Another link departs

 They're all stepping off the mortal coil now, because time is remorseless, surprise, surprise.   Lenny and Stubby and big Cal Purinton, all gone in the last year. And now George Drysdale, the man who saw it all.

 He died Sunday at 95, a full measure of years, on the day before the Fort Wayne Komets opened training camp for their 71st season. This was altogether neat, because George had been around for all 70 of the previous ones. He played on the first Komets team and scored the first goal in franchise history, and then he stuck around and became something even more valuable.

He became our link to an origin story that had become old-timey and sepia-toned, as rascally time did its thing. It was a team photo looking out at you from a dead time until George, by his very presence, gave it life and color and context. He was the living, breathing conduit between the then and the now, the guy who could tell you what it was like back at the beginning.

As such, he was also a hell of an ambassador for Komet hockey, as it added weight and narrative and permanence.

For years and years it was George who greeted you when walked into the pressbox on game night, an incorrigibly sunny soul and constant reminder that what you were there to cover was an institution that demanded your respect. It's easy to take that for granted sometimes, after 71 years. You come to think of Komet hockey as something that's always been there and always will be, because (except for one brief month 30-some years ago) it always has been. 

Well, it hasn't been, and George was your reminder of that. He'd been in Fort Wayne as long as the Komets had, but before he came here he was just a kid from Toronto playing for the Chatham (Ont.) Maroons of the IHL, where he'd been an all-star. In Fort Wayne that first season, he wore the captain's C, and, on Oct. 28, 1952, he scored that first goal in a loss to Grand Rapids.

Seventy years to the day from then, the 71st edition of the Fort Wayne Komets will play the Savannah Ghost Pirates in the same Allen County War Memorial Coliseum where George Drysdale, the kid from Toronto, skated all those years ago. Would have been nice to hear him reminisce about that anniversary, to repeat the story for the umpteenth time. 

But umpteen-and-one will never happen now, sadly. And when it doesn't, we'll look around, and feel the loss, and it will be our loss, too.