Dan Snyder narrowly escaped being cut from his junior hockey team for two years in a row. That's hardly the stuff that NHL careers are made of. But Snyder earned his spot on the NHL's Atlanta Thrashers roster through sheer force of will and strength of character, even though scouts thought the odds were against him. Those who knew Snyder describe him as the kind of person others naturally gravitated towards. One of those people was Dany Heatley, college star, All-Star, and marked one of the NHL's next great players. On September 29, 2003, while driving down a treacherous Atlanta road with Snyder, Heatley lost control of his car. Snyder was injured, and died in hospital six days later. The lives of his family, friends, and teammates changed forever, as they searched for meaning and healing. Meanwhile, authorities in Atlanta charged Heatley with vehicular homicide. Snyder's family, however, took a path of forgiveness and reconciliation-a path that is ingrained in the Mennonite tradition from which they hail. While some might lash out against an easy target, the Snyders invited Heatley and his parents into their lives in an effort to make peace with their grief. This paperback edition contains an afterword by the Snyder family. The Dan Snyder and Dany Heatley story. John Manasso is a freelance writer for NHL.com and covers the NHL, NBA, and NFL for an affiliate website of FoxSports.com. He lives in Decatur, GA. Atlanta Thrashers general manager Don Waddell had made up his mind and decided it was time to deliver the good news. The start of the NHL season was three weeks away and even though Dan Snyder had not been able to take part in training camp, because he had undergone surgery on an ankle ligament, Waddell wanted the 25-year-old to know he had made the team. He approached Snyder and Dany Heatley, Waddell's budding star and the most valuable player at the previous season's All-Star Game. At Heatley's invitation, Snyder, a gregarious floppy-haired, gap-toothed player to whom teammates took a liking for his ever-present crooked smile, had been staying with Heatley for about a month, as Snyder had bounced up and down from the minor leagues to Atlanta and back during his previous three seasons. "Are you getting tired of the hotel yet?" Waddell asked Snyder. "No," Snyder responded, unsure of the line of questioning. "I'm staying with him," he added, motioning to Heatley. "You've got to be tired of him by now," Waddell said to Snyder. "I think it's time to get your own place." On that late September day, in oblique fashion, Waddell signaled to Snyder that he had would be with the team for the entire season. It was the crowning achievement of Snyder's brief professional career. Snyder excitedly called his parents and his brother Jake to inform them of the news and started his housing search. But the celebratory mood would last only a few days. The week before Thrashers' training camp was set to begin, Waddell had persuaded Snyder to have the surgery, explaining bluntly that, with Snyder's skating ability, he needed to be at top form to compete in the NHL. That Snyder needed the surgery, in Waddell's mind, served as a microcosm of the player's career - barely fast enough, barely big enough. Nonetheless, Snyder embodied the ethic Thrashers coach Bob Hartley prized: He was tough, fearless, and with a mouth that never stopped yapping, no one wanted to play against him. Snyder had been through enough trials before, so the 2003 training camp need not be one of them. Based on his performance at the tail end of the previous season, Snyder had earned a spot as the team's third-line center for the 2003-04 campaign - a season which held high expectations for the expansion franchise entering its fifth year. In previous stints with the Thrashers, Snyder had lived out of a hotel room beside the highway n

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