Just so everyone is clear, the J.C. Lipon story did not begin with him staying out late on a backyard rink imagining finishing his checks or scraping his stick across a opponent’s ribs when the referees were looking elsewhere.
After all, there isn’t a kid on the planet whose National Hockey League dream involves playing the... ummm, well, what’s the best way to describe this role, anwyay?
"I guess," said Lipon with a grin Monday morning, just hours before his NHL debut against the Colorado Avalanche, "you’d say it’s pest or rat."
And yet ask around the American Hockey League, where Lipon has spent the last 21/2 years with the St.