from Brent Cooper of the Bracebridge Examiner,

It is easy to tell Katie Coll adored her late father.

“I was his first-born. He was just always there for me. Just growing up he would show me and do everything for me,” she said. “We had a cottage up on Lake Rosseau and he was just always doing something with me and for me,” she said.

Calling from her North Carolina home, Coll spoke fondly of her father, born and raised in Bracebridge and who may remember as one of the best National Hockey League goalies of the 1960s, Detroit Red Wings star Roger Crozier. Though prior to his NHL career, he helped the Bracebridge Bears to the District Championship in the Intermediate C playoffs in 1958-59.

To pay homage to her late father, she is trying to get him into the Hockey Hall of Fame through a letter-writing campaign.

She said she has a number of her father’s fans on her Facebook page, and many were surprised to learn he wasn’t already in the hall.

“He so deserves it. There are these fans from all over that are saying this to me, so I decided I would try this and see if I can’t get him into the hall. I have all these good reasons why I think he should be in the hall of fame and everyone else does … some of the players in the hall didn't do half of what my dad did and it makes me so irritated,” she said.

Coll has been busy the past few months collecting newspaper articles and hundreds of letters of support and Facebook messages for her father to be inducted into the hall.

continued