So I sauntered into the Royal Oak on Wellington a few Mondays ago to play a little sports trivia with some friends. We’re kickin’ it old school like Dr. Dre, why yes Mookie Wilson did hit the ball that went through Buckner’s legs, no that’s not just a racist nickname, and one of my buddies who is our server and a Habs fan says "Hey man…. You know Zenon Konopka is sitting up at the bar eh?" So I was like "has he just been hugging his drink in the corner all night and providing no momentum to his trivia teammates?"

We chuckled, kept trivia-ing, but as the game ended my server buddy came back up (he was serving Konopka as well) and said "Hey you're a Sens fan do you wanna meet Konopka?" Zeno isn't my fave Sen by any stretch and I never know what to say to athletes (you gotta straddle the line between "I have a monster sponer (sports boner) for you" and "sorry who are you again?") but I figured sure I'll tell him good luck and that I'm a big fan of the team and carry on my merry way.

So my buddy drags me up to Konopka and says "hey Zenon, my buddy here is a big fan of the Sens and wanted to meet you and to ask you if you were just going to hug your way around the..... next..... game you guys have". First off: totally blew the joke. Second off: this is Zenon Konopka:

So a couple seconds of awkward silence with me with a serial killer awkward grin plastered on my face, and he started chuckling and then started talking about how he'd broken his nose 17 times and had over 800 stitches before and telling stories of stepping on pucks and getting knocked out. What struck me as odd was how much he treated fights like anyone else treats points. "You know you gotta take of yourself and your body if you're gonna hit 30 fights a year! I had 25 last year, but I'd like to get back to 30+ again this year you know!" (insert medium meat-head accent, but not too bad).

Overall, I like Zenon Konopka. He's a nice guy, he likes to talk a lot about fighting.... but I guess that was why I was talking to him in the first place right? at least he's not a dinkus like Emery.

Anyone else got good meeting players stories?