Danny Marston is the type of guy who already tries to spend at least a week back home between seasons, and at least a day is spent in his childhood rink teaching kids to play hockey. So for Career Day, he took some time and prepped two speeches: one about being a hockey player and manager tells stories of great games played, goals scored, and trades won, and another about all of the things he wished someone had told the kid in the blue hoodie he'd once been, with big dreams and a heavy weight of expectations on his shoulders.

Thankfully, the first-graders that he's been invited to talk to at his old elementary school are more athletically inclined, and reveled in the "war stories". The speech went over well. There were a few slip-ups, a few hastily-edited details for the sake of not saying "fuck" in a room full of seven-year-old kids. It was an enlightening and good experience for most. There were a few kids that balk and scoff, but they were hushed quickly and it didn't change the overall mood of the room. The kids didn't hang off of every word but Danny got the reactions he was looking for as the speech and stories went on. Winces where someone is in pain, laughs when something funny happens, etc. 

"The thing I want to leave you with," Danny said at the end, "is that at the end of the day, sports are meant to be fun. It's meant to be something that you enjoy doing. Being good enough to become a professional is a rare blessing. Play the game for yourself and for your team. You don't always have to win, but you make the winning and the losing worth it by having fun. That's all these stories are."

It ended after about an hour, and the kids went back to class. Danny packed up the gear he brought with him, thinking about the future and remembering what it was like to be a kid and sit in these talks. He wondered if, like he was, the people who had talked to him in his youth wondered about the futures in store for him and his classmates. He wondered about the next 1C/GM of the Scarecrows, and where they might be now. It was a ridiculous thought, but who really knows for sure? Maybe it was one of the kids he just spoke to.