It Takes All Ages

Like many Sundays that come and go with not many plans I’m sitting in my living room. The tv is on, but no one’s really watching it, checking out the internet, books, and magazines as the mood suits us. Today’s background distraction until some golf or baseball gets underway is The Rock. It’s a decent background movie – one you’ve fairly familiar with and even if you weren’t you don’t really need to follow it to know what’s going on. In a way, comfortable. But for some reason as Ed Harris threatens to launch VX gas from Alcatraz into San Francisco I find myself wondering if maybe this is the exact time that Mrs. Doubtfire is happening in that same city, in Movie Land. And what about the Tanners? Are they in danger too? I hope not, for Saiku Koivu’s sake at least.

It kind of got me thinking about how the Flyers have 21 year olds playing for them and guys who will turn 35 this season. It’s pretty amazing. It’s not like you just have to be the best among your age group to be in the NHL, you have to be one of the top 600 hockey players in the world, form ages 18 to, now, 40. When Chris Pronger was in the middle of his first NHL season as a member of the Hartford Whalers Claude Giroux turned 6 years old. He was six. Writing that it’s almost hard to comprehend that while one of these current teammates was playing against Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux the other was still in diapers (you didn’t wear diapers until you were 8?) For the past 16 years Chris Pronger has been honing his skills against the best players in the world and Claude Giroux, who many are expecting to be a key contributor to the Flyers offense as soon as this upcoming season, was going through school and having camping trips with his parents.

If Rabbit, 16 months younger than Giroux, makes the team there’ll be an even larger gap between the club’s oldest and youngest player. Ian Laperriere turns 35 this season and Rabbit just turned 20. It must be an interesting dynamic in the locker room when you have such a mixture of guys in their mid 30’s and guys they honestly see as kids, who are just as big a part of the team as anyone. Must be hard, as a younger guy, to know where to fit in.