G! No. 850!

It’s surprising, to me at least, how quickly the pucks pile up. At the beginning of the season, I believed it would take me at least until the 2006-07 campaign to near my goal of 915 pucks. And now, less than three months into this season, I find myself within striking distance.

As the magic number draws near, I find myself becoming much more selective. There’ll be no gimmes here. I want the pucks to mean something. I want a story behind each puck. As I’ve said before, quality takes precedence over quantity.

That’s why I was pretty psyched to get Ken Gernander on the 850th puck of my collection. Granted, Gernander, or "G" as he is called, is not a household name. But, to hockey fans, Gernander is a great story.

A fifth-round (96th overall) draft pick of the Winnipeg Jets in 1987, Gernander played only 27 games, including playoffs, in the National Hockey League. The right winger did, however, notch 624 points in 973 games in the American Hockey League, mostly in the New York Rangers farm system, becoming the AHL’s highest-scoring American-born player.

Gernander, the only team captain in Wolf Pack history, now serves as an assistant coach with the team.

What I like most about Gernander, though, is how he made a career out of hockey. Though it would have been easy to be disillusioned by having no more than a "cup of coffee" in the NHL, here is a guy who played hard, became a leader and, I believe, is a living tribute to perseverance.