It's Not So Much Me...

…As it’s Roenick. While I was at 8 Rinks, a huge building in nearby Burnaby that contains (you, guessed it) eight hockey rinks, including the practice rink of the Vancouver Canuck, I chatted with Jeremy Roenick about doing a mo-cap session with players that were babies when he was drafted some 20 years ago. “I feel like a father figure,” he said. “I think could actually be there fathers.” The first thing I think of when I see Roenick working on a video game is that scene in Swingers when Vince Vaugn is playing NHL ’94 and he says, “It’s not so much as it’s Roenick,” as he’s destroying the “finesse” Kings with Wayne Gretzky. “My abilities in Sega Genesis were all time,” he said. “I became friends with Vince Vaugn a few years later and he told me that he grew up in Chicago and he had to put me in the movie in someway just out of respect so I thought that was cool.” While there may not have been any fighting in that game, there will clearly be fighting in NHL ’09 as Roenick and Dion Phaneuf playfully went at it in a mock fight that the developers captured digitally.