The girls in the family and I took Walter and ten of his classmates to the Rangers game as his 10th birthday party. No greater test of parental love has every been devised than stopping 10 soda-fueled boys from inflicting permanent inner ear damage on one another — not to mention 18200 innocent hockey fans at the Garden. It is truly a miracle of Darwinian selection that so many of these boys outlive their every attempt to blind one another with a flicked bottle cap cross-check one another over the guard rail or generally attempt to maim torture or trip one another. I have new found respect for the incredible policing let alone teaching prowess of the teachers at Walter’s fine boys’ school.

In the event we were all rewarded with an exciting Ranger win over the Devils. Henrik Lundqvist was particularly sharp in goal in the 3-1 game. What I had forgotten in years of only watching hockey at home was (i) how much better it is to watch in person and (ii) how much of a throwback it is to witness the spectacle of hockey fights in our era of organized and highly regulated violence in sport. I will leave it to the sociologists to explain why we do not permit tall black men to fight in the NBA but seemingly encourage stocky white men to do so in the NHL. I just don’t feel it adds to the game in any sport while I nonetheless recognize the passion with which the game is played.

This was very much my week for hockey as earlier in the week I hosted a party at the Thomson Reuters sponsored ice rink at Canary Wharf in London. What I had not counted on was that my hosting duties included actually playing 3-on-3 hockey with clients and colleagues. However one of the fringe benefits of being the ceo is that I was paired with NHL Hall of Famer Luc Robitaille as one of my two teammates. Never in his 19 record-setting seasons did the former LA Kings star ever work harder to score a measly assist. Despite Luc’s every effort to place the puck on my stick in front of the goal I failed to score a single goal in my first appearance on ice in 30 years. Fortunately however across the many games others including Luc and the Canadian High Commissioner did score resulting in $28000 going to Haiti earthquake relief at $500 per goal.