A fun fact about me is that I got into hockey because my brother got into hockey, and he got into hockey after his neighborhood friends got into hockey. I grew up in that awful window when the state of Minnesota was a state without an NHL team. My initial hockey fandom was of my brother's peewee team.
NHL 94 was a big hit in our neighborhood, and I finally got a Sega Genesis myself about 4 years later, but before that, my brother and I would crash neighborhood friends houses to play (I was always the Hartford Whalers). Our friend was always the Penguins, and we would get destroyed. It was a bonding experience.
My brother played goalie through a couple years of high school. He liked being a goalie, even though he admitted it was the right role mostly because he was a slow skater. Better than me, though because I can't even skate. Nevertheless, family friends saw how much he liked playing, and how much I liked watching, and we started getting tickets to watch the Minnesota Gophers college team, and we went to a few games a year.
The NHL finally came back to Minnesota at about the time I was leaving for college. Still and all, our hockey fandom established, we rarely run into each other when neither of us is wearing a bit of Minnesota Wild merch. Often, it's both of us. And then we hold court about the team for a bit, and then realize we don't know where our kids ran off to.
My brother and I have a pretty good relationship, and hockey has been a tie that has bound us through the years. With all that pretext, I can't imagine making a point of ensuring that we were on the same team if we had made it to the NHL. I don't think we are any less close than the Tkachuks or Folignos or Staals.
And I am fairly sure it wouldn't be such a point that I would be making the entire league hold it's breath on free agency through this season and next year, like some families.
Obviously, there are some biased anxieties at play here, and I am sure the unbelievable isolation of elite hockey prospects can make time spent with family all the more important when you get older, but I just can't identify with that impulse.
Heck, my brother and I currently work in the same industry, and I am fairly sure neither of us wants to go work at the others' company. That is essentially the same thing, right?
