Gainey's daughter missing

Holy crap! :'(

I remember Laura as a little kid when Bob Gainey was coaching the North Stars.

Daughter Of Hall Of Famer Swept Off Ship Near Cape

 

Rosie,

I put this in the Hockey Thread II, but I suppose it should be a separate thread. Sad situation for sure.

 

As a separate post for Rosie -- at least the Vikings can still be counted on to beat the Lions. can't believe the Vikes were underdogs going in, but I suppose Brad Johnson makes even the oddsmakers uneasy.

 

This is a more complete story....

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=2693085

It is a sad situation -- Bob Gainey lost his wife, Cathy, in 1995 at the age of 39 to brain cancer, leaving him with four kids to raise. Lots of prayers for him and his family right now.

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Claws, as for the Vikes, I'm just watching (okay, sorta watching) the games. I don't expect much with three games left in the season. But to have the Vikes as underdogs against the Lions just didn't make sense as the Vikings have had the Lions' number for years.

 

As a lifelong fan of les Habitants, I'm immensely saddened by this.
What a terrible series of events.

 

Roy MacGregor's column today. Gainey is a class act. Famed Soviet coach Viktor Tikhonov called him the best hockey player in the world. Awful stuff.
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'Life," a former coach of the Philadelphia Flyers once scribbled on the dressing room notice board, "is just a place where we spend time between games."

Try telling that to Bob Gainey after this past weekend.

On Saturday, word came that a young Canadian woman had been swept off a tall ship sailing from Nova Scotia to Grenada. A violent Friday evening storm had struck the Picton Castle somewhere off Cape Cod, a rogue wave cuffing the crew member off the deck and into the churning Atlantic.

Sunday, more word: The woman was identified as Laura Gainey, 25, middle daughter of the former player who is now general manager of the Montreal Canadiens.

She had no life jacket. The Gulf Stream water in the area is warm this time of year, but even a strong swimmer would be losing to hypothermia after 1½ days in the water -- and 1½ days and more had passed by Sunday morning.

The good news was that the United States Coast Guard continued to look; the Gainey family of Montreal continued to hope.

It is moments like this that the easy, inspirational words of sport take on new and often unfortunate meaning. Life is just a place between games, the late Fred Shero wrote in that Philadelphia dressing room; hockey, on the other hand, is "where we live, where we can best meet and overcome pain and wrong and death."

Such sentiment is common in sport. The legendary soccer coach, Scotland's Bill Shankly, said he was profoundly disappointed with those who believed any game to be a matter of life and death -- "I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

"There's no tomorrow," they say in hockey; there has to be, say the Gaineys and their circle of friends.

Sport may not always say the right thing, but it often does the right thing, and as of this weekend that surprisingly small family that is the national game will be gathering around Bob Gainey and his family to offer something far beyond mere words.

They did it before; they will do it again.

Eleven years ago, Cathy Gainey died at 39 of a brain tumour. She was as friendly and vivacious a woman as can be imagined, the 15th of 19 children, while Bob was the fifth of seven children. They met when he was the painfully shy star of the local Ontario junior team and she was a 17-year-old usher. They soon married and had four healthy children.

Life seemed perfect until the day five-year-old Colleen found her mother passed out on the bathroom floor and had the presence of mind to call her father on the telephone. Cathy held on through five years of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, but she could not hang on forever against her rogue wave.

The Gaineys were living in Dallas at the time, Bob working as general manager of the Stars and the two older children, Anna and Steve, somewhat buffered from the turmoil by being off at boarding school in Canada.

Colleen battled depression. Laura, the middle daughter, turned to drugs in her very rebellious teen years. Both girls ended up in rehabilitation clinics, both eventually recovered fine. Laura began speaking out against drugs and signed on with the tall ships, where she quickly became a highly respected crew member of the Picton Castle.

A quiet man not given to public display, Gainey finally told his story, with his daughters' blessings, to The Dallas Morning News and the Montreal Gazette. He even suggested to his old friend, Gazette sportswriter Red Fisher, that perhaps, if only he'd been around more, none of this would have happened. Perhaps, but some storms are impossible to predict.

Bob Gainey is a beloved figure in Montreal, where he once served as team captain and won five Stanley Cups.

He had one of hockey's most admirable work ethics on the ice, and was much the same off. City workers thought the captain of the Montreal Canadiens shouldn't have to shovel his drive, but he insisted they leave the snow for him. He liked shovelling. He insisted on living close enough that he could walk to work, just as his father, George, had walked to the Quaker Oats factory in Peterborough for more than 40 years.

He came to Montreal with only a high school education, but taught himself French because he felt an obligation to speak to the press in both languages.

His integrity is so renowned that at one point, when the Dallas Stars were stumbling in the standings, general manager Bob Gainey took a hard look at what was wrong with the team and decided to fire himself.

He played hurt, they say, which is as high a compliment as the game has.

He no longer plays, but he hurts.

And it is hardly necessary to be a hockey fan these days to stand up in recognition of that.

 

Thanks for sharing that, JR. :'(

 

Likewise, here's Red Fisher's column in the Gazette ...

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=2b76f9c9-7963-4d05-99ca-41b69835a685&k=90891

 

Guy I work with is on that boat right now.

 

Sirs, Madames,

Years back in Dallas I over-extended during an afternoon work-out (it was hot out and I did an eight-mile run or something, then lifted), took a steam bath, and rushed to the rink without eating. Yup, right in the middle of an interview with Bob Gainey, I collapsed, blacked out, out cold, at his feet. I came to about five minutes later and he had my head in his hands and had called the team doctor. A lot of guys would have just called a janitor (or pr guy) and had me removed. (Thankfully, no mouth to mouth.)

He's an absolutely class guy. He has a wonderful sense of humour--Newhart-like, he never actually laughs. But as he said to one of his former employees a few years back: "They only give you what you can stand--but I don't know how much more I can stand."

Laura had some drug issues in the past but seemed to be through them. This couldn't happen to a less-deserving guy.

YHS, etc

 

That was a very powerful column.

 

Coast Guard has suspended the search. According to the Coasties' spokesman, after 70 hours in the water her chances of survival start dropping rapidly and "The reasonable time for survivability has already been expended.

http://tinyurl.com/yc82r6