This was Kirk McLean's 2nd wife. She references his stints in Florida and NY, which was in 1998-2000. Jeff Brown was shipped out in 1995, and supposedly had the affair with Kirk's first wife Lesley.
Jane's last paragraph takes some heat off the rumours in which she actually had no part in. I guess she wants people to stop asking her about it, but it would mislead the reader at first, unless they were able to put the timetable together.
Also, does Kirk have any kids? Specifically, does he have any kids with Jane? How long were they married? It says "briefly" on wikipedia.
Some things don't really add up in her article. I'm wondering if she's blurring her experience with others that she's heard about, and using it to add to her point.
She talks about doctors and school for the kids. While that is true for players that have kids, I'm just curious if she had kids at the time. I assume Kirk and Lesley divorced in 1995. In 1998, Kirk was traded to Carolina (Jan. 3) and then Florida (Mar. 24). Then signed as a free agent in NY in July 1999.
If she didn't have any kids at the time, what "schools and doctors" are you looking for? If they did have a kid, at the time, the child would be 2 at most, unless Kirk knocked her up in 1995 (and that would be a different reason for his 1st divorce)
Plus in 1998, the internet was widely being used, and people had emails. The world had started to become a smaller place. Signing up to chat with friends on in ICQ, etc. was pretty popular. She makes it seem like she was out in Siberia or something. Not sure what her background is (not signed up to Linkedin), but as a writer, she would have some time to work on her writing (when Kirk was on road trips). Sure it can get lonely, but people find stuff to do. It wasn't like he was on a 6m tour in Afghanistan. Take a course, join a gym, go shopping, find some hobbies, meet your neighbours, etc. There's lots of ways to meet people and make friends if you really want to. It's not that hard.
She never references a move to Carolina, so she may have just travelled with the team, or maybe just stayed in Vancouver. Dunno.
Also, if it was hard to keep track of the phone number thing, do what everyone else does: write it down. We all experienced it. New cell phone/land line, new number. Sounds a bit whiny when she complains about all the mobile phones she had to keep track of.
She also contradicts herself a bit. She writes, 'I’d presumed that life would have continued as the courtship had: a predictable program of practices, games and road trips with the team for which he’d become a marquee player. I was wrong.'
Then she writes, 'Your hockey-playing husband headed off into the routine he’d been immersed in since peewee hockey.' So what changed??
Plus I don't know how true this statement is either: Most team rosters are populated with personnel the player has been acquainted with since he was 13 so anywhere he goes is sort of “old home” week.
It was the moving that "almost killed" her. I think a lot of the other stuff just added to it, but were pretty minor. Maybe I just lack empathy, but all I feel after reading the article is to tell her that she should have sucked it up. A lot of people travel and move for work, and sometime just out of necessity/circumstances (i.e. renters). There are worse life situations, and usually it doesn't come with a quarter million bi-weekly pay cheques (more like $175k, which Kirk never got in NY where he only made $950k/$975k), which she infers that she still took full advantage of.
I don't put a lot of weight in this article at all. I think it's a bit of creative writing just to prove her point, and some of these experiences are not her own. She also got the bad part of the business with Kirk's career. She didn't get the 10 years of stability before.
This all took place in 11 months from 1998-99. Kirk was playing in Florida in the last year of his contract, then got signed as a UFA to the NYR. Jane says they were renting in Florida, then bought a house, and then when he didn't get an extension, they planned to settle back to Vancouver, where they bought a house to renovate, then Kirk got an offer to play in NY for 2 years, and then bought a house. Those are the 4 "moves" Jane is referencing.
Besides, Kirk retired and moved back to Vancouver. Guess she couldn't stick beside him for 3 years.
