An open letter to the Adrian College Hockey team:
I don’t know how many of you read these boards, but those of you who do, you know very well who I am. I have had the opportunity and privilege to get to know some of you, and watch you play for the last four years. Mostly it has been an unqualified success. Some nights have been much better than others, but a lot more good than bad. I would not consider myself an expert on the game by any stretch of the imagination, but I have seen, and learned, just enough to get myself in trouble. I’ve also seen more than enough of your play to know when things are going well, and when something is wrong, regardless of what the scoreboard says.
18 of you now have 10 games left in your collegiate careers, plus what ever success you can come up with in this year’s postseason. This season hasn't started quite like we thought it would, and we’ve hit some bumps in the road, but I’m not here to rip you for that. Fine. That’s gonna happen from time to time. However……….
Roughly two months from now, you will play your final game as a team. And just like that, you will walk out of that locker room and you will go your separate ways, likely never to be together as an entire team again. Sure, some of you will talk from time to time, but things will never be the same again. Some of you may play professionally, but some of you will never again play competitive hockey.
I wrote this to give you a message: Do not leave anything to chance. Leave no regrets. Get everything you can out of every second you have on the ice. You have very limited time left in your collegiate careers, and it will be gone before you know it. I’ve been out of college for 14 years now. Very few days go by where I don’t think about it. Do not be sitting there six months from now thinking “Dammit, I should have done this, or that, and things might have been different”. Don’t be wishing you had done something different.
When you play like you are capable, there isn’t a team in this league that can lay a glove on you. The banners are in the rafters to prove it. But we’ve also seen what can happen when you don’t…..
Next year is going to be radically different, but we’ll deal with that when we get there. For most of you, there’s no second chance after this season. This is it. Get everything out of it.