Two summers ago, I approached Brent Seabrook on the corner of a Hilton Chicago ballroom and, once the crowd of reporters and just me and him had dissipated, I asked a very proud man a very humiliating question. .
You’re a three-time Stanley Cup champion, you’re an Olympian, you’re almost revered by your teammates, but all anyone thinks when they hear your name is “the worst contract in the NHL”. Does this bother you?
I, of course, was in a hurry. Athletic had just put that phrase in a headline in a ranking of the biggest albatrosses in hockey. Seabrook may be a thorny species, so he played a little on fire, but after all these years he had won enough rope with the boy to get something out of it from time to time.
He didn’t bite.