On June 24th, 2011 I had the opportunity to attend the NHL Draft in Minnesota to support my cousin, a hockey player who stood the chance of getting drafted. I had watched a part of the draft on television before and thought I knew what to expect. However, the event in person is far different than how one experiences it on television: At home I’m not wearing 5-inch heels and contemplating whether Spanx can cut off enough circulation to kill me. Also, I have the ability to change the channel during commercial breaks or simply watch the ticker underneath Sportscenter. Every time a team approached the podium, I’d find myself on the edge of my seat wondering if this would be the team. I didn’t particularly care who drafted Mika, since the Atlanta Thrashers closed shop earlier this year, so I had no dog in this fight.
Much to my surprise, Mika went fairly early on in the draft to the Ottawa Senators. Despite not knowing anything about the team aside from what their logo looked like, I was thrilled. Mika hugged his mom, dad, and brother, then he broke the one rule he was told to abide if drafted. He marched 4 rows up the stairs and hugged my immediate family; he didn’t care, we were family, too. Watching Mika don the Senators jersey for the first time, lead his first interview as an NHL draftee, and watching him take his first photographs in an NHL jersey was surreal. It quickly became more surreal when my tweet to share the news that Mika was now a Senator was shown on TSN, friends were texting me that my cousin was on television, and people began to ask for Mika’s autograph. This was really happening.
Later that night, after the draft had finished for the day and we had made it back to our hotel in Minneapolis, my family wrapped up the evening in the hotel’s restaurant. We ordered a bottle of champagne that we split between us and celebrated this monumental moment in Mika’s life. The televisions in the lobby were continually playing highlights of the draft and every 10 minutes Mika’s face was on every television and his name would flash on the ticker. It was then that I realized that the kid that sat across from me who wastoo young to drink his own celebratory champagne, was quietly sipping his Coke and being his usual introverted self. I wondered if that would change and if he knew the big things that his future had in store.
