Jason Blake: Plans to keep playing while fighting cancer
Why does it take something like a cancer diagnoses to remember there are things more important in hockey than goals, points, ice time, hockey pools or bonuses? Once Jason Blake went public with his leukemia diagnoses, everything else just seemed like background noise.
The most amazing thing about the way this story has come out is the upbeat nature of everyone: the team, the doctors, and Blake himself. Leafs head coach Paul Maurice nailed it when he said “It’s an unusual sentence to hear — the first word is cancer, the next word is leukemia, and then everything should be all right. I’m not familiar with the condition so it was new that something like this would be as treatable and for such a positive sentence to come after such a negative sentence, it takes a little while to get your head around it.”
The Leafs are the subject of much derision and abuse from fans throughout the season (and that’s just in Toronto), but no one ever wishes anything serious to happen to these guys. As it shows in the article, Blake and his family have been through a lot already. Here’s hoping this is the end of it.
Ironically, this is also the 10th Anniversary of the NHL’s Hockey Fights Cancer campaign. Throughout the season all 30 teams will be involved in fund-raisers and public awareness of local cancer charities. There is also the annual online auction, where player goodies such as game worn jerseys and other memorabilia is available for bidding.
November 13th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
[...] if you remember, was diagnosed with leukemia earlier this year, so there’s a lot of speculation Avery’s comments were related to [...]