My first interview at SI, I sat in silence next to Guy LaFleur for five minutes on the New York Rangers team bus until he finally broke the ice. Those early interviews, every one of them was like a terrible first date.

You can be writing every day. When you go on a road trip, the trip itself becomes part of the story.

Summer runs out the way a centerfielder runs out of real estate - slowly at first, then all at once.

Hockey belongs to the Cartoon Network, where a person can be pancaked by an ACME anvil, then expanded - accordion-style - back to full stature, without any lasting side effect.

I've always had an irrational fear - it's really not an irrational fear, I think - whenever I've been standing at a urinal at a bar, or Giants Stadium or Yankee Stadium. You've got a bunch of drunks behind you, often in a hostile, adrenalized environment like a football game. What's to prevent the guy behind me from slamming my head into the porcelain wall in front of me?

I can enjoy an Arsenal-Chelsea match without having to worry about getting exclusive quotes afterwards from one of the participants as he makes his way to his Bentley. I was never very good at steaming up to someone and engaging them in conversation like that.

Happy 110th birthday to Frank Zamboni, who left us in 1988 but still resurfaces periodically.