Most Valuable Player

 I was going through some old bins in the attic, and I found this, stating that on one chilly December day I, Mark Woonton, excelled at sports. Yes, it turns out that my golden age of athleticism that was deemed worthy of recognition was twelve years old. Back in 2004, the year that Martha Stewart went from oven roasted turkey to jail bird. Bacon was the #1 food trend according to hobbylark.com and Usher and Ludacris made good use of Lil John's limited vocabulary to create the #1 song of the year. Now, throughout my time of playing sports I have been on teams named after top predatory animals like eagles, sharks or bobcats. I have been a member of teams named for historically aggressive warriors like Vikings, Patriots or Spartans. As you can see, no such names appear here. These are the names of companies that make and sell hockey gear. I have several meetings throughout history I wish I could have sat in on, among them are Lee's surrender at Appomattox, a meeting of the Inklings which was a discussion group at the University of Oxford with members J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and lastly, would be the meeting that took place nearly two decades ago that ended with the affirmation that the best way to get a bunch of Salem, New Hampshire area youth fired up and passionate about the sport of hockey would be to name the teams after hockey equipment manufacturers. I'm sorry, but is this hockey or NASCAR? I understand that participants in both are missing most or all of their teeth, but I'm pretty sure that the similarities end there. I was loyal too. I was representing East side from my neck guard to my skates. I was brand loyal long before Meghan Trainor started singing about it. Two things to close to the folks over at Easton, your boy just gave you some major exposure and your sales are about to go through the roof so how about you hook a brother up with some free gear, huh? And lastly, CCM, I unfortunately had to include you in this picture so just know I put on the full armor of Marian Gaborik. So, just know if you even THINK of sending me your hockey pants of perfidiousness, chest protector of wrongfulness, the skates of sleeping through practice, the shin pads of shame and the stick of the kid who is scared to get hit, all of these items will be burned in a glorious fire in my backyard. I know what you are thinking, "Mark, why is it that your go to tough guy is named Marian? He doesn't sound all that imposing." And to that I say "Hey, at least his middle name isn't Francis." At this point there is a particular member of the Woonton clan who has his feathers ruffled and I know for a fact he's not going to do anything about it, but here is what said individual can do, he can go for a little walk off a short pier and jump into Lake St. Clair which, while not officially one of the Great Lakes itself, it is a small but integral part of the Great Lakes system.