Into What Sort of World Were You Born?

A story to which I'm becoming too familiar: The Wild dig a first-period hole that they failed to work their way out of, but that's not the story.

The opponent tonight was (were?) the Columbus Blue Jackets, who have Sergei Federov on their roster. Federov was +2 with an assist tonight in his 1,000th NHL game, but that's not exactly the story, either.

The real story is that this was the 1,000th game by someone who had to escape the prison-state that was his native country in order to pursue happiness. In 1990, while playing for CSKA Moscow in the Goodwill Games, Federov sneaked out of his Seattle hotel room and onto an airplane bound for Detroit. He had to defect to play in the NHL.

It's easy to get down when you look all over this world, but it wasn't that long ago it was a whole lot worse than it is now for a whole lot of people on this planet.

Freedom for everyone. No exceptions.