There’s an excellent article in today’s Inquirer about Luca Sbisa and how the 18-year-old rookie has adjusted to the last few months as an NHLer. It’s a nice chronicle of how Sbisa has adapted to the United States after playing in Canada, how he’s adjusted to the NHL spotlight, and how his living situation has been.
And that’s where the questions start. From the article:
“He’s still a junior-age kid, and it’s not fair that he live on his own,” general manager Paul Holmgren said.So Holmgren has arranged for Sbisa to live with a local woman, who, over the years, has become the unofficial housemother for some of the younger Flyers.
Former Flyers Maxime Ouellet, Justin Williams and Todd Fedoruk also lived with Allison Staffin. Sbisa will move in with her – she lives about four miles from the team’s practice rink in Voorhees, Camden County – when he finalizes the purchase of a car this week.
“She’s a principal or a vice principal at a high school near here, so she’s used to dealing with kids that age,” Holmgren said.
Staffin sounds like a very nice woman, offering her home to a complete stranger and all. But honestly, I’m 19 years old, and I wouldn’t want to live with the vice principal of my high school, no matter how nice she is.
I understand the need for Sbisa to live with someone at such a young age. It would be stupid to automatically assume a kid with that much money can automatically make it completely on his own. But why can’t he live with, or right near, one of the guys on the team? It seems to me that Sbisa didn’t really get the choice and the the Flyers said “hey, we’re gonna put you in with this old lady.” There are a ton of the younger guys on the team, like Upshall and Hartnell, that live in Center City. I’m sure if Sbisa had the option, he’d be there instead, where the older guys would look after him but he’d still have the freedom he can’t get living with a woman more than twice his age.
