What's In A Name?

Here's a cute hockey anecdote from a friend of ours, Gina aka MrsDP from Islander Mania. Many thanks to her for sharing the humor!

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My best friend and season ticket holder partner, Theresa, has a brother that lives in Arkansas. Her 6 year old nephew, Davey, visits up in New York for a few weeks every year around Christmas and New Year's Eve. We thought it would be fun to take him to an Islanders game, since they don't have much hockey in Arkansas. I doubt he had even seen it on TV.

When we got to the arena, I told him that I was going to buy him an Islanders shirt so I could send him back home representing the Islanders. I brought him to the merchandise stand and told him to pick a number. He picked #81 (at the time Miro Satan). I was wary of his choice because the part of Arkansas that he lived in was in the Bible Belt down south. They were God-fearing Christians and I didn't think it would go over well with his mother. I tried to convince him to pick another number by saying "Don't you like 14? or maybe 39?" But his mind was set on 81. He had an absolute blast at the game cheering every time Satan was on the ice, yelling, "There he is! There's my guy! 81!"

Satan wound up scoring the game-winning goal, and Davey was positively thrilled. He ran through the parking lot screaming "Let's Go New York Islanders!" while we were going back to the car. He came home telling his grandma how much fun he had, and I made sure to explain to her that Satan was Czech and did not mean satan but was pronounced SHAH TAN.

A few months later while I was at Theresa's house, her mother told me that Davey had gotten sent home from school for wearing his Islanders shirt. The teacher called up his mom and said she would not allow him wearing anything that said Satan in her classroom. His mom tried explaining to her how it was really pronounced, and that he was a professional hockey player and he had gotten the shirt at a game when he visited New York, but she was simply not having it. She made his mom come pick him up and she had to promise he would never wear it to school again. Davey was so mad. This was his Islanders shirt that he got at a real hockey game that he loved to wear.