Dinner With Bob Hartley

Last night was our March meeting and our guest speaker was Bob Hartley. It was held at the Family Sports Center, the ice rink where the AV's practice. He arrived and filtered through the room introducing himself to each table. We ate dinner, burgers and brats, and then Bob addressed the group.
He started out by discussing the current injury situations on the team. Danny Hinote (shoulder), should be back by April 1st. Milan Hejduk (Ab's), will start skating this week and hopefully will be back by April 1st if all goes well. Stephane Yelle (shoulder) is expected to play this coming Saturday against the Wings. Adam Foote (lacerated finger) will be back tonight against the Capitals. And the big one, Peter Forsberg (ankle). Peter's rehab has been going very well. Bob thinks that Peter is currently in the best shape of his life with all the weight training and endurance training that he has done. Peter has been riding the bike and will start treadmill running this week. The next step is skating. The target for Peter's return is the 2nd or 3rd round of the playoffs. This was exciting news for all.
As Tuesday the 19th is the trade deadline, Bob then talked for a bit about the rumors and potential move, or more likely, non-moves. He said that all though the AV's have a few lines in the water, no one is biting. As a result, he did not think that there would be any big blockbuster trades like we've seen in the past years. And this he felt was true for the whole league. Bob moved into discussing some of the other teams in the league that are in the playoff hunt and really felt that this year would be a slow trade year. Along with discussing the whole NHL, Bob also touched upon the Olympics. There has been great discussion within the media about what Olympic rules the NHL should adopt to help the flow of the game. In Bob's opinion, the NHL is at it's healthiest and doubts any Olympic rules will find there way into the NHL rulebook.
Ray Bourque's stay here in Colorado continues to be felt amongst the team. Bob could not say enough of good things about Ray and how his attitude infected the team and pushed them on to win the Stanley Cup. Bob told a story about just prior to game 6 of the finals at New Jersey. The team had just lost and were down 3 games to 2. As a result, the mood was less than peppy. Bob went through his pregame speech and when finished, continued to walk back and forth in the locker room. Bob said the silence was deafening and he was just hoping someone would speak up. Ray, stood up and with tears streaming down his face, told the team that he had at least one more game to play, but hoped it was two as he would be retiring at the end of the season. Bob said the silence then was even worse, mouths were agape. But as we know, the team pulled through game 6 and game 7 to win the cup.
After a while longer, Bob opened the floor to questions. One of which also lead to a pre game 6 story. The first of two buses left from the hotel around 3:30 to arrive at the rink by about 4:00. Bob, Jacques Cloutier, Bryan Trottier, Ray Bourque, Patrick Roy, Adam Foote, John Klemm and a few other were on the bus. As it pulled into the parking lot of the Devils stadium, the team could see all the tail gating parties the Devils Fans were having. These fans knew the bus was for the AV's and they pulled out all their derogatory signs. As the bus slowly pulled through the crowd, Patrick got more and more angry. So much so that he started pounding on the glass, ping ponging back and forth inside the bus and yelling in French. Footy asked Bob what was being said and all Bob could say was, Roy was telling them that the Devils would not score a goal and would never win a Cup against him. Of course with some extra French being spoken in between. As we know, Roy had a shut out that night.
Other stories were told and in all, Bob spoke for a little over an hour. It was a lot of fun. You can tell that he is a heck of a nice guy, humble and gracious, as are all the hockey related people that we've met.




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