Bourne Blog: The summer I fell out of love with hockey

In the summer of 2008, I was at the make-or-break-it crossroads of my hockey career. I was 25 and coming off a pretty good season between the ECHL and AHL. Problem for me was, 25 going on 26 isn't exactly youthful for an undrafted player trying to claw his way out of the minors, and each year there was going to be more and more young bucks who were drafted and on the rise. It's also likely that many of them would be much, much better than me. I basically had to have one hell of a good summer of workouts, report to camp, wherever that may be (ended up being Hershey), and be better than I'd ever been if I hoped to play in the AHL. Otherwise the option would be to head off to Europe for "the experience," the money, and the chance to delay the inevitable "guess I should get a real job" moment that would be coming shortly after. (Whether you start trying to climb the ranks at another job at 26 or 36, you're still starting from scratch, so the "why...