from Amalie Benjamin of the Boston Globe,
He used to keep it hidden. Even many of his teammates — those Adam McQuaid spent years playing with, protecting, avenging — didn’t know. He only recently reached the point that when asked what he has done on unencumbered Sundays, he mentions church.
He used to leave that out.
There were hints: the cross dangling from a chain around his neck, the black rubber encircling his wrist with “I am second” in white. He said little about it, even as he drew closer to his religion in recent seasons as illness and injuries interfered with his career.
“I know that there’s other guys on the team that do the same thing,” McQuaid said. “I’ve kind of come to a point where if someone’s going to ask me, I’m going to be honest.”
While spirituality is on display in other professional sports — with pitchers’ fingers pointing skyward, tattooed crosses adorning NBA arms, words of divine praise in postgame sideline interviews — that’s not the case in hockey. In the NHL, religion is mostly omitted from the conversation, God left unsaid.
Now McQuaid is saying it, softly, hesitatingly: faith.
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