Reason I Love Hockey #13

Heroes

I'm not talking about the Heroes of the Game: your Gretzkies, your Messiers, your Crosbies. Those guys are all well and good (well, great), but it's the other kind of heroes that are my favorites: the guys that don't have careers of outstanding success behind them, that only need a few seconds of ice time to have fans chanting their names, and wearing their sweaters for years to come. These heroes can come from anywhere, or out of nowhere. One minute they're skating innocuously up the ice, the next minute you're saying "Did you just see that? Who was that?" It was Brian Campbell, steamrolling RJ Umberger to start the playoffs off right. It was Jason Pominville, making Daniel Alfredsson look like the rookie as he sent him golfing. It was Max Afinogenov, scoring in overtime a game after he was benched. Every roster is littered with unlikely players just waiting for their moment to shine. Sure, after a couple of weeks they go off your radar again; they become just another cog in the machine. But for those few minutes they were heroes, and every time you look back on that hit, that play, that goal, you will say "Remember when so-and-so..." with reverence. In a sport whose big moments are more about the heroics than the hero, more about the play than the player, these are the perfect champions.