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This a nice, sweet story from the draft yesterday.It's about the Habs 1st pick, a kid named Chris Higgins, who goes to Yale and is from Long Island.I saw his reaction and his parents yesterday on TV and the mother was crying her eyes out and the father jumping up and down in the stands.Read on and you'll see why it meant so much for them both :-)

"TORONTO -- It's something most of us can only imagine, the emotions a father feels hearing his son's name called at the NHL draft, seeing him walk to the podium and slip the sweater of the family's favourite NHL team over his head.

Bobby Higgins felt those emotions yesterday and they were even more intense given Higgins is a captain in the New York City Fire Department and, well, moments like yesterday's are appreciated even more these days.

"This is beyond a dream," said Higgins after seeing son Christopher, a centre at Yale University, drafted 14th overall by the Montreal Canadiens yesterday.

"To be sitting here and have your boy taken in the first round ... I wouldn't even dream it would be Montreal because I didn't want to jeopardize his chances."

Bobby Higgins wasn't on duty when the planes slammed into the World Trade Center, "but I was in there that afternoon.

"Things will never be the same. My wife and I were going to fly up here, but I said no. We put everybody in the car so he could share this with his brothers and sisters.

"That's part of what's changed. You want to enjoy everything, every moment with your family."

The elder Higgins' love affair with the Habs started years ago when he got a table hockey game and one of the teams was the Canadiens. A Habs sweater followed after that. On Friday, he received a Canadiens key chain from the Hockey Hall of Fame and he kept it in his pocket yesterday "like a rabbit's foot."