Community Chaplain

Now for something completely different...talk about the Leafs. I have a few thoughts on the latest trade made by our beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. About 4 years ago I started posting comments on line at two of our newspapers. Specifically, I was asking if anyone in Leaf management understood what hockey talent looked like and even more importantly if they knew how to build a team. Despite some extremely nasty comments by those who live and breathe the "Blue and White", I expressed my total dislike for the management team of Brian Burke and Dave Nonis. BB spent all sorts of time promoting himself and the team as "soon-to-be Cup contenders". He and his sidekick Nonis assured every Leaf fan that they were building a winner with the likes of Kessel, Phaneuf and then Clarkson and that the cupboard was full of young talent. The core of the franchise were in fact two men that nobody else wanted for reasons the media kept hidden from the Toronto public. Seemed that Phaneuf...

I noticed that there was recently an event in the Toronto Estonian community that featured a guest speaker who grew up playing hockey in Canada but also played in Estonia. He was a younger version of me and probably twice the player but we did have something in common: we are in a rare group that has had the privilege of playing hockey in a country where our parents, and in this fellow's case, his grandparents were born. After reading about this I started remembering the excitement of playing in Estonia at the age of 50. I was a goalie and as anyone who has played the game knows, goalies are usually in short supply. When we moved our family, including 3 children to Estonia in October of 2003, I thought it would be neat to bring my goalie equipment with me in the overseas container that included our car and most of our belongings. In my mind I figured if nothing else, I could go to the island province of Saaremaa a few times and play out on the frozen Baltic Sea with my friend Vel...