Even the boys know to #KeepNugeForever

I’ll be the first to admit that this job is pretty cool. Truth be told, I feel grateful all the time that I get to hang out at Nation HQ with the boys and talk hockey with all of you guys every day. The gig can be weird, different, time consuming, stressful and everything in between but, at the same time, it keeps all of our lives interesting. As far as hockey goes, though, we always feel like we’ve seen it all based on the Infinibuild we’re living through and the general oddness we’ve endured, so it’s not very often that something so amazing happens that it gets absolutely everyone in the office to stop dead in their tracks, but that’s exactly what happened today.

Yesterday, on the Real Life Podcast, we were talking about how a close friend of the Nation reached out to see if he could get his hands on a few Nation Gear shirts, specifically the Keep Nuge Forever tees that I hold so near and dear to my heart. When asked why he said he was going to try and do us a solid and get some of our shirts into the boys’ hands in time for RNH’s wedding. Obviously, we said yes and sorted out the order as requested, but we never would have expected in a million years that the boys would actually wear them. I guess we were doing what we could to temper expectations, ya know? At best, we thought we might see someone holding one up or something and that would be cool in itself, but we never would have expected what actually happened.

Then, this afternoon, a tweet came in:

Holy shit.

After checking my vitals to make sure I hadn’t died, I collected my thoughts, picked myself up off the floor, and took another 35 studying looks at the photo. Unbelievably, I found myself staring at six gentlemen decked out in the Nation’s finest couture, locked in a pose that will be hung up on the Nation Wall of Fame for all of eternity. I was shocked. Honestly. I mean, really take a minute to look at the picture. Not only do we have old friends and current friends coming together to celebrate the marriage of the man that’s seen more hell and hardship than anyone in franchise history, but they’re all wearing a shirt that I specifically remember workshopping with the boys at HQ. That’s wild. If that doesn’t get the blood pumping on a Wednesday afternoon then I don’t know what will. Seeing that we got to be a small part of Nuge’s big day is a pretty dope feeling that’s hard to describe, so I guess all I can say is congratulations and that all six of you look great.

It’s a hell of a community we’re building here, Nation.