Komisarek an unlikely All-Star starter
Rugged blue-liner gets rewarded
NEW YORK — As much as Roman Komisarek loves to watch his son play hockey, and he once traveled from Long Island to Russia to see a junior tournament, he just could not make it to Newark last Friday. That night was the deadline for All-Star Game voting, and he just had to be at his computer, clicking the mouse.
It turns out that Mike Komisarek received 1,373,628 votes and was named a starting defenseman.
“My dad kept on letting me know the results,” the Montreal Canadiens’ defenseman said, “and I think he was good for at least half of those votes.”
Not quite. Komisarek was swept in by an avalanche of fan support in Montreal, where the All-Star Game will be held Jan. 25. You could say other defensemen were more deserving, especially because he missed 16 games this season after he injured his shoulder in a fight with the Boston Bruins’ Milan Lucic on Nov. 13. This peanut stand says it was great that a non-scorer, non-stickhandler defenseman finally got a chance to skate with the glamour guys.
“You don’t see my type of player in the All-Star Game,” Komisarek said.
What anybody with a brain and a heart would have to say is that this is just the sort of thing that Roman Komisarek dreamed would happen when he left his young wife behind in Poland and came to Brooklyn with nothing more than the shirt on his back.
The elder Komisarek had hoped for something great, even if he couldn’t envision the details: Working hard enough to bring his wife, Kathy, over, opening the Smithnest Collision auto repair business on Long Island, raising a son and daughter and clicking away for his son on the computer.
“I have two of them here in the office, I was going back and forth,” Roman said.
Who could have dreamed he’d have two computers, let alone an All-Star son who led all NHL defensemen in hits last season? “It’s awesome,” the father said.
Roman loves hockey, a game he reportedly played as a boy.
“My dad always tells stories of breaking off branches that looked like hockey sticks and playing with the branches, but I think it’s pretty far-fetched,” the 6-foot-5, 243-pound, 26-year-old defenseman said. “I’ve seen him skate.”
No matter. Mike saw how much both of his parents worked and sacrificed. He knows that those 1,373,628 votes are a resounding endorsement of them.
Mike thinks about flying round trip from Montreal every Sunday in late 2005 just to spend a few hours with his mom as she was dying from pancreatic cancer at age 51. He thinks of how his cousin placed by her grave a laminated ticket from the game in which Mike scored his first goal.
“I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for her and the sacrifices she made,” Mike said. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my mom.”
He thinks about how much she would have loved to hear the ovation in Montreal when he is introduced Jan. 25.
“She’s still watching him,” Roman said. “She’s still proud of him.”
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