Life After Hockey: Greg Andrusak fishing for compromises

(Photo courtesy of Greg Andrusak)

Fittingly, a river was the boundary between the co-hosts of Greg Andrusak’s most momentous week in hockey.

Incidentally, it was none of the forward-liners comprising the Golden Triangle of the city he represented. Nor was it any of the streams he now oversees in the career his puck pursuits postponed.

It was one of North America’s household-name waterways, shadowed by the continent’s most massive metropolis. And, at the time, populated by two men with lasting cases for the GOAT crown in their respective on-ice positions.

Given its place in the world, the Hudson River cannot help connoting greatness. But uttering the word river on its own can evoke simplicity. A vision of running water and its natural inhabitants does not seem to have much to it.

Then again, untrained eyes have a similar way of deceiving hockey spectators. No matter how effortless a pack of pucksters may appear in their element, no matter how superhuman and resistant to outside disturbances they seem, they are subject to untold and often invisible variables.

Yes, team builders put each player in a given position because they see a natural fit. With that said, each individual signs up for the short end of a symbiotic relationship. With selective exceptions, everyone takes far less from the game than they give.

Furthering their modicum of control, they can never predict the twists in an environment and situation that fluctuates the way people claim their local weather does. A twist can influence a whole team’s course, or just that of an individual.

So at least Andrusak, 15 years after his final season, has less chaos going for him in one sense. He has settled in a permanent home market, back where he began in British Columbia. There he does and experiences a lot less moving than in his former vocation.

His last transaction came in the spring of 2016. He had followed his father’s footsteps to fisheries, and the two Andrusak generations headed a consulting firm in Nelson, B.C.

With Redfish Consulting Ltd., Harvey Andrusak, a three-decade veteran fisheries biologist, and Greg’s most noted collaborations included studies of Kootenay Lake, the province’s fifth-largest, and the spawning and exploitation therein.

In 2017, Harvey became the president of the BC Wildlife Federation. One year prior, Greg had shuffled from the inland town of Nelson to the coastal capital of Victoria and the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (MFLNRORD).

At his prior employer, he had logged a dozen years in his self-described “niche” as a consultant and risen to Redfish’s vice presidency. Ultimately, he told Pucks and Recreation, “I was starting to realize that I’m not getting any younger.”

At 46, he took his chance to make a bigger stride, and assumed the B.C. government’s provincial rivers biologist’s office. On some days, the lifelong defenseman follows a more goalie-like regimen, staying in one physical space at his desk. But like a puckster in some youth ranks, he will also venture to a more outer position, surveying his jurisdiction firsthand.

Regardless, he is a crucial figure in his other lifelong passion’s “Show.” He has his head on a swivel, ready to answer shots from any party and any direction.

All federal, regional, private, nonprofit or simply concerned groups with a stake in B.C.’s waters are in his web. The seven organizations he mentions by name in his LinkedIn summary hardly cover it all.

“The most important part about success in hockey is the same in government,” he said via phone from his office. “Collaboration is how we mainly do our business.”

That principle, combined with geography, lends favorable familiarity to Andrusak’s post-puck profession. He is back where a love of fishing inspired him to build on his biology bachelor’s toward a long-term career in inland freshwater management.

And where, as he said, he “grew up idolizing” Wayne Gretzky. That detail was the X-factor of the front end of his peerless week on ice.
 

A graze of greatness

One mid-April Sunday in 1999, the year Redfish was founded, Andrusak was a month removed from rejoining the Pittsburgh Penguins. The organization had drafted him out of the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 1988, only to summon him for 12 sporadic games between 1993-94 and 1995-96.

But they signaled they wanted the third-year European-leaguer back for a guarantee-free playoff push. Andrusak inked a new Pittsburgh pact on March 18, 1999, and worked his way to a regular roster spot beginning April 3. Paired with Bobby Dollas on the third tier, he saw action in each of the final seven regular-season games.

As it happened, the Penguins went a toe-curling 2-5-0 in that stretch. They could not keep the comparatively streaking Buffalo Sabres from leap-frogging them for seventh place in the Eastern Conference.

But by April 18, the eighth and final playoff seed was safely Pittsburgh’s. In addition, a 2-1 overtime triumph in Manhattan secured a high note to take cross-Hudson for the first-round series against top-dog New Jersey.

Despite playing a stay-at-home role where stats rarely sparkle, Andrusak had something of a career day. He sustained a plus-two rating by being on the ice for both Pittsburgh strikes, including captain and regular-season MVP Jaromir Jagr’s walk-off tally.

That meant Andrusak was one of a dozen players in action when Gretzky’s career abruptly ended.

The Rangers, like the other teams below the playoff line, had not caught nearly enough fire to catch up. And with Gretzky having announced his retirement, effective at season’s end, the April 18 card would be Andrusak’s only chance to play against his old idol.

Mixed emotions ensued for every soul in Madison Square Garden. The Penguins promptly offered the man of the hour a personalized handshake line.

From there, they took their place along the bench and watched The Great One’s second round of swan-song ceremonies. (Before the game, the hockey world stood still as players and spectators in other arenas watched the ceremonies remotely.)

The ice-level personnel, to say nothing of the press, all wanted a moment at that moment with No. 99. But being one man, the owner of 61 NHL records could only oblige so much. The majority, if not the entirety, of his postgame attention went to home allies or non-padded guests.

“I wish I would have been able to approach him at the time,” Andrusak admits, “just to say thank you. That would have been a capper in my mind.”

Instead, he accepted his lack of an open shooting lane and moved on to his Stanley Cup playoff debut. His week as a growing fish in a vast, crowded, spotlight-laden aquarium was only starting.

At the time, the then-29-year-old’s postseason experience featured two Turner Cup contests along Lake Erie with the IHL’s Cleveland Lumberjacks. Now he was fostering a career hot streak of Penguins lineup inclusion and preparing to meet the other half of the Hudson River rivalry.

The Devils, backstopped by future NHL career wins and shutouts leader Martin Brodeur, were looking to restore their contender’s persona. The 1995 champions had attained the conference’s top seed in 1998, only to fall to a scrappy eighth-place Ottawa team.

If proverbial lightning was to strike twice, Pittsburgh would make it happen. After dropping Game 1, the Penguins regrouped to issue their first threat.

On Saturday, April 24, 1999, they put four of 21 shots behind Brodeur for a 4-1 victory, knotting the series and usurping the illusion of home-ice advantage. By polishing Pittsburgh’s second strike, Andrusak earned credit for the clincher.

Though he would miss the next night’s tilt due to a bout of food poisoning, the momentum continued. Back home, the Penguins seized the upper hand in the first of the set’s maximum possibility of three lead changes.

When that back-and-forth was over, the underdogs were celebrating again, Game 7 victors at a silenced Continental Airlines Arena.

“It was just sort of a whirlwind tour,” Andrusak reflected. “Going from Gretzky’s last game to (the upset). I look back at it now like it just happened yesterday.”

His illness-induced absence from Game 3 was his only benching that spring. After suiting up for six first-round games, Andrusak added another half-dozen in Pittsburgh’s conference-semifinal loss to Toronto.

But his personal playoff thrill ride was not over. He rejoined the Houston Aeros early in the IHL’s Western Conference final, and dressed for six games en route to the Turner Cup championship.

“I guess that would be the most productive and memorable time of my hockey career,” he offered.

Not that Y2K yielded too much of a letdown. Andrusak credits the Maple Leafs professional scouts who witnessed the Pittsburgh-Toronto series for offering him a contract the next season.

With the Leafs, he mustered nine regular-season and three playoff games, which ultimately finalized his NHL transcript. In between, he played for the IHL’s Chicago Wolves, with whom he won another ring in the spring of 2000.

That split campaign along two of the Great Lakes (Ontario and Michigan) added to a surplus in Andrusak’s log. When he met Turner again, he had no way of knowing his big-league basin had evaporated. But when it came to a career on climate-controlled ponds, he had long bargained with caution.
 

Vocational water cycle

Andrusak was born 350 miles inland from British Columbia’s coast in Cranbrook. That made him a virtual contemporary of future Stanley Cup-winning captains Steve Yzerman (three-and-a-half years his senior) and Scott Niedermayer (four years his junior). Other NHLers from his birthplace of roughly 20,000 included Jon Klemm (773 career games) and Jason Marshall (526).

Another 1970s Cranbrookian child, Corey Spring, mustered 16 twirls in The Show after four years at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Along with Andrusak, he was an exception to the norm of B.C.’s top-tier talent taking the major-junior route.

Through his father’s vocation, Andrusak capitalized on a wealth of opportunities to explore his province’s fisheries. Still, he was raised in what he described as a “middle-income family,” and wanted to “utilize hockey as an opportunity to get an education.”

“That had always been a focus because you never sort of felt like the NHL was achievable,” he elaborated. “Going to university was key.”

After rounding out his youth in B.C.’s Junior A ranks, he accepted coach Mike Sertich’s invitation to UMD. In the neighborhood of Lake Superior, he majored in general biology while bolstering his on-ice prospects.

The Penguins gave him his first boost after his freshman year, choosing him 88th overall in 1988. He later postponed his senior season, spending 1990-91 with Canada’s national team, opposite Stu Barnes, Craig Billington and Joe Juneau.

After he graduated, his studies would not see professional action in earnest for 12 years. Although, as one testament to delayed gratification, the University of Minnesota would become one of Redfish’s affiliates.

Come what may, Andrusak honed a critical chameleon-like habit of adaptability in the interim. During his first stint in Pittsburgh’s pipeline, he played for minor-league teams in Muskegon, Detroit, Cleveland and Minnesota. Over the four nonconsecutive years that he did see action with the Penguins, he never wore the same jersey number twice.

He also formed a juxtaposing pair of memories with the same batterymate. On Oct. 27, 1995, while representing the IHL’s Detroit Vipers, he took a bare-knuckle punch to his visor-shielded face from prolific Indianapolis Ice forward Kip Miller. Moments after the skirmish, Andrusak confronted Miller in the bowels of the arena before being restrained by ushers.

Fast-forward three-and-a-half years, and the two journeymen were sharing a common purpose with the Penguins, with whom Miller had just spent his first NHL-only season.

On April 24, 1999, the depth forward fed Andrusak for the latter’s only NHL goal, regular-season or postseason. The new allies combined for two strikes and six points in Pittsburgh’s seven-game upset of the Devils.

In between, Andrusak played all of 1996-97 and 1997-98 in Berlin, and also spent a portion of 1998-99 in Switzerland. By 2003-04, which he finished as an assistant coach for the Swiss-B league’s EHC Chur after conceding to persistent knee injuries, he had represented 14 cities in four countries over his career.

As fulfilling as it turned out, 1998-99 was arguably his most turbulent campaign. In nine months, he went from Berlin to Geneva to Pittsburgh to Houston.

Back in B.C., where he and his wife settled to raise their four daughters, Andrusak still makes good on his intangible takeaways from that wheel of change.

“Being adapatable and being able to weather the storm, as we call it,” he said, is a key carry-over from his first field to his second.

Working in government, he also recognizes the long-term benefit of his exposure to the Maple Leafs media masses. His final three NHL games closed out Toronto’s second-round loss to the eventual 2000 champion Devils. Not exactly the follow-up the Buds buffs and brass wanted after a journey to the 1999 Eastern Conference final.

The scrutiny and the subsequent summer rebuild that sent him back to free agency gave Andrusak a firsthand feel for the accountability Anglophone Canada’s Original Six franchise upholds. He senses the similarities in how the B.C. press covers his new team’s larger-scale resource-management mission.

In the NHL, it is all about establishing a balance conducive to a winning formula and an entertaining product. In the MFLNRORD, it is all about squaring conservation with the needs, wants and rights of diverse demographics.

Harvey’s precedent sets a sound example. A longtime collaborator with BC Hydro, the province’s premier energy provider, he was also instrumental in establishing the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area.

Since the area took root in 1998, resource exploration and extraction have met various and respected degrees of restrictions and permissions. Four cut-and-dry categories — protected areas, special wildland resource management zones, special resource management zones and enhanced resource management zones — physically divide a land as vast as Ireland. But the boundaries have also kept the peace between all parties concerned.

“In most cases,” the younger Andrusak said, “negotiations are best served when common ground and compromises can be found.”
 

(Photo courtesy of Greg Andrusak)

 



Messaging mogul

Recent initiatives concerning the First Nations tribes and other stakeholders have impelled Andrusak to evolve from more than a master of natural science. He must now also approach his job as an up-and-coming scholar of sociology.

“There’s a lot of outreach to the public, coming from an industry that is so media-driven,” he said. “Being able to communiciate with people is one of the biggest assets we have.”

In terms of social media, Andrusak sticks primarily to a passing game. On Twitter, his hockey content is mostly his 1998-99 Penguins action-shot profile picture and retweets revolving around his daughter, Devan’s, team at the Delta Hockey Academy.

Sometimes his two worlds overlap, as they did this past Thursday when he retweeted a post on current NHLer, fellow conservationist and fellow B.C.-bred fishing enthusiast Andrew Ladd. He has previously retweeted an argumentative salmon-preservation message by Willie Mitchell.

Otherwise, he focuses on sharing articles and retweeting posts on the status of B.C.’s endangered fish stocks. His own commentary, if and when he offers any, is short, crisp and to the point.

One such report, published in the Vancouver Sun on March 8, detailed the dire findings of the Wild Salmon Advisory Council. The group noted that the local salmon and steelhead stocks are vanishing despite a decades-long slew of conservation initiatives.

From his Victoria office, Andrusak is working with regional counterparts to get the species on the emergency list. Meanwhile, as he shared the Sun story, he tweeted, “Still need to address better management of fisheries.”

As it happens, Andrusak’s former line of work has a history of accentuating fish’s importance to his province. From 2004-05 to 2010-11, the Victoria Salmon Kings played in the ECHL.

Neither that team nor the locale was alone. Since 1997, the Idaho Steelheads have competed at the same professional Double-A level the Salmon Kings did. In the Ontario League, Mississauga’s major-junior team has also used the Steelheads moniker since 2012.

Being in Idaho’s bordering province, Andrusak keeps his eye on similar population preservation efforts there. (Idaho Fish & Game was listed among Redfish’s partners and clients during the firm’s Andrusak era.) While he hesitates to draw conclusions on the team nickname’s awareness effect, he welcomes any potential help.

“If we can rise the profile of a species through sport,” he said, “I don’t see that they should be disconnected.”

He should know. His sport bridged him to his studies and beyond.

Remembering the “Kernkraft 400” boom in North American sports

Few did their part to fulfill Jurgen Korduletsch’s vision quite like the Toronto Maple Leafs sound crew.

Last May, VICE ran a segment detailing the origins and rise of Zombie Nation’s “Kernkraft 400” phenomenon. The German techno artist, whose magnum opus dropped its first rendition 20 years ago Friday, gained transatlantic traction in an unintended and, from his perspective, discomfiting viewpoint.

In his VICE interview, under his real name, Zombie Nation mastermind Florian Sentfer admitted to initially shuddering at his tune’s “Stadium Chant Mix” reprise. He had nothing to do with that rendition, which originated in Italy. And the vocal onslaught of oh’s flowing in sports venues to the beat he had in turn borrowed from the video game Lazy Jones deviated his modest idea for a dance-club staple.

“To have, like, a bunch of hooligans be aggressive,” he told VICE. “It just, like, was a weird moment.”

Together with Helmut Geier, whose Gigolo Records released the first “Kernkraft 400” beat, Sentfer lawyered up to no avail. The 1999 “Kernkraft 400” had effectively mutated into a 2000 redo that spearheaded a drive toward a new era in sports-tunage staples.

It started in soccer circuits around Europe, then spread to North America. On this side of the ocean, the “Stadium Chant Remix” arguably cemented its notoriety as a new go-to goal song in hockey. But wherever a team did not experiment with it for that purpose, it was more than likely to find usage in a pregame pump-up or general context.

As the founder of Radikal Records, Korduletsch had been a key cog in the explosion of canned music. When VICE approached him last year, he recalled seeing the potential for a pattern in Zombie Nation’s lifted remix not unlike that of his earlier all-star partners.

“We had some good contacts at some sports arenas because our of prior success with 2 Unlimited, ‘Get Ready for This,’” he told the network.

The bar-setting tune Korduletsch spoke of was chiefly, and naturally, a game-starter for the better part of Radikal’s first decade. In 1995, it led off the first Jock Jams album as a mashup with Michael Buffer’s trademark “Let’s get ready to rumble!” bellow.

With or without Buffer, it was heard in an easy majority of high-profile venues during player introductions or between the national anthem and the opening faceoff/kickoff/tipoff/first pitch.

But the Maple Leafs purposed it differently. Up through the end of the 1999-2000 season, a Toronto home goal triggered a horn, then the unmistakable opening crescendo to “Get Ready for This.” The tune would continue after a recording of broadcaster Joe Bowen’s catchphrase, “Holy Mackinaw!” in lieu of Buffer.

When the Buds tuned the twine at the Air Canada Centre for the first time in 2000-01, it first sounded like nothing had changed. The same horn rang, followed by the same 2 Unlimited introductory crescendo.

But then a split-second silence gave way to incessant rapid-fire patterns of Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh. Just in time for the new millennium, someone had found their new “Get Ready for This.”

By season’s end, Zombie Nation (which many mistakenly believed to be the track’s title) became a staple on other NHL playlists. Of particular note, the eventual 2001 Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche used it as their opening-faceoff song for the playoffs.

Of course, 2 Unlimited’s legacy was not going to go dormant on command. NHL and lower-level PA systems alike kept “Get Ready for This” in its familiar spot for a handful of years.

But no later than 2001-02, the “Stadium Chant Mix” proved a formidable foe to another arena adage. When they played “Get Ready for This” after goals, the Leafs were an exception to the “Rock and Roll Part 2” norm.

Gary Glitter’s claim to fame had served its stadium function since the 1970s, long before canned music became commonplace. But by 1999, concomitant with the birth of “Kernkraft 400,” Glitter’s hideous claim to international infamy was becoming apparent.

Incredibly, many teams kept using Glitter’s work for nearly two decades during and after his slew of sex-crime convictions. “Rock and Roll Part 2” has still not entirely vanished from canned rotations and college pep-band music sheets.

For the final quarter of the 1990s, only Blur’s oven-fresh “Song 2,” with its unmistakable “Woo-hoo!” hook, stood out among Glitter’s goal-song challengers. But at the dawn of this century, there was another viable alternative, undoubtedly inspired by the Leafs and others.

The “Kernkraft 400” groundswell could not have been more palpable circa 2001-02. It was one of the few non-recycled tracks on the 2001 All-Star Jock Jams compilation. (Two of the reused ones were…drumroll…“Rock and Roll Part 2” and “Get Ready for This.” All three tunes reappeared on ESPN’s final CD, 2003’s Stadium Anthems.)

At that point, a rash of hockey teams of all levels abandoned Glitter in favor of Zombie Nation for goals. This author, for one, can recall hearing “Rock and Roll Part 2” in that role for the Grand Rapids Griffins as late as their final IHL season in 2000-01.

But “Kernkraft 400” had crashed in by the next winter in time for the team’s inaugural AHL campaign. Similarly, the Chicago Wolves were including a snippet of it as part of their celebratory mash-up.

A smattering of NHL teams, such as Edmonton, did the same. Some stuck with it, others reverted to Glitter and others pursued something fresher.

Tellingly, Toronto was among those who did not keep “Kernkraft 400” as their goal song forever. Another period of decisive change, the other side of the season-long 2004-05 NHL lockout, brought on a boom in variety across the continent.

This is not to say it was previously all Glitter, then Glitter or Blur, then Glitter, Blur or Zombie Nation. Concomitant with Toronto’s big Y2K switch, a few minor-league teams tried “Who Let the Dogs Out?” But that practice did not gain mainstream traction, and most of the franchises using it had short runs altogether.

Dating back to the mid-1990s, the New York Rangers had long distinguished themselves with “Slapshot.” In St. Louis, the organ has long defied Father Time with a twist on “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The Philadelphia Flyers and 1999 Stanley Cup finalist Buffalo Sabres were the first prominent users of “Song 2.”

But even the Sabres went on to experiment with “Kernkraft 400,” as did a few more NHL teams after the song’s novelty and peak had passed. The late Atlanta Thrashers, who started with Glitter’s tune when they launched in 1999, eventually rotated between Blur and Zombie Nation. Florida, New Jersey and Washington have all tried it as well.

And the Flyers, who also used Glitter in stretches, have since had flings with Fall Out Boy and Pennywise, just to name two. The latter’s “Bro Hymn” also fastened itself as the Anaheim Ducks’ goal song shortly before the club’s 2007 championship run.

Concurrently, the Minnesota Wild were popularizing Joe Satriani’s “Crowd Chant,” and the Chicago Blackhawks “Chelsea Dagger.” Those songs have stuck in those markets, and “Crowd Chant” also sees NHL goal-horn action via the New York Islanders, but nowhere else.

The snowballing craving for variety has trickled down to other levels, even to the point where it made headlines when the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch abandoned “Kernkraft 400” as their goal song in 2015.

 

As of 2018-19, while “Rock and Roll Part 2” has finally vanished from The Show, the Boston Bruins are the last of the NHL’s “Kernkraft 400” lamplighters. In fact, having triumphed in 2011, they are the only team to have won a Stanley Cup while using that goal song.

Contrast that with the three-peat of then-Glitter users in the 1999 Dallas Stars, 2000 New Jersey Devils and 2001 Avalanche. The Devils were still using it when they last won the Cup in 2003. Even after Zombie Nation chipped away at the old standardized guard like no other song has, the 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning and 2009 Penguins used “Rock and Roll Part 2.”

For the first half of the current decade, the Penguins ran through this age’s trite troika. Blur, Glitter and Zombie Nation all had stints with their goal horn between 2010 and 2015. But ahead of the team’s 2016 and 2017 titles, they selected something more distinctive in Andrew W.K.’s “Party Hard.”

Ironically, “Party Hard” was either a late arrival or received a belated invitation. As part of the album I Get Wet, it was released amidst the 2001-02 NHL season. Too late to compete with “Kernkraft 400” for first dibs on the unofficial distinction of the 21st century’s “Rock and Roll Part 2.”

But with the successful Penguins, it was better late than never for W.K. In 2017, he told ESPN’s Tal Pinchevsky, “I was just really moved. It means a lot to have that song be useful.”

As the tune’s artist, the hard-rocking W.K. gets a gratifying share of the goal-song pie that once seemed to solely go to a pre-disgraced glam rocker. Though the slices of publicity and recognition vary in size, he is in ample company with Blur, the Fratellis, Pennywise, Satriani and many more.

Even the techno DJ who unwittingly started the wave of variety, though at first looked primed to be the reluctant Glitter of the new millennium, has grown to embrace the arena link. Zombie Nation’s website touts “Kernkraft 400” as the project’s “landmark Song.” It adds that the chant variety is “still played as motivational anthem or in breaks almost 20 years” after the first version came out.

Compared to its formative years on athletic playlists, the remix lingers these days. But it has earned its keep, and likely the distinction of the last homogenous fad of its kind.

Teddy Bear Toss endures test of time, NHL shutout

 

The Teddy Bear Toss that minor-league, junior and college hockey enthusiasts treasure shares some key common threads with The Nutcracker. Besides being Christmastime customs, their stories each have a happy ending despite threats via pesky muroids.

Wednesday marks 25 years since the widely accepted origin of the Teddy Bear Toss. The consensus points to the Western League’s Kamloops Blazers inviting their fans to throw donatable playthings onto the ice after the team’s first goal at a Dec. 5, 1993 game. As with all subsequent iterations, the discards become gifts for underprivileged locals.

Most lower-level promotions tend to stay synonymous with one team or league. They also rarely see action in the game’s highest ranks. In this case, the NHL can come across as a superficial Scrooge for keeping it out. Although, in fairness, a rat problem might have exacerbated the derailment of any big-time aspirations the Teddy Bear Toss may have had.

With that said, like an exceptional journeyman, it has made waves one step below The Show. In fact, no later than this year, the concept’s balance of association has shifted.

Three days before the custom’s silver anniversary, the AHL’s Hershey Bears set a new standard for this unique charitable collection. With a tally of 34,798 stuffed animals, they became the first team to break 30,000 in a single toss.

Until then, WHL territory had remained the now-global practice’s definitive region. The Calgary Hitmen held the previous record of 28,815 items, which Saddledome spectators combined for in 2015. Seven pickup trucks were required to transport the toys off the ice that night.

That mark eclipsed the Hitmen’s previous bar of 26,919, which they raised in 2007. A provincial and divisional rival, the Lethbridge Hurricanes, had held the preceding record, albeit for two days. In so doing, they surpassed yet another high major-junior mark set by Calgary one year prior.

In an e-mail to Pucks and Recreation, Bears broadcaster Zach Fisch noted that the Hitmen offered Hershey their kudos. “With that said,” he added, “they’re gunning to get the record right back and are pretty competitive about it.

“If they do, that’s not a bad thing at all. It means more kids in need across North America were helped and that fans in Hershey will just have to continue to up their game more next year, which means even more kids here happy too.”

From North America’s minor-pro, major-junior and collegiate ranks to some European circuits, the Teddy Bear Toss is tried, true and ever-growing. But it would not be a stretch to look back and wonder if it was once in peril.

Hockey’s big league brandishes what some might scorn as a big-brother attitude toward the Toss. Per ESPN’s Tal Pinchevsky in 2016, an NHL spokesman explained, “Player safety is an obvious reason, but so is fan safety. At NHL arenas, a high percentage of anything thrown from the stands would hit other fans.”

Incidentally, the Hitmen share their building with the NHL’s Flames, and usually sell it out for the Teddy Bear Toss. But outside of a player’s third goal, there is an explicit precedent against celebratory showers of merchandise. And it all began with another kind of toy in mind.

When the Teddy Bear Toss was two years old going on three, an overdone occurrence in Florida may have spoiled its hopes of trickling up to The Show. While no authorities have confirmed the connection outright, the Panthers’ “rat trick” phenomenon did lead to new restrictions.

Thrusting plastic rats onto the Miami Arena rink after Florida goals proved a one-year wonder in 1995-96. New rules, effective in 1996-97, were meant to diminish delays in the action. As with flurries of fuzz when lower-level home teams is shut out, it can only happen after the final horn.

When Panthers fans brought back the “rat trick” without permission in 2016, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman reaffirmed the regulations. As the Associated Press’ Stephen Whyno reported at the time, Bettman’s league would only make allowances for hat tricks. Anything else, the commissioner told the AP Sports Editors, is “disruptive to the game” and “potentially dangerous.”

But no such misgivings have taken hold in any of the development ranks. Other than caving to the embarrassing specter of being blanked, hardly anyone who has taken up the Teddy Bear Toss has seen a reason to relinquish it. If anything, higher-profile teams just shy of The Show are coming fashionably late to the party.

While the Bears, the AHL’s longest-tenured brand, set the world record this past weekend, the Chicago Wolves conducted their first toss amidst the team’s 25th season. Their version took place during the first intermission, a la Chuck-a-Puck.

Back in the presumed Kamloops epicenter, everyone is in the seasonal spirit of sharing. CBC News marked the Teddy Bear Toss’ silver anniversary by querying current Blazers personnel.

Booster club president Kevin Rhodes told the news station, “Good things go a long way. It’s good for the organizations that benefit in the community…People want to be involved in that.”

Those whose shots cue the bear blizzard are no exception. Blazers blueliner Montana Onyebuchi is a third-year WHL stay-at-home defenseman with a mere seven career goals. But when he was an Everett Silvertip, one of those white-elk tallies happened to bring on the bears.

Of that experience, he told CBC, “It’s better than scoring any other goal I’ve ever scored, ever.”

Why wouldn’t it be? It chalked up to 8,523 assists on a happier holiday for Everett-area residents.

And no major-league misers or Miami Mouse Kings could take that away. Nor is their lack of participation or explanation thereof likely to stop another quarter-century of the Teddy Bear Toss elsewhere.

Any chance you get to help kids and throw something on the ice without getting in trouble is a great time,” Fisch said. “The hockey community is special and full of so many good people. I am not surprised to see so many communities taking part in this event.

“It's really gained steam here, and many other places in the past several years. I hope it continues to grow. Safe to say, the world loves it.”

Quinn Hughes has a future on both sides of the contract table

If and when playing does not pan out, working in the front office of a professional sports team is a dream for fans around the world. Quinn Hughes is setting himself up to live out the latter after he is done fulfilling the former. 

The Michigan freshman has emerged as one of the premier defensive prospects for this year’s NHL Draft. Adam Herman of The Sporting News sees him ending a dry spell of genuine “superstar” talent among American-born blueliners.

His presence with the puck on the blue line earned him a spot on Team USA’s World Junior roster, and has NHL scouts excited about his potential.

In the meantime, Hughes is getting used to life on campus, where he is majoring in sports management. He described the field as being in a team’s management, or the business side of sports. It chiefly entails dealing with players and forming contracts.

This is something that many people want to do, but most don’t know how to get there. For Hughes, he can follow in the footsteps of his father.

“My dad worked for the (Toronto Maple) Leafs for 10 years,” he said. “He worked as a coach and in management, and it piqued my interest.”

Hughes’ father was the Boston Bruins assistant coach from 2001 to 2003, then worked behind an AHL bench in Manchester, N.H., for three years. He returned to the NHL in 2006 as Toronto’s director of player development. Growing up watching his father and being interested in his job is what influenced Hughes to pursue sports management.

Michigan is one of the most well-known schools in the country. With many different professional development clubs on campus, there are plenty of opportunities to make connections in the industry. Hughes has not joined one yet, but is not ruling it out further down the line.

“It’s only my first semester, so I haven’t had time to really get used to things at Michigan,” he said. “As I get older, it’s something I’ll look at.”

The sports management program at Michigan is well known, and provides a great opportunity for Hughes to learn, even if that wasn’t the reason he chose Ann Arbor.

“It didn’t really influence the decision, but it got me excited to get there,” he said. “After I committed, I found out about that.”

Going west of Lake Ontario was a somewhat unlikely twist in Hughes’ career path. He had been born in Orlando when his father was an assistant coach for the IHL’s Solar Bears.

Subsequently growing up in New England, then Toronto, Hughes was originally more of a Boston College fan than anything else. His cousin, Teddy Doherty, was a captain there in 2015-16. Both of his parents played at a current Hockey East school (Jim at Providence, Ellen at New Hampshire).

But he committed to the Wolverines because they were simply one of the first programs to recruit him.

With such a big alumni base, with many in the sports-management field, Hughes can rest assured in the connections he will have when he begins his post-playing career.

“It’s very comforting to know that there are Michigan people who want to take care of other Michigan people,” Hughes said.

Sports management is a common major among Michigan’s hockey players. With many teammates taking similar classes before him, Hughes feels that he has support in his schoolwork.

“A good chunk of the team is in sports management or training,” he said. “Coming in as a freshman, I can ask what teachers to take, what did you do for that project and just be more prepared. They’re a good resource to have.”

Most people don’t think about how NHL teams care about a collegiate player’s off-ice studies. But Hughes understands the importance of getting good grades to give teams the right impression.

“While I think they’re more interested in hockey, there are so many players,” he said. “So if someone isn’t doing well (academically), and another person is, they’ll take the good student.”

Hughes’ studies mean that he will not be passed up in the draft over his grades. But one day, once his playing career is over, a job in the front office working with contracts would be a welcome reversal of roles.

- Zach Green