Man, it sucks to get traded….or does it??? I know exactly where Matt Duchene’s head has been. He is a bonafide superstar….. Me, not so much. These situations don’t just affect the top. They go all the way up and down the gamut of pro sports. My first years playing for Boston were a rollercoaster. I was the B’s first round draft pick in 2005, a young up and coming player. Playing mostly in the minors and 3 years into my professional career with most of the personal accolades you can acquire in the American Hockey League for a defenseman to my name, I wanted a trade.
We were in the bowels of the Philadelphia Spectrum. The trainer leaned over, my face towards the wall avoiding the carnage, “It doesn’t look good kid, but we’ll put er back together”. These were the words that I heard before I eventually whispered under my breath…. “Fuck me”. I had a deep skate laceration in my leg that ended up needing 60 stitches. I couldn’t walk and feared the light at the end of my trade tunnel was disappearing. It hadn’t.
So much of this game is revolved around timing. So much of this game revolves around who you get a chance to play for and who believes in you at the right times, same as in life. In turn, when things don’t go the way you want, you have to find a way through and prove the people wrong who don’t believe in you, and overall trust your gut.
Now that I am older, I look back on my situation completely differently. As business like as the trade may have been and as frustrated as I may have been (the reasons for that are for another post 😉), I consider everyone with the Bruins family to me. I believe they wanted things to truly work out in my favor. These people were integral pieces in my life when I was very young, from Claude Julien, Peter Chairelli, and Don Sweeney. They all taught me something different. I certainly didn’t handle every situation the way I wanted and maybe they didn’t either. At the end of the day, I owe all of them a huge “Thank You” for the lessons they taught me, the eventual chance they gave to a young frustrated kid, and overall the dream to wear that B on my chest. Something I definitely wished I could have done a little longer.
Just when things get hard, is just when they start to get good. Sure it’s hard to not get that job, to be told no, to get bad news, to go through transition and not know what is next. The good news is these things don’t define any of us.
Matt Lashoff 