A sweet story about a hockey team and a loss in the "family"

[underpants]

It began with the rarest of elements in professional sports: silence. No press release. No major announcement. No photo opportunity. Just the quiet of people doing a nice thing, the right thing.

Blackhawks general manager Dale Tallon was murmuring prayers over his father's casket a half-hour before the wake was to begin. The family was saying its goodbyes to Stan Tallon, a tough, big-hearted guy who liked helping troubled kids. Dale's mother, Julie, was there. So were his wife, Meg, and their two children, Lauren and Kristen.

Dale Tallon looked up and noticed a few members of the Hawks' front office wandering into the funeral home. That's odd, he thought. This is Gravenhurst, Ontario. They're supposed to be in Chicago. In the whirl and clatter of his emotions, Tallon was having trouble connecting thoughts.

Then he saw some Hawks players walking through the door — Adam Burish, Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Cristobal Huet. On and on it went, fresh-faced kids and battle-scarred veterans. Coach Joel Quenneville and his staff. The trainers. John McDonough, the team president, too.

"I told my mother, 'Mom, the team's here. The whole team's here,' " Tallon said. "She said, 'You've got to be kidding.' She became 6 feet tall all of a sudden. She went from one emotion to another, a complete 180. She went from distraught to all of a sudden having a little fire in her eye. She was a little excited about it."

Sports sections are filled with stories about angry, greedy, self-absorbed athletes. There's a simple reason for that. There are a lot of angry, greedy, self-absorbed athletes. So you tend to notice when a group of players goes the opposite direction, especially when it's done in a near whisper.

On Nov. 22, the Blackhawks beat the Maple Leafs 5-4 on Dave Bolland's goal in overtime. Rather than take a chartered flight back to Chicago, the team decided to stay in Toronto, practice the next day and then make the 110-mile trip north to Gravenhurst for the wake. That's how it came to be that two busloads of Hawks personnel walked through the doors of a funeral home in the middle of Ontario on a cold night.

No acclaim. No hubbub. Just a nice thing, the right thing.

Tallon tried talking to the players in a side chapel at the funeral home but got choked up and couldn't finish. He said he still gets teary-eyed thinking about their gesture.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/hockey/blackhawks/chi-15-morrisseydec15,0,5328342.column

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. ...

:thumbsup:

[applegrove]

2. That was very kind.

[Kat45]

3. That is sweet. Doesn't surprise me with a hockey team.

I think hockey players (in general) are the least full-of-themselves professional athletes.