Hockey players show most class

In an era when it seems we can’t get enough news about athletes, when every bar brawl, strip-club visit and parking-lot scrape merits a headline, the best story of the NHL season somehow managed to fly below the radar for nearly three weeks.

The story that’s been dubbed “Millionaires Behaving Properly” was written in two small towns a few hours north of Toronto. It might have remained nothing more than local lore if not for the efforts of a few persistent e-mailers and fan message boards.

It begins with a young Chicago Blackhawks team in the middle of a wearying six-game road swing, having just beaten the Maple Leafs and learning that general manager Dale Tallon was staying behind to attend his father’s funeral. The team had arranged a flight back to Chicago to get some extra time at home before Thanksgiving and a West Coast swing.

Instead of boarding the plane home, though, the Blackhawks voted unanimously to check back into their hotel and charter two buses for a two-hour ride on a frigid Sunday morning to the rural Ontario town of Gravenhurst (pop. 11,000).

“It was a no-brainer that we’re going to be there for Dale and his family,” winger Adam Burish said in a video posted the Blackhawks’ Web site Thursday, in response to numerous queries the club received. “Every guy in this locker room would say he’s a guy you would do anything for.”

What’s unique about the Blackhawks’ tale, and maybe hockey players in general, is that no one involved thought it was unusual enough to share with the rest of us. Part of it, no doubt, is because hockey resides at the edge of America’s crowded pro sports radar – at least until one player caves in a rival’s head or tastelessly talks about his girlfriend. But the other part of it is hockey’s ethos.

When people ask which athletes are the best interviews, I always say, “Hockey players, hands down.” Not because they come up with the most colorful or controversial quotes, but because they’re usually the most honest.

That sentiment was expressed countless times in the e-mails that pinged around the Internet the last few weeks. As classy and worthy of attention as team’s show of unity turned out to be, the consensus was no one in the Blackhawks thought to make a big deal out of it because they just assumed any hockey team would have done the same. Tallon agreed.

“At first, I was, ‘OK, a couple of guys came.’ But then, as more and more of them came through the door, I almost forgot where I was,” the GM said. “I thought for a moment we were back in Chicago. … But I looked around and saw all these kids and it made me feel really good about what we’re doing. It’s been our goal to have those types of players. I tell people my draft priorities are, in order: character, speed, skill, size and then more character. You can never have enough of that.”

So wouldn’t you know it: The story gets better.

Somewhere along the bus ride back from Gravenhurst, a few of the players decided it would be a good idea to pull off the road and into a McDonald’s.

This being hockey-mad, small-town Ontario, it didn’t take people in the place long to figure out who the two dozen millionaires in suits dropping by in the middle of a Sunday afternoon were. Any doubts were removed once Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews started showing off to teammates their trading cards at the bottom of McDonald’s sacks, then signing autographs for some of the patrons.

Kane insisted he didn’t know the promotion was going on, and denied Burish’s claim the McDonald’s stop was Kane’s idea.

“He is probably just mad he didn’t have one in there,” Kane said, referring to a Burish trading card.

But Burish, being a hockey player and all, probably couldn’t have cared less.