They find out when the hotel phone rings or the ticker scrolls across the bottom of the TV screen. They learn while they're at home or on the road, eating dinner or breakfast. They hear rumors and make plans, but nothing prepares them for the actual thing—families they have to suddenly leave, bags to pack, houses to sell, lives to uproot. It’s the nature of the business, they claim, but business becomes intensely personal when it happens to them. And they never forget that first feeling.
“It’s not panic,” says Capitals forward Justin Williams (in photo above).