David Ayres Is Crushing Life Right Now As The New Face Of The NHL
On Saturday afternoon Alexander Ovechkin became just the 8th player in NHL history to score 700 career goals. The fact that he's 34 right now and still scoring 50+ goals a year gives him a legitimate shot at breaking Wayne Gretzky's all-time goals record. One of the many records held by 99 that everybody had previously just assumed would never be broken. We are watching hockey history unfold in front of our very eyes and guess what?
Nooooooobody cares.
Well maybe it's not fair to say "nobody cares" but at the very least, Ovechkin scoring 700 hit the B block of the NHL news cycle because the A block belongs to the 42-year-old Zamboni driving David Ayres who became the 1st EBUG to record a win in the National Hockey League. I mean just getting the Hockey Night In Canada towel alone is more than I'm sure he could have ever imagined. But to follow that up with an appearance on the TODAY Show...
And then followed that up with an appearance on The Late Show...
And now has a David Ayres Day in Raleigh.
It is officially David Ayres' world and we're just living in it. And great for this legend, man. You love to see good things happen to good people and from everything we've seen so far, David Ayres is an awesome dude with an awesome story. I know there are people out there who think that this whole saga makes the league look a little like a joke (cough, cough, Kris Versteeg), but you can't beat this story. This is the only sport where something like this could possibly happen. Versteeg was right yesterday when he said if the Dallas Cowboys had 2 quarterbacks get hurt, they wouldn't try to find an accountant in downtown Dallas to fill in for the 4th quarter. But where's the fun in that? To see some regular dude get to live out a dream scenario where they get to play against some of the best players in the world and they just so happen to succeed (after an admittedly brutal start)? They write movies about that scenario, sure, but it's so much cooler when we see it happen in real life. It's a great story that deserves the attention its getting right now, and I have to imagine that David Ayres will know when its time to start cooling it down. He's a good ol' Canadian who probably realizes we don't need an actual movie about this, but the media car wash this week is more than deserved.
Sidenote: Tough, but fair.