from Milan Lucic at The Players' Tribune,

is is how naive I was when I got to Boston. Are you ready for this?

We had this really nice guy who worked for the team and handled all the road travel. He was in his early 70s. His name was Johnny, and he was just awesome. I was a 19-year-old kid in my first training camp. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I didn’t know about NHL travel. I knew about WHL buses. So Johnny had my back. He was kind of like a cool grandfather to me.

One day after practice, I was sitting in the locker room talking to one of my teammates, and I was like, “Johnny’s a real nice guy, eh?”

He goes, “Johnny who?”

“You know, the road guy. Johnny. Can’t remember his last name.”

“You mean Johnny friggin’ Bucyk?!”

“Is that his name? Sorry, man. Still trying to learn everybody.”

“Come here.”

continued