The Rookies

In 1994, one of the greatest upsets in sporting history occurred on U.S. soil. It was then that a ragtag group of kids from the Minnesota suburbs joined up with a collection of “talent” from around the country to participate in the Junior Goodwill Games. There they somehow managed to defeat a loaded Iceland team that saw seven (!) players make it to the NHL.

That was fifteen years ago. Unbelievable.

The question remains; what have the USA Ducks been up to since then? A lesser blogger might have just done a quick Google search to see what the team had been doing since they left Eden Hall Academy, but not this man. I crisscrossed the country in hopes of interviewing the whole gang.

The first three installments caught up with Coach Bombay, Averman, Luis Mendoza, Charlie Conway, and The Bash Brothers; this one with Ken Wu, Julie “The Cat” Gaffney, Russ Tyler and Jesse Hall.

Kenny Wu

From a young age Ken Wu found that whenever he observed anyone else performing an activity, be it a triple lutz or the “Stick, Gloves, Shirt” method of fighting, he was able to duplicate it almost immediately. So it’s no surprise that once his hockey career ended he went on to study Neuroscience with a specialty in mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are neurons that fire when an animal acts and when an animal observes an action being performed by another animal. In this sense the neuron “mirrors” the behavior of another animal as though he or she was acting and may play a pivotal role in the ability to imitate.

First found in other primates, it is still uncertain if humans possess such neurons, although Wu has been vocal that it is this type of neuron which allows him to quickly mimic what others do. His groundbreaking research has been instrumental in finding indirect means to establishing the existence and importance of these neurons in the human brain as well as their possible link between a deficiency of mirror neurons and autism.

Julie Gaffney

Unfortunately due to some legal complications I was unable to interview Miss Gaffney. (Who would have thought a restraining order could last this long?). I do know that Julie graduated summa cum laude from Yale University before she attended Yale Law School. Having talked with several of her co-workers I have found that she is a highly efficient and successful worker at her firm, but her seemingly inevitable path to partner is being hindered by a fellow lawyer. Although he is described by others as an “overweight cut-up that isn’t particularly good at his job”, he seems to routinely get all of the firm’s high-profile cases over Julie.

Russ Tyler

American hockey fans were first notified of Russ Tyler and his almost magical “Knuckle Puck” shot when Team USA played Russia in the Junior Goodwill Games, but they weren’t the only ones. Rumors abound that shortly after Russ graduated high school, and was old enough to be tried as an adult, the two largest organizations of physicists, the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft and the American Physical Society brought Tyler in front of the International Criminal Court in The Hague for breaking the laws of physics.

The proceedings were secret, but sources who wish to remain anonymous claim that the three month trial laid out step by step how the knuckle puck could in no way be possible given any understanding of physics, and that it could in fact rip a hole in the space-time continuum causing existence as we know it to cease. Tyler was found guilty and has not been seen by anyone in twelve years.

Jesse Hall

Jesse Hall may be the most tragic figure of any of the Mighty Ducks. Unable to reach Jesse, I contacted his father to see if he knew where I could find the Duck that led the Flying V. Jesse’s father broke down almost immediately. One day in the summer between when the Ducks one the Minnesota State Peewee Championships and when Jesse was invited to join Team USA, his brother Terry disappeared. The police searched for weeks trying to find any evidence of the young Hall, but several promising leads turned into dead ends.

The worst part of the whole situation was that not a single Duck, not Charlie, or Guy, or even Coach Bombay would ever acknowledge the existence of his brother. They acted as though he never had a brother. His father told me that Jesse would try desperately to get even the slightest glimmer of recognition out of his teammates regarding his brother, but none was forthcoming. In high school he turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with his situation and eventually quit the team. Shortly afterwards he took his own life. He was seventeen.