Pete Rozelle, the patron saint commissioner of the National Football League, always regretted not interrupting the 1963 season to mourn John F. Kennedy.
Former Philadelphia Flyers coach Bill Barber went back behind the bench a few hours after his wife of 28 years, Jenny, died of cancer.
People go on -- after Sept. 11, after the deaths of athletes Darryl Kile and Korey Stringer and Steve Bechler, and yes, they will after Ottawa Senators assistant coach Roger Neilson dies.
But people also see the wheel spinning. And they notice.
"My grandmother passed away a while ago," Sens captain Daniel Alfredsson said yesterday. "My father became a grandfather two weeks after. That's life. That's the way it goes on."
There is a striking ascendancy going on inside the Senators, a young and gifted club that sheds a new skin every night of the NHL Eastern Conference final against the New Jersey Devils.
It involves Jason Spezza, the 19-year-old inserted into the lineup Monday to spark a moribund offence. Spezza scored once, collected an assist and suddenly the Senators have a life.
And it involves Neilson, the 68-year-old Hall of Fame coach who sat before Spezza and his teammates Monday afternoon.
Neilson has three forms of cancer. His chemotherapy treatments have left him frightfully thin. His voice is from far away. He isn't strong enough to watch the game from the press box. He's dying, nobly, wonderfully, magically. And he's living, nobly, wonderfully, magically.
Neilson told the Senators he had been in the game nearly three decades and had been to the Stanley Cup final exactly once. His name has never graced the Cup. Enjoy these playoffs, he said, for you don't know if or when this time will come again.
And then he shuffled back home, a rock, barely moving in a stream of bustle and health and excitement.
It would be crass to say the Senators won Game 5 for Roger Neilson. But it would not be altogether untrue.
"You can tell he's not doing that good," Spezza said. "He's trying to be upbeat. His memory isn't all there. For him to spend that time with us, you get chills and goosebumps all at the same time."
Spezza had worked with Neilson at two summer camps. Everyone has worked with Roger Neilson. His friends are in the thousands. When the august men around the Hall of Fame selection committee counted their votes and announced Neilson as their newest honoured member in 2002, the meeting room rocked with their own spontaneous applause.
It would be more apt to say the Senators won because of Spezza, a new star added to a cast that had been ground to a standstill by the Devils.
The energy, the stuff GM John Muckler and coach Jacques Martin were searching for, came from this wonderful combination, the influence of a new, vital talent, and a beloved fading one.
"You sense you needed some spark," Muckler said of the decision to bring Spezza into the lineup. "You needed someone who could create some enthusiasm."
At 19, Spezza says what often goes unsaid. It sounds corny but it is true.
"You want to win for yourself and your team but you also want to win for him (Neilson) and for all he has done for the game," he said.
The Stanley Cup, the most magnificent trophy in team sports, is in its own way a memorial. Pounded one-sixteenth of an inch into the tin rings are the names of people who burned the brightest until time weighed in.
Maurice Richard, Jacques Plante, Bill Barilko . . . these names adorn the surface of this beautiful silver crypt.
"Like all of us, Roger would be delighted if he got his name on the Stanley Cup," Muckler said. "Every time you get the opportunity, you look at it like it might be your last one. That's why it's so special."
Amen.
