Montreal Canadiens’ Max Pacioretty looks for an open pass as Columbus Blue Jackets’ Jordan Leopold defends during the third period of an NHL hockey game in Columbus, Ohio. I’m sorry I can’t find a picture of him where he’s actually, you know, looking at the camera. My bad. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)
A good thing to remember around the trade deadline (and really, all the time, guys) is that players are people, too. They have spouses and kids, significant others and friends.
So … you know … that means that when athletes get moved, it affects their spouses and kids, significant others and friends.
Take, for example, Jordan Leopold, whose 11-year-old daughter wrote a letter asking that her dad be traded to Minnesota, where his wife and children live.
That seems like a real bummer, but — don’t worry! — because on Monday’s NHL trade deadline, Columbus sent Leopold to the Wild. Yeah! It happened!
[Forward Curtis Glencross gets acclimated with Capitals in first practice ]
Here’s the letter from Leopold’s daughter, which was obtained by KFAN:
[Hillen out, Gleason in for Caps ]
For additional confirmation-slash-comment, let’s go to Jarmo Kekalainen, the Blue Jackets GM:
“The deal was done already when we saw it, almost simultaneously I guess, but that’s a touching letter,” Kekalainen said in a piece posted on the team’s website. “He’s a great pro. We wanted to do the right thing with Jordan Leopold. That’s what we had talked about the whole time, we knew that his family was in Minnesota. There is a human side, believe it or not, to our business.”
Leopold’s wife also appeared on KFAN on Monday:
“I didn’t even know she wrote it,” she said in the radio interview, which is posted below. “And she left it on the counter when she went to school one day, and I read it and I just started bawling.”
She later noted: “it’s been a long couple months, but we’re really excited.”
Sarah Larimer is a general assignment reporter for the Washington Post.
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