The best thing about this Saturday's Play the Pros event at JBM Stadium is not that some local kids and weekend warriors will get to skate against actual NHLers, it's that dozens of local kids will benefit from it.
Funds raised from Saturday's action ($49,500 was raised in 2007) will help those who otherwise would not be able to play hockey because of the cost involved with the sport.
The benefits of sports for kids are well-documented: in theory, sports can help with self-esteem, you learn to be a team player, you learn to win and you also discover that sometimes you lose - just like in life. A kid doesn't need hockey to learn those things, but if he or she really wants to play our national passion, those little extras can be invaluable to a child's development.
Also, they have fun, and I've always been big on having fun.
Yes indeed, fun is where it's at.
Colin White, Jon Sim and Joey MacDonald bucked the odds and made it all the way to the big leagues, and it's nice they lend their names and their time to help others.
If a kid can have fun playing hockey and pick up some life skills along the way, that's about all we should realistically ask for.
The handwringing is over, now that our Olympians have finally started winning some medals in Beijing.
Frankly, I was getting tired of all the whining from the media, pundits and armchair athletes, so much so that once the women's soccer team was eliminated from medal contention, part of me started to hope that Canada would be completely shut out of the medals for the entire Olympics, just to further annoy those who found it distasteful that Canada wasn't reaching the podium.
Isn't being sixth or seventh-best in the world at something still pretty good? If you had the sixth-best doctor in the world, wouldn't you be happy with that?
But my attitude changed when Carol Huynh won gold in women's wrestling - her story is one of those you can't help but feel good about.
Her Vietnamese parents had been living in Canada for just a few months when she was born in late 1980. Her family had been sponsored by a church group in the tiny village of Hazelton, located in an isolated part of British Columbia.
As they watched from the stands, her mother cried and her father was bursting with pride as their daughter, who'd toiled for years in anonymity, stood on the podium with her gold medal around her neck, singing the national anthem.
The look on Carol Huynh's face when she pulled off the stunning upset was priceless - what a moment that must have been for her.
I'd bet anything it meant more than yet another gold medal would mean to American swimmer Michael Phelps.
Kevin Adshade is sports editor with The News
