Normally we don’t tend to feature the same player twice in our Foxy Friday feature, but after what Gregory Campbell did on Wednesday night, how could we not?
from bosstownsports.tumblr.com
In case you’ve been living under a rock since Wednesday, just take a moment to review what transpired to bring about this Foxy Friday Sequel.
We wouldn’t know it officially until yesterday but Campbell broke his leg on that shot…and kept playing.
from fictionmist.tumblr.com
We all know that hockey players are notorious for being one of the toughest, if not THE toughest athletes on the planet. (Rugby players are right up there especially that guy that lost a testicle during a game and kept playing. Talk about cojones.)
But what Campbell did on Wednesday was incredible. To have the presence of mind to get back up and keep playing when you are in obvious intense physical pain is just remarkable.
Some might call it stupid or reckless.
We just call it foxy.
Cue bad-ass strut walk music.
He could have easily collapse to the ice and waited for a whistle.
But he didn’t.
He put his team before himself, got back up, and finished his shift.
If you watch Bruins hockey with any regularity, you are quite familiar with Campbell and how he plays. It’s smart, aggressive, and unselfish. If he gets a goal occasionally, that’s cool. But it seems for him, it is more about doing what is best for his team and his teammates without regard for personal gain.
He’ll scrap. He’ll muck and he’ll grind. And apparently he’ll even play on a broken leg if that is what it takes.
With one act of incredible courage and self-sacrifice, Gregory Campbell has become a Boston sports legend.
Parents will tell their kids about what he did. They’ll use it as a metaphor about how to never give up, even when it hurts, because there are people counting on you.
We’ll use it as a reminder of what it means to be part of a team, to be part of something bigger than yourself. That no one person is more important than another and the only way to win is if you work together.
Much like Nathan Horton was in the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals, Campbell will serve as inspiration, motivation, and as an emotional linchpin for this team.
Right now, everyone on that Bruins team has a singular collective focus – to win the Stanley Cup and to win it for Gregory Campbell.
P.S. Get well soon, Soupy!
Well said, Chuck. This was exactly what I needed to read after making the mistake of reading that piece of garbage blog over on Yahoo.
+1.
Boston Hero. Full. Stop.
My life partner aka boyfriend is a huge Philly sports fan. (Ugh!), he’s been mentioning how our future children will be Philly fans like him (nope), I will show them of the good side. The resiliency of the team after Horton’s concussion and bringing ‘Boston ice,’ to Vancouver, to Bergy’s clutch-ness, to Soupy’s resiliency. Never, ever give up. #BostonStrong
If you haven’t already watched it, go to Bruins.com and watch the video of Campbell when Bish went to visit him over last summer. It’s really great! He’s so soft-spoken and it shows how different these players can be once they put their skates on. Plus, if I remember correctly, he was wearing nerdy, hipster glasses and pink pants rolled up. So cute.
About the Lambert piece on Yahoo: I guess I can see both sides. Doing what he did shouldn’t be expected of him (in the NHL or any other sport), but the fact that he did it, I think it’s fair to say we’ve all got mad respect for him and that should be commended. He wasn’t thinking of himself–even if he should’ve been (and no one would’ve respected him less if he’d just laid down on the ice–Hello? Broken leg!?). He was thinking about the team. And THAT is the teachable moment, as Chuck so eloquently wrote.
Here’s on the videos from last summer: http://video.bruins.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=185851
I can definitely see Lambert’s side to the situation. But how was Campbell to know that his leg was broken? He was probably thinking it was just a stinger and that he could skate it off like I’m sure he has so many other blocked shots.
Now knowing that the leg as in fact broken just makes the whole situation just so much more dramatic and heroic and just all-out bad ass.
I agree, Chuck. I wondered, too, if Campbell knew he had broken it. I doubt it. Can you imagine that “sting” though? I really do respect him for staying out there–whether he knew it was broken or not.
One thing regarding this and the awful Lambert blog is that often, while you’re in pain, you don’t actually know how bad it is. The initial pain can be deceiving; it’s not just that it’s injured; it’s how your brain interprets those signals from the site of pain.
I know this from personal experience, when I got kicked in the thigh this past fall during hapkido (by a former hockey player, too, so it wasn’t a light kick), and the way the pain hit was utterly confusing in the first several minutes. It wasn’t broken; hell, on the outside, it didn’t even bruise, but I also walked with a limp and had limited range of motion for 4 weeks. The pain itself was all over the place–and that was in the first minute or 2, ranging from numb to “oh my god” to a little bit of muscle soreness to “I think I might lose my breakfast” to “walk it off and get right back in there for the rest of class then go grocery shopping.”
So when we talk about the heroics, yes, it was heroic–but it’s also just as likely that he was doing the same thing I did and that everyone I know in a contact sport or discipline does at some point or other; not knowing quite how bad it was, trying to see if the pain would be fine after a minute or if it’s indeed a trip to the hospital, running on crazy endorphins, yes. So maybe not quite heroic so much as practical, and not nearly as stupid as Lambert thinks.
This post was perfect….just throwing that out there 🙂