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All The Motivation Konopka Needed

by Paul on 10/05/10 at 12:48 PM ET
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from Christopher Botta of Fanhouse,

Ask most NHL players where they get their character and work ethic, and you’ll hear warm and appreciative stories about moms and dads who drove them to hockey practices at five o’clock in the morning. Ask Zenon Konopka, the gritty and pugnacious fourth-line center of the New York Islanders, and he’s got some story to tell about Zenon Konopka Sr.

“I play hockey and I scrap, and I guess people say I’m tough,” said Konopka, who led the NHL last season with 33 fighting majors while a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning. “But my dad ... now, he was tough. There isn’t any comparison between what I do as a hockey player and what his life was all about.”

Konopka’s Polish-born father was three years old when Germany and later Russia invaded Poland at the start of World War II. Russian soldiers came to his family’s home and said they would be placed in a concentration camp in Siberia.

continued

Filed in: NHL Teams, New York Islanders, | KK Hockey | Permalink
  Tags: zenon+konopka

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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