REGINA PATS - JORDAN EBERLE - THE FUN OF BEING A HERO

Parts taken from Pats CKRM Broadcaster Rod Pedersen's blog.

Friday, February 12th. -

Friday Rodservations

However it came very apparent the other night in Brandon what life is like for Jordan Eberle. A guy emailed me the day before the game saying he'd be at the game and asked if I could introduce him to Jordan and get an autograph and a picture. I told him to meet us outside the dressing room after the game, but I couldn't guarantee why type of mood the team would be in.

After the postgame show I sauntered down to the dressing room where a group of fans were waiting. Jordan was finishing up ANOTHER newspaper interview, a television interview, and then he came around. "JORDAN!", "EBS!" they yelled. He put a smile on and pivoted toward them to make sure they were all obliged.

We walked up the ramp to the bus and when we walked around there was ANOTHER group of people waiting for him. "JORDAN!", "MR. EBERLE!" they shouted and he went over to the greet them. Young men, young women, kids all getting photos for their Facebook profiles.

I've seen this type of hysteria for the Riders but truthfully, I've never seen it for one individual player. And this is just on game day. Charities want him to be their spokesperson, people want endless quantities of souvenirs autographed for fundraisers, they want this, they want that.

Near as I can tell he's accomodated just about all of them. I suppose that comes with being a "Canadian Hockey Hero" as he's been labelled by the national media. At the very least, I suppose he's paid handsomely for it by the Oilers.

There's no doubt in my mind that he'll be a very productive NHL player.