Dallas Stars’ Adam Cracknell Is An Inspiration For Us All

Dallas Stars forward Adam Cracknell has been through it all in pro hockey, but he never gave up. Let’s take this as inspiration.

We’ve all been an underdog before. Every one of us has fallen into a seemingly endless abyss looking to find something to hinge onto, and few of us – very few – get lucky and hang on. Underdog stories are as enlightening as they are because we have all envisioned ourselves achieving our goals where we have no business succeeding.

For every hockey player dangling or powering their way to the net for a goal, there are thousands of individuals day-dreaming of a scenario in which they slip on that hockey sweater and replicate such a highlight-reel goal. 18,000 people, a number of them donning jerseys and shirts reading your surname, going berserk.

People like you and I, in case the reader (yeah, you) isn’t an active National Hockey League player, these dreams are merely distractions from accomplishing our real, current tasks. For Dallas Stars forward Adam Cracknell, these thoughts and imaginations are much less measly, insignificant thoughts as they are inspirations for success. The 32-year-old Cracknell, quite frankly, has been on both sides of the dreams and has that chip on his shoulder.

Cracknell can relate to both the NHL goal-scorer and the dreamer, as the Prince Albert native has eaten up healthy scratches over his seven-year career at the pinnacle of North American pro hockey as if they are his favorite meal.

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When the Stars inked Cracknell, a former Kootenay Ice standout, the deal was pushed aside by analysts and experts as American Hockey League leadership at best. Having played just 134 games at the NHL level before coming to the Stars organization, it was easy to think the same: we’ll be seeing a lot of Cracknell in Cedar Park.

Cracknell, it appeared, had other plans. After the Stars saw themselves without forwards Mattias Janmark, Cody Eakin, and others, Cracknell took the ice with the Dallas Stars, scoring a third-period goal and connecting with Antoine Roussel for an assist in the opening night game. It wasn’t the highest point of the season for Cracknell, which for everyone in Victory Green was abysmal, but it was a wonderful start to what turned out to be a beautiful story.

The former ninth-round pick (the ninth round, yes, a Draft round that doesn’t even exist anymore) was asked nothing out of him at the NHL level, but stared adversity right in its shallow face and crushed it. Cracknell had been with five NHL teams, five AHL teams, and two ECHL teams before making an unprecedented splash with the Dallas Stars, never curling up and dying when the going got tough.

Cracknell totaled career highs in goals (10), assists (6), and points (16) over 69 games, another career single-season best. A hat trick in a 6-1 March victory against the San Jose Sharks was an exclamation point on the magnificent season from the 6’3″ righty.

Dallas Stars

Cracknell had garnered multiple goals in just one career game entering 2016-17, and never in a single game tallied three points. But, Cracknell persisted and found himself posing for pictures with three discs of vulcanized rubber in his hand after the game.

In this, I find inspiration, the same inspiration I feel as though everyone close to the story of Adam Cracknell should feel zooming through their minds and hearts. Cracknell is the physical embodiment of what perseverance is: finding yourself in absolutely helpless territory and climbing out from nothing but hard work and a clean, crystal-clear mindset.

To reiterate to the top of the article, we have all been Adam Cracknell before, and many of us in our professional lives or not still are. Cracknell is the kid in the playground who’s selected last and provides little but dead weight in a pick-up dodgeball game, except Cracknell ran up to the line, grabbed the balls, and started annihilating the opposition one-by-one.

I live with clinical depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Many out there, whether you know it or not, suffer through the same. However, thanks to looking at what Adam Cracknell has been able to accomplish when everything thrown at the Canadian was against him, nothing seems too hard.

That’s all we really need on this orbiting mass of water and magnesium: influence and encouragement to look past all that we face and destroy the boundaries that separate us from notoriety and satisfaction.

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I’m not going to play professional sports, unless I suddenly attain superpowers. What I’m going to do, and what I advise everyone else to do, is strive towards greatness each and every day no matter what. It worked for Adam Cracknell.