This week, I was having a hard time coming up with something to write about for this passion blog.  Now don’t get me wrong, I have a list on my phone of more ideas than it will take to get me through the semester, and there are more floating around in my head.  But none of them seemed right for this week.  Sure, I could talk more about the strength of different development leagues.  I could talk about the Olympics and the USA women’s first gold medal win in twenty years.  I could talk about my opinions on hot topics, like outdoor games and fighting. Or something silly, like glow puck.  While all of these are perfectly fit topics for the blog, and some will make an appearance later on, I just couldn’t bring myself to write about any of them.

So instead, I started thinking about why I’m writing this blog.  I mean sure, it was required for RCL.  But why on Earth did I decide last semester that I wanted to write 2,500 words about hockey?  And then, why this semester did I sign on for 5,000 more??  I realized it was because I wanted somewhere, anywhere, to express and share my love for this sport.

I realized I needed a sounding board now that I was away from my dad.  My dad is the reason I love this sport as much as I do.  It was him who convinced me to go with him to Erie Otters games, and was thrilled when I finally started to actually pay attention to what was happening on the ice instead of only in the stands.  It was he who patiently answered my questions, no matter how many times I asked the same ones.  Hockey has been an integral part of my life since the 5th grade, when I finally focused on what was happening and fell in love with the game.  So much of that is because of my dad.

And that is why I care about this “stupid game” so much.  Because to me, this game means family.  It means climbing into the car with my dad every home weekend, driving to my grandma’s to pick her up, and heading to the arena.  Its walking up that steep flight of stairs to the very top, where we are free to move and stand as we please.  Knowing that no matter what anyone else might say, we have the best seats in the entire arena.  All the way up, attacking side, at the blue line.  Its always knowing my seat, even now, with my grandma on my left and my dad to my right.

Its not having to talk to each other, but taking comfort in the silence and simply being in each others company.  Its the high fives and after goal rituals that have formed and will never change.  Dad first, a normal high five, and then to my grandma, where my hand will stay in between her’s as she claps a few times, what started as an accident but is now tradition.

Its the people who sit around us every game.  Its knowing that while to many, the things I have just said makes little to no sense.  But they understand, and have their own versions of this story.  While we may not know their names or stories, we know that they are there, as are we, to sit and watch this game that means so much to us.

This game means family, and structure, and community, and tradition.  This game means love.

As I write this blog post, I am perched in the downstairs lounge of my building, watching Olympic hockey.  This is a pleasure that can only be indulged every four years.  Watching the world come together and engage in friendly, or not-so-friendly, competition is an amazing thing, not only in hockey.  And normally with the Olympics, you can be assured that when you are watching these events, you are watching the best of the best in the sport.

That’s how the Olympics work, right?  Only the best?  and Every country sends the absolute best talent they have? Well, that is how it should be.  But this year in hockey, this is not the case.

This year the best players in the world, those who compete in the National Hockey League, will be sitting out of the Games.  This is because the NHL decided that it wasn’t worth the cost that it takes to send the players to Pyeong Chang.  This is due to both a disagreement between the NHL and the United States Olympic Committee about who pays the insurance for these players while oversees, and the cost of putting the NHL schedule on a three week Olympic break in the middle of the season.

While these reasons may make sense from an economic standpoint, what it means for the players is something that should not be respected by anyone who appreciates either hockey or the Olympic spirit.  This decision was made without discussion with the NHL Player’s Association, and something that the players were not at all okay with.  While no one actually took the penalty and went to play with their county, there were a few who had originally threatened these actions, including high-profile player Alexander Ovechkin, the Russian captain of the Washington Capitals.

I think this action is ridiculous.  The Olympics are an event that I and so many others around the world cherish, and they only happen every four years.  Being an Olympian is something that anyone at a high level in their sort dreams of.  Even when talking about lower level competition, many hockey players say that putting on the sweater for their country gives them an unmatched feeling of pride and honor.  The Olympics would only heighten the significance of representing your country.

No one who is at the highest level of their sport should be stopped from having the opportunity to be an Olympian.  For some players, one Olympic cycle is all the time they have at the prime of their game.  By the time the next Olympics comes around four years from now, they will no longer be at the level needed to be competitive for the team.  Because make no mistake, the Player’s Association has made it clear that sitting out of the games will not happen again, even if that means another contract lockout.  And then there are those young players who have not yet had the chance to go to the Games but are their countries stars who were stripped of the chance to prove themselves on the international stage.

Don’t get me wrong, the level of skill in these Olympics is still high.  But it brings me so much sadness when I think about how great these Games could be if we were actually watching the best athletes in the world.

(By the way, the US beat Slovakia 2-1.)

As today is National Girls and Women in Sports Day, I figured there was no better time to talk about my experiences with women’s hockey.  As with almost all sports, the women’s side of hockey is generally overlooked.  This oversight can be linked to objective things like lower participation levels as well as subjective and debatable things such as lower skill level or physicality.

However, in my opinion, women’s hockey is just as entertaining as men’s hockey.  While there may not be the high speed collisions and fights that people love in the men’s games happening in women’s hockey, the skill level is the same.  In fact, as with many sports based on physicality, the women have to learn to be more skilled in their play because they can’t use brute force to control their opponent.  This is also why women’s sports tend to be “dirtier” games, in which players are taught and learn how to bend or sneakily break the rules in ways that give them an advantage.  This change can be very interesting for both well-versed fans and those who know little, because it is a new experience.

If I’m being honestly, I have only seen women’s hockey a few times, with those begin heavily concentrated in Olympic years when the world finally decides to focus on women’s sports again.  However, this is in part due to the lack of exposure.  Besides Olympic hockey every four years, professional women’s hockey is never on TV.  The only other places I’ve experienced women’s games were at college events, through both my local team Mercyhurst University and here at Penn State.

I was lucky to have my first exposure to women’s games come in the form of Mercyhurst, led by now Canadian gold medalist Megan Augusta.  In the years I became interested in hockey, the team was very good.  This caused my hometown of Erie, PA to be chosen by the NCAA to host the Frozen Four (NCAA Championships) in 2011.  Over the course of that weekend, I watched Wisconsin, Cornell, Boston College, and Boston University duke it out for a championship.  While I no longer remember the winner of the tournament, what has stuck with me was the appreciation for women’s hockey.

Coming to PSU, I had hoped to get both men’s and women’s season tickets. However, upon investigation, I learned that women’s hockey games are not given scheduling preference above of anything, making the games frequently be in the late afternoon or even on weeknights.  Because of these weird game times, I could not commit to going to all of the games.

I have however, made it to one PSU women’s game.  The weekend after we came back to school, I went to the pink out game against Syracuse.  The game was great, and our women’s team is actually really good!  It was a sad event though, as the arena was extremely empty and quiet, and this crowd of just under 1,5000 was the second highest attendance for a women’s game EVER.  There was no student section and no loud Penn State cheers echoing through the arena throughout the game as I am used to with the men.

Women’s hockey is great, and I wish more people paid attention to women in sports.  These women are skilled and great at what we do, and they deserved to be shown more respect and attention for what they do. That being said, celebrating National Girls and Women in Sport day is a good way to start.

This week, I’m going to talk about something that has caused me a lot of sadness over the years that no one outside of the junior hockey sphere has probably ever spent considerable time thinking about.  This week, I”m going to talk about the OHL trade market, and the effects it can have on a team and their fans.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that trade deadlines are a big deal in every sport that has them, but I don’t think any other sport or league has as much shuffling as the OHL.  This is likely due to the short time that players have in the league (only five years, from ages 16-20) and the quick turnover rate of junior hockey.  The OHL trade deadline, happening every year in the middle of January, is a rough or exciting time of the year, depending on a teams situation.  Top players, young talent, and eons of draft picks are exchanged in rapid fire, each team trying to get out of this crazy time what is best for their current game plan.

For the teams at the top, this sometimes means selling the farm (future) for a chance at the championship now.  At the end of the Erie Otters championship run last year, we had left ourselves with almost no high picks until the early 2020s and out of some young talent (speciffically Allan McShane, a former first round draft pick).  In exchange, we picked up high powered offensive prospects in Warren Foegle, future Playoff MVP, and Anthony Cirelli, scorer of the championship winning overtime goal, and physical defenceman Cameron Lizotte, or as I lovingly called him, Beardy.

.

(This is Beardy.  Makes sense, right?)

This worked out very well for us last year, boosting moral and skill enough to get us that championship win.  This year, however we were in a much different situation.  A bottom dweller in our conference after most of our high powered talent, including all of our “purchases” from last season, have either moved on to higher level play or aged out to college.  This year, we were sellers, trading our best forward in Taylor Raddysh and our two best defencemen in Jordan Sambrook and Mitch Byrne to other teams for young players and tons of draft picks.  At this point in our development, it is still to start re-cultivating the farm.

So uh… do we have a trade to announce? pic.twitter.com/HBaEWj1G2z

— Tom Hunter (@PuckDontLie) January 6, 2018

(This picture of Taylor Raddysh was taken during a trade freeze for players playing in the World Junior Championships, when he knew about the trade but it had yet to be announced.  This tweet crushed all remaining hope I had.  He was the face of this year’s OHL trade market, as a very high impact player on a low level team.)

Watching all of these proceedings go down is very stressful for avid junior hockey fans, and it can leave you with very mixed feelings.  While I know that giving these players a chance to play for another championship now, especially because it allows us to start rebuilding sooner, is the right thing to do, that doesn’t completely remove the sting.  Sometimes, you can’t help but feel like the team management has given up and is writing off the entire season.  It also very much hurts when you get attached to players that are apart of the trades, especially when those trades are unexpected.

I still vividly remember the day my Dad texted me asking if I had “heard the news.”  I frantically searched the Otters website and found out that my favorite player, Brady Austin, was traded away for a very bad goalie.  In the end, this goalie was so bad he was traded away for draft picks and Austin went on to be an NHL draft pick and is currently playing in the league under that, the AHL.  I stand by my viewpoint that this is the worst trade in Otters history.  Based on my continued anger about this trade, you would think this trade had been recent, right?  Oh no.  This all happened in 2011.  Us OHL fans are just kind of crazy. (It’s me. I’m just kind of crazy.)

Overall, the trade market in the OHL can have huge effects on teams and their fans, and this doesn’t even go into the player’s perspective of moving teams and cities in the middle of a season as a teenager.  While necessary, this market is emotional and logistical chaos for teams and fans alike.  But it does give hockey bloggers (like me??) some interesting material to talk about!

https://twitter.com/JessTaylor2712/status/548967826665791490

There is a special place in my dad and I’s hearts dedicated to the IIHF World Junior Championships.  In late December of every year, the best 20-year-old and under hockey players in the world descend to one place, to represent their countries and fight for the most prestigious winning in junior hockey.

Every night for the week and a half of play my dad and I would move to our respective spots in front of the TV and flip the channel to the NHL network as my mother rolled her eyes at us.  It was like clockwork.  And there we would sit for the next 3-4 hours, watching as either Team USA or Canada played again some (usually lesser) foe or, on a special night, against each other.  We cheer less for teams than for specific players, keeping our eyes peeled for the boys we know and love (and sometimes love to hate).

You see, these players are “our boys.” Our local hockey team, the Erie Otters, is a part of the best junior league in the world, the Canadian Hockey League (CHL).  (This is debated by some, but that is a discussion for a later post.)  This system is the main feeder for Team Canada players, and the NCAA is the main feeder for Team USA, with very few overlaps. (Another topic for later discussion.) So almost every year, some of the players we have been rooting for all season leave our team to join their country, along with the rest of the leagues’ stars.  In recent years, this has been a long list of names, including Connor McDavid, Dylan Strome, Travis Dermott, Anthony Cirelli, and Taylor Raddysh for Team Canada and Alex DeBrincat for Team USA.  So in front of the TV we sit, and root for our boys to bring home the Gold.

However, this year we had a unique experience in hosting a pre-tournament game at our home arena in Erie.  So a week before the actual tournament began, we went to our home arena to watch Team USA take on Sweden.  This was the first time either of us had been to a live international game, and we were pretty excited.  While none of “our boys” were on either of these teams, there was no shortage of players worthy of watching.  Multiple players drafted by our favorite NHL teams were on the ice, including USA star and Buffalo Sabre’s draft pick Casey Mittlestadt.  The level of skill we saw in the game made it very entertaining and it was a very neat experience cheering on our country in person.

(On a side note, one of my favorite parts about the game was seeing local hockey fans with all of their varied jerseys, with many Otters jersey littering the stands, of course, but also name NHL and NCAA jerseys as well. I shared a few knowing head nods with some old men who were also wearing Penn State jerseys that day. Great experience.)

Going to the game only made me want to experience the tournament in person more.  Even though this year’s was only two hours away in Buffalo, my dad and I were not able to make the trip.  So instead, I settled in for the nightly ritual of games with my dad.  What more could I really ask for?