Man, this really sucks to hear. He was such a character and you couldn't help but want to be friends with him. I feel like I need to add my own Jeff story to help show how awesome he was.
I started a team at AHC, and Jeff was one of the first to join up. The first season we played together, we had so much fun. It was clear Jeff was way better than any of us on the team, but he didn't give a shit and didn't bail on us. After a season or two, we all got a lot better and ended up in the championship game. The timing was terrible, as we all thought we'd never make it that far and half the team went on vacation.
We had 4 skaters and a goalie, playing ironman roller hockey against a bunch of young kids who could skate circles around us. We sucked it up and played our asses off to a 2-2 tie with 5 minutes left in the game. We line up for a face off and I hear Jeff (who's playing defense) say, "f*** this". When the puck drops he books it to the offensive zone and spends the rest of the game on the far side of the red line with the rest of us yelling at him to get his ass back to the defensive zone. I'm sure he heard us, but you wouldn't know it by his reaction.
So now it's basically 4 on 3 in our defensive zone and we're dead tired. Somehow the puck ends up behind our net and a couple of players get tangled up with our other defenseman. The puck pops out of the tangle and we fling if off the boards. I think with the pile up, the other team must have totally forgotten about Jeff who grabbled the puck coming up the wall, skated in all alone, and scored what ended up being the championship clinching goal.
And Jeff being Jeff, he skated right to the faceoff dot as if nothing special had just happened.
I'm saddened to hear he's gone, but it's unbelievably awesome to hear all of the other crazy stories and how much everyone else cared for him. He was definitely one of a kind.
