Our good friends at the Family Ice Center in Falmouth, Maine asked Craig Gray to have the New England Bruins Sled Hockey Team play an exhibition game as part of the ‘Yankee Conference All-star Festival’ on Saturday 3/26/05 at 4:40pm. Three of the Bruins top players were at a Training Camp in Colorado for the US Sled Hockey Team, so players from the reserve roster were called into action.

Craig divided the players into 2 teams. One would wear Black Jerseys & one would wear Gold Jerseys. Talent wise the teams were fairly even, but the Black team had a definite advantage when it came to speed and it was speed that won the game not talent. Rick Middleton was unavailable this weekend, so I was given the unenviable task of coaching both teams. It is said that players win games & coaches lose games, so I was in a no win situation. If I had suffered a massive heart attack and dropped dead on the bench, the coroner would have ruled it Suicide by Hockey. Funeral photos.

The Black team played poor positional hockey, but fortunately for them the Gold team played no positional hockey. The players chased the puck, too many players ganged up in the corners and not covering in front of the net, are some of the good things that could be said about the game. I now know what Herb Brooks meant when he told the players of the 1980 Olympic Team, that it looked like a bunch of Monkeys having Carnal Knowledge with a Football (not Herb’s exact words, but close enough). Peter Grosso started the scoring off early with a breakaway and went in unchallenged on the goalie Aguinaldo Luis, who had no chance against the speed and accuracy of Grosso. Grosso had a couple other breakaways, one of which resulted in an unassisted goal and the other resulted in a goal from several rebounds. Joe Legere scored the 4th goal, when players from the Black team surrounded the crease while players from the Gold team sort of milled about. Jeff Labbe came away with a Shutout in the 4 – 0 debacle, behind a better defensive effort from his teammates.

I wish there were more positive aspects of the game I could comment on, but there weren’t. The game wasn’t a representation of player’s who’d been coached in the fundamentals of hockey by one of the finest coaches in sled hockey, but rather a ‘Free–for-All’, ‘Rush-n-Muck’ style of Pond Hockey. The game did bring back old memories though. Back to 1993, when sled hockey was 1st introduced in the New England area & no one had a clue as to how to play the game. Fortunately there were few spectators in the stands, and I understand 1 of them demanded their money back even though admission was free. I did observe a cameraman from 1 of the local TV stations filming part of the game. We can only hope that his producer will decide to air a segment on ‘How to save the Colored Water’ from this year’s Easter Egg dying so that it can be used next year, instead of the footage from this game.

I think the lesson players should take from this experience, is how much they need to attend the practice at the Exeter Rink on 4/21/05.

The ‘7th player Award’ went to the head referee, who called 2 penalties on Craig Gray and 1 on Dan Sousa. Craig protested both his penalties as bogus calls, but when you factor in that the ref has officiated over several sled hockey games and was trained by Craig, his protests didn’t hold much weight. Good Job Ref.

I think I know what happened! I washed the jerseys after last weekends 1st place win in the United Spinal Rangers tournament in Mt Vernon NY. Hockey players are very superstitious and don’t like to wash their uniforms when they are on a winning streak. I think I washed the Luck out of the jerseys. Maybe I shouldn’t wash them until after the Amelia Park Tournament.

Dale Wise

Dale Wise is Team Leader for the New England Bruins Sled Hockey Team.

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