Oil Kings win Memorial Cup!

This year I made sure to go to a few Vancouver Giants games with special focus on watching a couple of teams that I knew would be in the hunt for the Memorial Cup – the Portland Winter Hawks and the Edmonton Oil Kings.

Like the Vancouver Giants are to my boys, the Edmonton Oil Kings are to me. They were the heroes of my earliest years in hockey. To see them win the Memorial Cup yesterday over the Guelph Storm brought me back to a time when in 1971 I listened as the heroes of that team – Phil Russell, Tom Bladon, John Rodgers, and of course Darcy Rota – play against Guy Lafleur and the Quebec Remparts.

The games weren’t televised in that day and age when our cable provider was, as one my former hockey goalies called it ‘TFC'(CBC and not-CBC) …so it was broadcast on the radio – ‘the theatre of the mind’ as a former business colleague related to me from his days in the radio business. I can still see the lime green leather encased radio on my dresser as I listened to the game. (Hey, it was the late 70’s and some of the designers had probably tuned out and tuned in while designing the radio!)

I missed the game yesterday sitting at the PCAHA AGM listening to the need to change clause 7, subsection 4, sentence 5, word 3 from “puck” to “pucks”.
But beside me was a new acquaintance, the Director of hockey from one of our local hockey associations. Not only was he a fellow ‘Tsawwassenite’ but he was a former Oil King goalie with the 1971 Memorial Cup team. Upon further research I found out that he also knew my older brother, Jim, through junior hockey in Edmonton. What a coincidence!

After my new friend Jack and his colleague, Eric, left to watch a graduate of their hockey program, Griffin Reinhart, play in the Memorial Cup, I heard from my other friends at the table from North Delta. They were excited to follow the Memorial Cup as well because one of their graduates, Tristan Jarry, was backstopping the Oil Kings in net that day!

For me its a hockey mosaic that extends across generations and across geographies and it connects us as family and as friends – old and new. It was a great day for hockey – it was actually a delicious day of hockey all around!

A Great Game made better by a Great Moment

I looked around the room at the PCAHA AGM as we listened to the narrative shared before a special award was announced for a Midget C team from Abottsford BC. Grown men wiped tears from their eyes as did I.

The narrator read

‘In the finals the PCAHA Midget ‘C’ division the Abottsford Midget ‘C’ team had defeated the Langley Midget ‘C’ team to win the championship. At one end of the ice sticks and gloves were strewn in celebration of a championship, while at the other end one team took the loss in an unusually tough manner with most of the kids driven to tears at a profound loss. But it wasn’t just the loss of the game, it was the thought of losing a game dedicated to the memory of a teammate who died during the season.

This fact was relayed to the Abottsford captain during the traditional handshake, whereupon the Abottsford captain came back to his dressing room and he and his teammates decided that they would instead give the championship trophy to Langley. With his team behind him, and a knock at the door, the assembled Abottsford team gave their trophy and championship to Langley’

Three boys and their coaches from the Abottsord team accepted a special award from the PCAHA for this selfless act – for taking a great game and making it even better.

The audience gave a standing ovation……..many with tears in their eyes.

Arrest made in murder of Hockey Mom

All of us in the minor hockey community were horrified when a hockey mom from Surrey was killed outside the local Surrey arena as she was picking up her son after he refereed a game.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/man-charged-in-hockey-mom-death-to-appear-in-bc-court/article18840621/#dashboard/follows/

Yesterday, at the PCAHA annual general meeting we held a moment of silence for the people of the hockey community who we lost or were taken from us in the past year. Julie Paskall was mentioned by name. Little did we know that a prime suspect in the case had been arrested.