Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/774246
lmost weekly, somebody asks me, "How did somebody who grew up in Florida become a hockey writer in Minnesota?" As with most everything I say and write, it's a looong story. But if you can somehow make it to the bottom, and you're a kid who maybe someday wants to write and talk about sports for a living, hopefully I can offer some good advice. Dynasty Island Even though I call South Florida home, I was born in New York and even- tually moved to Plainview-Old Bethpage on Long Island. That meant, even though I was very young, I was around during the Islanders' dynasty, and it made quite the impact. I used to go to nursery school and day camp at Camp Green Hill in Woodbury, N.Y. There was this community through the woods behind the camp, and many of the Islanders lived there, from Bryan Trottier and Denis Potvin to Bobby Nystrom to Clark Gillies. My friends and I—and we're talking around ages 4, 5, 6, 7, 8—used to sneak out of camp just to watch those Islanders come home from practice. I still remember pretending I was Duane Sutter (my favorite player) or Mike Bossy during street hockey games in front of my house or holding a flashlight in front of my mouth and fake-announcing an Islanders game like Isles broadcaster, Jiggs McDonald. FEBRUARY.2017 // MINNESOTAHOCKEYJOURNAL.COM 27 By MICHAEL RUSSO How the man they call Russo made a career covering hockey I really wanted to be a play-by-play guy as a kid. But I used to do this paper route after school. I'd load the papers in my grocery cart, turn on my Walkman (Google what that is) and read every single article on the Islanders while delivering Newsdays. Maybe deep down, that's what first put the hockey-writing bug in my veins. Finding a Passion At 12 years old, I moved to Boca Raton, Fla. In high school, I really got into mass media. I knew I wanted to have a future in TV or radio, and in fact, my senior year at Spanish River High School, they actually had to add a Mass Media 4 class so I could keep taking it. At 15, I used to do the public address announcing, work the scoreboard and keep the stats for all the football and basketball games. I befriended the local sports writers assigned to cover the games, and they loved me because when you're assigned to cover high schools, there are no media relations people to help. So I would arrange interviews for them and give them all the stats. I got jobs working at the Boca News and the major newspaper in the area, the Sun-Sentinel. I still remember my stepfather having to drive with me to games because I was so young, I wasn't allowed to drive at night without an adult. He'd come back with me to the newspaper and wait in the lobby reading a book while I wrote my articles. There's no chance I would have made it without the support of my mom and stepdad because starting at age 16, I basically worked full-time at the Sun-Sentinel. Carving a Career Unfortunately, the Florida Panthers didn't exist when I first moved to Florida, but we got an expansion team in 1993. I think deep down, I knew I wanted to eventually be the beat writer because without being assigned, I'd attend every West Palm Beach Blaze home game I could from 1993-95. In the four-team Sunshine Hockey League (there were also teams in Daytona Beach, Jacksonville and Lakeland), it was as minor league as minor league could get, and I'd write game stories, send them into the paper and most of the time it would be chopped to two paragraphs. But former Montreal Canadiens and Minnesota North Stars defenseman Bill Nyrop, who coincidentally was from Edina, was the commissioner of the league and owner, coach and GM of the West Palm Beach franchise. I never asked—sadly, he passed away way too young at the age of 43 of cancer—but I think he respected how much I kept coming to games even though my paper had little interest. I think he recognized my pas- sion for the sport, how much I wanted to be a sports writer and my desire to learn hockey. A