Why it took 15 years

So the astute reader will realize it took me 15 years to make the jump from Olympic hockey to NHL hockey.

It's mostly, rightly or wrongly, my association at that time of NHL hockey with too much violence and goonery.

That and lack of an NHL team in Atlanta. Jim Craig came to the Flames, but the team left at the end of the season.

Had the team stayed it might have been different.

Other sports interests took hold though. In the early- to mid- 80s I was a huge NBA fan. I loved watching Larry Bird, an Indiana native, play with the Celtics. Their match-ups with the Lakers then were magical. That rivalry started from the 1979 NCCA final game, which I remember watching with friends and family.

My love for the NBA, and nearly all sports waned, until the early 90s. With the Atlanta Braves run in 1991, I became a baseball fan. The 1994 strike left me disillusioned though.

However another Atlanta team piqued my interest when friends invited me to an Atlanta Knights game. Man those games were loads of fun. That's when I was able give professional hockey a chance.

The rest is history.