As Grand as Playing Your First NHL Game

That's how I felt today, or more accurately, I felt the way I imagine hockey players do when they play in their first NHL game. What brought this on? My name is listed in The Hockey News under "interns." I've seen my name in credits before but this means more than all the others combined. As I kid, I saved my allowance to buy The Hockey News when it really was a newspaper - how I miss that hot-off-the-press smell and the ink all over my hands. Back then there was no girls hockey where I lived so The Hockey News was the closest a small town girl could get to the daily grind of hockey life. Reading about Ron Duguay, Darryl Sittler, or some kid named Gretzky fuelled my hockey furnace. There were no female hockey writers but my childhood imagination didn't run on reality. I dreamed and dreamed that someday my writing would appear in The Hockey News. That hasn't happened but some of my edits are in there, not like the staff writers need much editing. They are not excellent hockey writers - they are excellent writers - period. I feel intense pride seeing a piece I worked on in the magazine or on the web site, not a boastful, arrogant pride - I'm just so damn happy to be involved with something that has been part of my life for years. If this is the first game feeling, I can't wait to get the writers equivalent of the Stanley Cup feeling.