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 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.

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.