid on crutches with a sprained ankle (he still skated) and one kid coming down with a fever over the weekend that caused him to miss a game (he returned for the tournament championship).