February 28th, 2008 by Ty Pilson
Tonight is big night for four very deserving men.
Sal LoCasio, Johnny Mouradian and Tony Resch will be inducted into the NLL Hall of Fame, while my colleague at The Canadian Press – Neil Stevens – will be honored for all his hard work and column inches of print covering the league over the years.
Personally, I’ve not spoken to Sal or Tony during my time covering the NLL but Johnny has always treated me with great respect and made himself available to talk shop or provide quotes whenever I called.
And while some may feel media folk deserve no honor associated with the Hall, trying to convince editors that the NLL deserves main-stream coverage and fighting for it, as Neil did, is often tougher than dropping the mitts with Geoff Snider or trying to go one-on-one with Brodie Merrill.
Tonight marks the third year of Hall-of-Fame festivities for the league. So, time for a quick history lesson. Skip ahead if you already know all this.
In 2006, the inaugural and likely greatest-ever-when-all-is-said-and-done class was inducted. Gary and Paul Gait were joined by Russ Cline, Chris Fritz and the late Les Bartley as the league finally formed a shrine to honor the greatest players, coaches, builders and, to a lesser extent of course, media who helped shape the league and make it what it is today.
Last year, Darris Kilgour, Tom Marechek and Mike French joined the list along with another scribe, Tom Borelli of the Buffalo News. READ MORE »