Just thought I would pass along something left over from my recent trip to New Jersey and New York to do stories on the Devils and Islanders.
Those of us who deal with professional athletes and those who coach and manage them are well aware of how oblivious some of them are to what life is like among us ordinary folk. They define the term self-absorbed.
But even by that standard, Calgary Flames head coach Brent Sutter set a new mark for the clueless. The occasion was his first game back at the Prudential Center after he quit as head coach of the Devils in June, 2009 and wound up as head coach of the Flames two weeks later.
Sutter always maintained the Flames opening was just a happy coincidence. He quit the Devils, he insists, because he was tired of the separation from his wife and children, who remained at the family home an hour north of Calgary instead of moving to New Jersey.
Fair enough, but here is where Sutter took a 180-degree turn away from reality.
In explaining how hard it was living apart from his family, Sutter recounted the many children's birthdays and other events he missed because of hockey games:
"People in my situation in my industry and in businesses where you have to travel a lot told me they understand. They said they were surprised I did it for two years. You guys don't understand and people don't understand."
"You guys" was a scrum of about a dozen media members. People who were sitting upstairs in the press box at the same hockey games Sutter or his contemporaries were coaching or playing and missing their own children's birthdays and graduations and piano recitals. The fact I was going to miss my son's birthday the next night because of that trip started a slow burn that took a long time to go away.
Yeah, right, Brent. We wouldn't understand at all.