OK Bruins and Leafs fans, you are going to have to tone down the PK hating….a lot. Did you see what he did this week? Subban is donating $10mm (yes that’s right $10 million, with an “m”) dollars to the Montreal Children’s Hospital. This is around 15% of the salary he will earn over the remaining seven years of his $72mm contract. It is the largest philanthropic gift from any Canadian athlete…ever. In return, the hospital is going to name its atrium after him in honor of the mega-generous pledge.

This is not exactly his debut with charity work

Is this why Habs fans after the lockout did this?

They know their hockey up there and what Subban is doing obviously advances his already immense local popularity. The Canadiens will hopefully name him the Captain (instead of having four alternates).

The Subban gesture on a grand scale reminded us of what Chris Nilan (a hockeyfreeforall.com favorite) did a generation ago (OMG, its been that long?) with hospitals in the greater Montreal area. His work was actually partially documented in a film about his life called the Last Gladiators (I saw it at the premier during the Toronto International Film Festival on its release). Nilan spoke after the showing and elaborated on his charity work. It was moving to say the least. Say what you want about “Knuckles” (and PK, and Ryan Miller and Messier and the Scrivens’ and….etc etc etc) but I am convinced that these type of guys outreach to the community because they really are upstanding pillars of society and are converting their God given talents to a serve a higher purpose (and a tax break doesn’t hurt either, right cynics?). Sure some hockey players do dumb things, but one of the hidden values of the NHL (at least to this observer) is that players by and large tend to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

All I know is that my fantasy team name this year could be PK76 > PK81 for so many reasons. Oh, and that Subban T-shirt I bought my kid a couple years ago (true story), I am only sorry I didn’t buy two.