A night at Northeastern with Cam Neely

As we walked through the doors of Ell Hall, I caught site of a familiar face of a large figure just behind me.

"Do you know where Blackman Hall is," he said. "It's right up here. Are you Cam?" I said.

Obviously, it was Cam. I just didn't know what to say at the time. Professional athletes have always intimidated me and a player of Neely's stature was no different.

I shook his hand, introduced myself, and walked inside Blackman Auditorium, as I listened to his explain that he didn't have a ticket to those working the doors.

His presentation was fun and very casual. It was $3/ticket for students and $5 for everyone else. He spoke of his playing days, with some behind the scenes comedic stories and finished with a short explanation of his charity work involving cancer.

After, he opened up the floor for questions. Unforunately, the floor included many dim-witted sorority girls and frat house bozos. There were a lot of real fans in the crowd and from them came some good questions.

What was your favorite place to play? Montreal, by far.
Did you enjoy a hat trick of a victorious fight more? Probably the fight. Players hate to lose a fight.
What was it like to be traded from Vancouver to Boston?
Who do you like most in the league now?
Why do the Bruins suck and where should they start corrections?

Cam was very down to earth and was able to shed a lot of light on both his career and the game today. A few girls felt it necessary to ask questions about rule changes and leadership in the locker room - these questions were not posed with any inteligence.

I was disappointed that there was no meet and greet afterwards but nonetheless, it was a worthwhile experience.

Later last night, our NESHL team won once again against a mediocre opponent, at best. I mean, I played back on D for two periods and I don't think we gave up a goal during that time. Playoffs start next Sunday, so the going should get tougher.

I'm not going to go further into the playoff scenarios of the NHL right now but as we all know, spots are still up for grabs in the East and these final couple weeks should be very entertaining.

One other thing I wanted to mention today was regarding the film "The Rocket," which as I have heard tells the story of Rocket Richard. I had read about this film a while back and based on the few reviews on amazon.com, this movie is on par with the other great hockey films. I'll be sure to check it out over the next week or so and write a full review.