We’ve been posting on this blog for over two years now (are we really that old?) and one of the very few recurring themes has been our friend JR. I’ve forgotten about my fair share of weekly updates and features, but JR never seemed to fade away for some reason. He’s always come around every once in a while or has done something on the ice that we took particular notice of. And then there are the emails. We don’t get a lot of emails, but I can assure you that at least three-quarters of them pertain to JR in some way. Whether it’s that he’s on the cover of a magazine looking absolutely plastered or that someone needs some good ol’ JR themed porn, you good folks just can’t get enough of him — and neither can we.
And now it’s all about over. The Sharks have called a press conference tomorrow where the 39-year old is expected to announce his retirement. And it had to end eventually, but it’s still not going to be the same.
There’s something about the guy that just draws people to him. Sure, he’s charismatic but he has always seemed to realize exactly what his role was as an athlete. He’s one of the few athletes that realizes that sports are, in fact, simply entertainment. Whether it was dancing on the ice in front of thousands of people at Fan Appreciation Day when he played for the Kings or simply making funny faces through the glass, he always seemed to know that his job wasn’t only to score goals — but he did that well anyway. Roenick always acted as if he knew that the ice was a stage and he was simply a performer on the stage to entertain us. And he had a big following, not only on this website.
(Join me after the jump for a tribute to Mr. JR himself)
But certainly not everyone was a fan of him. At times it was almost a glimpse at what might have happened if Dennis Leary was actually a really talented hockey player. Roenick is from Massachusetts, foul-mouthed, crude at times and never, ever — ever — afraid to express his opinion (he needs to be a commentator ASAP). He was never afraid to give a playful middle finger to the camera. And if you didn’t like it, then tough for you. This is who he is and he’s not going to change because it makes you uncomforable.
The character of JR on the blog was never supposed to be an actual representation of the guy, just a caricature like every other fake athelte post we’ve done. But for some reason the crude, womanizing, always joking JR we dreamed up almost seemed like maybe, in some odd way, kind of who Jeremy Roenick actually was. All those odd pictures we found of him were real and nothing we took or photoshopped. They were just scattered around the web. And there’s a reason you don’t find pictures like that of Sidney Crosby or Henrik Zetterberg just hanging out in corners of the internets. Maybe because stars today have been manicured and groomed by agents and PR gurus into the inoffensive family friendly star. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but in 1988 when JR broke in, there wasn’t nearly as much of that as there is now. But I don’t think he would have changed how he acted anyway. And that’s why he is awesome.
So here’s to you Mr. Roenick. Thank you for entertaining us for the past 21 years.
Oh and, I couldn’t possibly forget this.
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