mediachameleon

Washington Capitals right wing Mike Knuble will play his 900^th NHL game tonight in Calgary.  Last season, in late November 2009, while he was out with a broken finger, Knuble spoke about the games he was missing:

Knuble:  “I told (head coach) Bruce, like, I take a lot of pride in playing a lot of games. I don’t like being… I haven’t been injured that much and if I do get injured it’s because something is broken up, not because of these little day to day things. So that was my goal was to play 82 games — and now it’s going to be 72,  so…  because I am trying to get to 1000 games to for my career.”

MC:  “Where are you now”?

Knuble:  “840 or so.  So that is my goal… to stay healthy enough to get to 1000 games.  So it can’t be done this season or next season but the season after, so…”

MC:  “What will you do when you get to 1000?”

Knuble: “I don’t know.  Probably shoot for 1100!  (laugh)  Just keep climbing, you know? …  I was just thrilled to be in the league and I think when you get into the league 400 is kind of like a big number – kind of like a magic number…  So you hit 400 and then you keep going.  At 600 and 10 years pro you get your own room on the road, you know, so you want to hit 600 so you can get your own room!  But then after 600 you are shooting for probably 1000…  we’ll see how it goes, maybe get to 1000 so…”

In May 2010, after his team’s exit from the playoffs, Knuble sat down to reflect on the season past, the season coming up… and the status of his career game total.

Knuble:  “I can’t reach it next year.  I’m short so I gotta go one more year. If I convince George to let me stay one more year…!” 

MC:   “You told us before that after you hit 1000, you want 1100!”

Knuble: (laugh) “I don’t know, but I’m dumb enough to try and do that, so…  And then it becomes a game to see how many you can get in!  But you know that’s my next immediate goal, individually, is to earn a contract for the next season and stay healthy enough to play 1000 games.  I think that would be – um – really unique. I value that – I think that’s a mark of an excellent NHL career and I don’t really look at goals and stats and stuff like that but if you have the games played they’ll come around too…. Like I said, it was a slow start (to my career) so I’ve achieved a lot in the last little bit and I’ve gotten a lot more games in at a quicker rate, you know, the last little bit.  You hate to miss games being injured or sick or anything like that cause you just want to get to that total and keep getting those games in, so… it won’t be next year but it’ll be the year after, so…  That’s my motivation.  That’s really a big motivating factor for me right now.” (laugh)

We’ve just posted “Hockey Diaries: The Almost Season” to our listening site at www.mediachameleon.org.  Length is 59-minutes, and you can listen to it online or download it as an mp3, whatever works for you.  We’ve also added a bunch of audio clips for each player – six each from Mike Knuble and Tyler Sloan, the two main storytellers in the piece.  (Just too many stories, moments and memories to fit into the documentary itself!) 

If you have any questions or suggestions for Hockey Diaries, post them here on our blog, or just DM us on twitter (@mediachameleon) and we’ll get back to you.  Thanks for listening.

Thanks to everyone who listened last night, and to the audience members who came to the listening session at the XM Sirius studios in DC.  It was great for us to be able to listen with you, and we learned a lot from all your comments and questions.  If you didn’t catch it, we’ll post the full hour-long documentary as an mp3 on our listening site www.mediachameleon.org by the end of this weekend. 

But first, this morning, it’s back to the recording gear.  We’re starting work today on the next season of Hockey Diaries, and we can’t wait to get started.  Follow our progress here…