PK Subban: “People should want to help people”

Last Wednesday at lunchtime, as I usually do, I surfed around the internet looking for items to read about hockey. My usual pattern is typically a quick check at Oilers Nation, Cult of Hockey, Spector’s Hockey, and of course The Oilers Rig. If there is nothing new I’ll shift gears and have a look at Tsn.ca then Sportsnet.ca to see if anything catches my eye. If there is absolutely no new content on any of these sites I will then downshift from hockey-nerd to full-nerd and see if I can find any news on any of the upcoming Star Wars movies at lrmonline.com and aintitcool.com. Can you be a blogger without being a nerd? Unlikely. However, on Wednesday an item on Sportsnet caught my eye. It was an interview with P.K. Subban discussing his trade from Montreal to Nashville. The key quote that got me thinking was when Subban said, “people should want to help people.”

You can find the interview here.

If you are looking for more on why Adam Larsson is either fantastic or the worst hockey player ever stop reading. There will also be no further dissection on whether or not Milan Lucic is the second coming of David Clarkson. Since I am the furthest thing from an insider possible there will also be no trade rumors posted here. If that is what you are looking for move along.

For those of you who decided to keep reading if you watch the Sportsnet video linked to above, the part of the interview I am referencing comes around 5:33 and the quote around the 6:19 mark. The context of the quote is the interviewer, Eric Engels, starts a line of questioning which addresses Subban’s huge donation to the Montreal Children’s Hospital. Specifically, Engels wants Subban to address the rumors that the donation was “politically motivated” to ensure that Subban would play out the rest of career in Montreal and have the player end up with the team captaincy. To which Subban’s response (in reference to the media and rumor mongers) begins with, “people should want to help people,” and ends with, “why don’t people just shut up and help?”

While typing this I was reminded of Bill Murray’s (playing Frank Cross) speech in the classic Christmas movie, “Scrooged.”

I could have transcribed the entire interview here but you can watch it.

I think Subban’s point is well made. I feel that hockey fans, bloggers, and the media sometime lose the plot when consuming or reporting on sports. The macro is sacrificed for the micro which is easy given the anonymity provided by made up internet handles which don’t force people to be accountable for what they type online. While members of the media are public they are guilty of stirring up controversy to keep the hit counter moving and people tuning in. What is forgotten, omitted, or missed is that sometimes people do want to help people for no other reason than altruism.

That is one of the main reasons I love that The Oilers Rig tolerates my little scribbles here on their site. If I stick to the Golden Bears I’m okay but if I try and get into analytics I usually get myself into trouble. However, they let me contribute and I am proud to do so as this website helps out for the sake of helping out. Their yearly, “The Oilers Rig live for MS,” raises money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada. I have to admit I’m invested in the cause as I am a person living with the disease and I myself raise money for the MS Society through my yearly. “Really Long Run to End MS,” where I run from Leduc to Camrose. The funny thing about that is that if you ever met me in person you would never guess that I was an ultra-marathoner. My common (bad) joke is, “as far as almost 40 year old fat guys with MS who run ultra marathons go, I’m probably in the top 5 in the world- for sure the top 10.” Now the money we raise isn’t the millions donated by P.K. Subban, but it is for the same reason; we’re just people who want to help other people.

Whether you like P.K. Subban as a player you can’t deny how great it is that someone who is in his position will give his time and money to important causes. As an aside, he would have looked great in an Oilers jersey, however, that is a topic for another post by another writer.