Thank God for the babysitter.

If it wasn't for her, Avs RW Dan Hinote would be playing basketball, or football, or softball, anything but hockey. Tracy Seline started babysitting for Dan a year and a half after his family moved to Minnesota from Florida, when Dan was only two. Six years later, Tracy spotted a pair of hockey skates in the neighbor's garbage and asked if she could take them for Dan. Five steps after putting the skates on at the local pond, Dan was skating on his own.

"He was such an active kid," says Seline. "He said, 'what do I do?' but he had great natural balance and nobody could believe he had just started skating."

At first, Dan's dad wasn't too thrilled. Charlie Hinote, a Pan-American Games gold-medalist in fast-pitch softball, was worried about the cold. "I'm from Florida!" he said. "I don't want to sit in a freezing hockey rink, much less outside, to watch hockey!" But Dan was hooked.

Tracy followed Dan's hockey career through high school, West Point, and the Hershey Bears of the AHL, but Monday night's Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final was the first game she saw in Denver. "We never expected him to make it this far," she said. "But it's great to be able to watch him. He's living a dream."

While Tracy doesn't take all the credit for Dan's hockey fever, he disagrees. "My Dad was a Southern boy. He was a big sports guy and he played basketball, softball and football, but hockey was the only thing he couldn't coach me in," says Hinote. "If it wasn't for Tracy, I never would have strapped on skates."

Thank God for the babysitter.

Lindsay Berra is covering the NHL playoffs for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail lindsay.berra@espnmag.com.