The women who put Tulsa in the Tulsa Oilers

 
A golf cart was as close as Amy Henderson and Jessica Adams would get to their own DeLorean. Their joint ride in it as two fresh-faced Tulsa Oilers employees now lives as the start of their shared journey into the new millennium.

Today their tenures dwarf those of all other Oilers front-office personnel. Henderson, the ECHL club’s vice president of marketing and sales, is in her 19th campaign. This is Year 18 on the staff for Adams, the vice president of business operations.

Only by the end of this season will any of their colleagues hit the decade mark. That distinction goes to general manager Taylor Hall. Everyone else will have been around for six years or fewer, a majority for fewer than three.

Delete Hall’s prior ice-level Tulsa tenure, and he and the other eight front-office employees have combined for 37 seasons of Oilers service. By the time 2017-18 runs out, Adams and Henderson will have matched that 37-year sum.

“The amount of time and energy they’ve put into the team is something I don’t think any of the rest of us can truly grasp,” said John Peterson, the Oilers’ second-year broadcaster and vice president of communications.

This is what happens when no other arrangement can match the evergreen gratification of home cooking. Of the 11 staffers, Adams and Henderson are the lone natural-born Tulsans.

“Amy is not just a fellow local,” Adams said in an interview with Pucks and Recreation. “She is an amazing friend and coworker, and she is my work sister.”

The sisterhood started over the holidays in 2000. Henderson was a sophomore in the Oilers offices, Adams a junior at Oklahoma Baptist University. Although a two-way commute between her campus in Shawnee and the Tulsa Convention Center ranged between three and four hours, Adams was home long enough to insert one foot as an intern that December.

The chaos of the season must have hammered the higher-ups. When Adams made her debut, Henderson was supposed to receive her. But word of the former’s hiring did not reach the latter until it manifested itself that morning.

“I remember that first day like it was yesterday,” Henderson told Pucks and Rec.

“Interns are often the forgotten helpers,” Adams mused, “and that was no different on my first day, except for Amy.”

Indeed, despite the lack of a heads-up, Henderson was anything but David Spade as Dick Clark’s receptionist. Fast-forward 17-plus years, and the two still laugh off that inconsequentially awkward first impression.

“Amy handled the situation with grace, and was kind and welcoming,” Adams fondly remembers.
And so ended the first phase in Henderson bringing Adams along on a once-unplanned, but now-cherished saga. Neither woman had envisioned working in sports, let alone one considered “non-traditional” for the locale. This despite the likes of Hall helping the Oilers to a Central League championship as a player-assistant coach in 1993.

Instead, both wandered a few hours out of town, though still in state, with vastly distinct fields in mind. Henderson majored in political science at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. Adams had figured a career in law was her destiny after clerking for a firm in her hometown. Upon enrolling at Oklahoma Baptist, she also accepted the potentiality of a career outside of Tulsa.

The two had never crossed paths growing up in a town whose population hovers around 400,000. But both were pulled back via a deep pool of connections at the Convention Center. Through a family friend, Henderson landed her Oilers internship. Going in, she envisioned a simple filler for her resume and the scorching hiatus between semesters at NSU.

As it happened, the internship was not merely filling, it was fulfilling.

“I ended up falling in love with sports marketing,” she said, “and my plans for the future changed completely.”

She returned to finish what she started in Tahlequah, an hour east of home. That higher-ed quest would be extent of her venture out of Tulsa.

Within two years, the Convention Center was seeing just as much of Adams’ shadow. Former Oilers owner Bobby Gilbert had helped her land the 2000-01 winter internship. At that point, she was still eyeing a long-term career around courts, albeit of the hoops variety.

“I knew I wanted to work in sports and was looking for any opportunity,” she said. “I’ve always loved in-game entertainment, specifically the NBA.”

This was still a decade before her hometown would nab the WNBA’s Shock from Detroit. It was eight years before her state capital turned the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics into the Oklahoma City Thunder.

For the time being, a hockey-centered homecoming would suffice for Adams. With the Oilers, she explained, “my intention was to take the experience and eventually look for something in the NBA.”

By the time of the Oilers’ links tournament — where, as Henderson recalls, “We first bonded while driving a golf cart around” — the conversion was complete. Adams followed her work sister’s lead in completing her undergraduate credits on schedule. But she added a three-day work week with the team to her regimen as a senior.

“What I didn’t expect to happen was to fall in love with my hometown again,” she said. “And, most unexpectedly, love hockey, our staff and the Tulsa Oilers fans so much.

“I realized as I got older that you can’t put a price tag on being close to your family, loving the organization you work for and all the while being in such a great city like Tulsa.”

A Lund-erful foundation
The Tulsa Convention Center is now the Cox Business Center. Even before the corporate bug bit the building in 2013, it lost the Oilers to the larger BOK Center in 2008.

While the old building was modifying its moniker, the team was sold to brothers Brandon, Johnny and Roddy Steven. A year later, the 22-year-old Central League folded, leaving the Tulsa Oilers of 2014 to make like the Edmonton Oilers of 1979 and find new auspices in a stronger league.

Another year elapsed before the Oilers, who once shared the BOK Center with an indoor football and women’s basketball franchise, became solo tenants again. The aforementioned Shock bolted for Dallas in 2015.

At times in this business, the winds of change rival those churning in the current presidential administration. But Tulsa’s puck posse’s stability has let its two native-born, self-proclaimed work sisters settle down and forge a second family.

“I am so grateful that Jessica and I have shared this ride together,” Henderson said. “We’ve been through the ups and downs of 9/11, the changes in the economy, different bosses and an ownership change.”

As one of the ups, Adams and Henderson were both there when Angela Ruggiero broke new ice by dressing for the Oilers in 2005. The four-time Olympian and future Hall of Famer made the Oilers famous as the first pro team to roster a female skater.

More generally, Tulsa has sustained stable fanfare, with average attendance staying above 4,000 and sometimes crossing 5,000. This despite having won only one playoff series since 1994 and missing 10 postseasons since Henderson arrived.

That does not mean the franchise has been immune to scares. Early in the post-Great Recession recovery, an intrastate rival and fellow founding Central League franchise of the Oilers’ caved in.

The Oklahoma City Blazers, one-time perennial CHL attendance leaders, folded in mid-July 2009.
In response, a Tulsa World headline speculated, “Blazers’ end might spell trouble for Tulsa Oilers.”

Reporter Bill Haisten wrote, “The news had a chilling effect on Oilers owner Jeff Lund. As Oklahoma City loses its CHL team, the Oilers could be doomed to losing a lot of money.”

Naturally, the franchise made it through, along with its then-nearly decade-long employment of Adams and Henderson. Ditto the squad’s then-new lease at the newer, bigger BOK Center.

But four years later, the last of the four upheavals Henderson cited implicitly had the greatest internal impact. From the Oilers’ 1992 inception, Jeff Lund had been their front-office anchor. He was their inaugural general manager, then assumed the owner’s box in 1999, mere months before Henderson’s internship.

“Jeff helped create the family atmosphere that we love about our team,” Adams said. “Through the years, he has been like a second dad to both Amy and me.”

Both women’s tenures had hit their teens by the time the Steven brothers took the reins in 2013. Now at the five-year mark of the new ownership, Adams, Henderson and Hall are the front office’s lone Lund-era holdovers.

A hockey mind first and a second-time figure in the organization, Hall represents the Oilers from before they had Adams and Henderson. As proud locals, Adams and Henderson represent Tulsa from before it had its current hockey franchise.

Adams went on to credit Lund, Hall and Hall’s predecessor as general manager, Corey MacIntyre, with fostering her professional growth. As far as Henderson is concerned, Adams burgeoned into “the glue that holds this office together” on their watch.

Besides accumulating her administrative adhesive, Adams tore the hardwood out of her mind. She has long learned about the enriching elements in the surface beneath, and not just for those whose blades have touched it.

“What is so amazing about our team is that we truly are a family,” she said. “Hockey is family.  The players, coaches, fans and staff, we each play an important role.

“My favorite quote about hockey is something Wayne Gretzky said: ‘The greatest thing about hockey is the people you meet. The people I’ve met....the friendships I have, the memories, and there’s nothing like it. It’s the greatest game in the world.’ Mr. Gretzky was so right.”

Long familiar, never old
For both of Lund’s homegrown business daughters, embracing a family tree made of Sherwood twigs has meant branching out to other gratifying roles. On their respective paths to vice presidencies, they have vocationally matured into the cool aunts of adopted Tulsans and born-again hockey and Oilers devotees.

“I’ve watched little babies grow into adults, and have become so close to so many people through the years,” said Henderson. “We are a family. I have stayed this long because I truly believe in sports marketing and what it can do to help other businesses grow and because I love the people I have met and relationships I have built through the years.”

That R-word is all but a refrain around the Oilers staff. Peterson singled out the two locals’ “relationships with many of our season-ticket holders and sponsors.”

And in another testament to their synced status, Adams cites Henderson’s self-proclaimed passion as her forte.

“Amy is great at taking on new challenges,” Adams remarked. “She has been an awesome leader in group and corporate sales for our organization. What she is best at, though, is building relationships. She has been able to establish and grow our partnerships in a way that affects not only our organization but also our community.”

All 25 Oilers home games between New Year’s and the 2017-18 regular-season finale have promotional flair on the side. Per Adams, a breast-cancer fundraiser Jan. 20 and a military appreciation night Feb. 23 were particularly rife with Henderson’s fingerprints.

As the regular season dusks, St. Patrick’s Night, Euro Jersey Night, Marvel Night and a block party are still to come. With her oversight of group ticket sales, Henderson also takes charge of getting the Oilers to put other uniquely Tulsa entities’ names in lights.

The sheer game-by-game variety of highlighted clubs, corporations and causes properly reflects the adage of no two hockey games being carbon copies. Just as appropriately, it meshes with the definition of daily Double-A hockey business.

“Minor-league sports can be tough sometimes” Adams concedes. “All our employees wear lots of hats. That is a challenge, but it is also something I love about working for the Oilers. Each day seems to include a new adventure of some sort.”

But at least two of the adventurers have spent this century symbiotically ensuring each other at least one familiar face.

“I don’t know what it is like to have a job without Amy by my side,” Adams said.

“She knows me better than most people,” Henderson reciprocates. “We have shared so many of the best and worst of life experiences. I don’t know what I would do without her.”

Camil Blanchet’s big impact on a small campus

 (Photo courtesy of Bowdoin Athletics)

 

Bowdoin senior forward Camil Blanchet has a lot on his plate while at school. He played every men’s hockey game this season for the Polar Bears, and had been playing lacrosse as well.

Statistically speaking, Blanchet’s contributions have been modest on the ice. He tallied 32 points over 85 games, and only broke double-digit points in one season with 13 as a sophomore. After that same year, he left the lacrosse team, having appeared in a mere nine games and scooped up nine ground balls.

But besides the rigors of playing a sport and being a full-time student, Blanchet has been very active doing charity work in his community. That constant overtime presence has had a can’t-miss impact. To that point, Blanchet is one of five finalists for the 2018 Hockey Humanitarian Award.

Name a Bowdoin-sanctioned service project, and chances are Blanchet has taken part. His leadership qualities have manifested themselves through his liaising role between the campus’ community-service office and his peers. He has allies with the Polar Bears football team to raise funds for cancer research. And he enlisted hockey roster-sized group of volunteers for a multi-charity half-marathon (Race the Runway) and a leadership training program (Breaking the Bubble).

The McKeen Common Good Center sees Blanchet’s shadow at a rate that rivals any classroom or athletic facility on campus. McKeen helps students connect with the community of Brunswick, Maine, and encourages them to volunteer and help the relationship between the school and the town.

Blanchet was drawn to this aspect of the Bowdoin experience when he was a candidate for admission. And now that all of his competitive athletic endeavors are behind him, community involvement will join his studies as the one aspect that will fill every week of his tenure there.

Pucks and Recreation recently got the chance to speak with Blanchet about his charity work.

How and when did you first hear about the McKeen Common Good Center?

In my application to Bowdoin, one of the essays explained the history of the McKeen Center and what they currently do. One of the first big events of the school year isn’t a football game, it’s Common Good Day. This is a day when over 500 students, faculty and staff participate in community-building activities around the greater Brunswick area one Saturday afternoon. That was my first direct interaction with the McKeen Center.

What was the fundraiser you worked on with the football team?

The football team was selling neon-pink long-sleeve shirts in a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. A group of representatives from the Breaking the Bubble initiative wanted to expand the fundraiser and have our respective teammates participate. It was pretty easy to order more shirts. The football team raised the majority of the final donation. Getting other teams involved and supporting the fundraiser was a cool thing to see.

 (Photo courtesy of Bowdoin Athletics)

 

Can you describe the Breaking the Bubble initiative and who all you have been working with there?

Breaking a Bubble is an attempt to connect the various work that athletic teams do throughout the year with the work that the McKeen Center does. The McKeen Center has developed strong relationships with the greater Brunswick community, and has resources to support students working with the community in any capacity. It only makes sense to connect teams with the plethora of resources and experience that the McKeen Center provides.

How did you get involved with Race the Runway?

I heard about Race the Runway through the McKeen Center. It was a featured event that requested race-day volunteers. I thought it was a good opportunity for the team to give back to a community that is so supportive of us at the hockey rink. I reached out to a Race the Runway representative who works at Mid Coast Hospital and told her about our interest. It worked out to be a beautiful Saturday in the spring.

How did you hear about all of these events? Was it difficult to initially get involved with them at a smaller school (roughly 1,800 students enrolled) like Bowdoin?

It was never hard to hear about the various events that are happening. There is a school-wide email listing the week’s events, posters and, most importantly, word of mouth. As a student here, you always hear about events that are going on. It’s really about how much time you have and what you want to do.

Have you taken any courses offered by the Center?

As part of starting Breaking the Bubble, all of the student-representatives went through a formal training process with the McKeen Center. This leadership training covered the basics, like how to access different resources on campus to things like how to effectively lead a trip and ensure participants are realizing the value of their work.

Through the McKeen Center, have you ever considered going abroad on a service trip?

I have certainly considered it, but I also knew that it wasn’t likely. With hockey taking up Thanksgiving, winter and possibly March break every year, the only possible time for a service trip was in the summer. I volunteered in Rwanda at the Rwanda Biomedical Center the summer after my sophomore year, so I have had a similar type experience.

What are the best aspects of the McKeen Center?

I’m always impressed by the McKeen Center staff and how approachable they are. The people who work here, both staff and students, are always receptive to new ideas and willing to help. They are very responsive to what students want to do. Rather than create their own agenda, they support what the student has a passion for. Another amazing aspect about the McKeen Center is the breadth of programs that they offer.

For a school as small as Bowdoin, it is incredible to have the types of community engagement opportunities that we do.

- Zach Green

Lauren Spring: ‘Hope is a really powerful tool’

 Photos courtesy of OSU Athletics

 



Lauren Spring did one better than obey an admonishing adage. Even in the context of helping those in need, she did not peer down at her beneficiaries. On the contrary, she literally looked up to them.

She did this in the midst of fitting children for much-needed footwear. She did this while rinsing the feet that had long lacked sturdy shoes, if any shoes.

Together with 10 of her fellow Ohio State student-athletes, she took these steps to ensure cozier and confident steps for impoverished Ecuadorian youth. By her estimate, the Buckeyes brought and distributed 800 pairs over a five-day visit last May. (In a diary on the OSU athletics website, one of her project colleagues, fencer Natalie Falkowski, counted 857.)

Being the Buckeyes’ lone hockey representative in a conglomeration of 10 athletic teams, Spring was naturally primed for humble takeaways.

“Seeing how just a small gesture…can put such a smile on a young child’s face just really puts things in perspective,” she offered last week in a phone chat with Pucks and Recreation.

A senior forward for the Buckeye women, Spring bears the portfolio of a depth contributor on the ice. She just finished the regular season 10th on the team with 11 points on the year. Or, to put that another way, she is one of 10 OSU skaters to have cracked the double-digit point plateau.

Patience paying off is another motif transcending her two worlds. As an underclassman, she witnessed back-to-back coaching changes as Nate Handrahan and Jenny Potter were dismissed in successive years. Her third Buckeye bench boss, Nadine Muzzerall, took the team through growing pains in a sub-.500 2016-17 campaign.

But the program has accelerated its resurgence this winter to the tune of a 21-9-4 regular-season record. An at-large bid to the NCAA tournament or an automatic bid via the WCHA playoff crown — all of which would be program firsts — are tantalizing possibilities.

Meanwhile, Spring is up for individual hardware as one of five finalists for the 2018 Hockey Humanitarian Award. As the first OSU women’s player to achieve this status since Jody Heywood in 2008, she has drawn national publicity through her extra-mile mentality in community service.

“There are times where you’ve had a long day or had a long week,” she conceded. “With school and our sports, we have a lot on our plate. But I think it’s important to suck it up sometimes and get out there and help others. It can teach you a lot about yourself, and you always walk away feeling like you made a difference in someone’s life.”

The HHA’s official press release made a passing reference to Meals on Wheels as one of Spring’s initiatives with her fellow pucksters. But the Buckeyes’ annual multi-sport, international journey on behalf of Soles4Souls is the meat of her candidacy.

Whether that pushes her above her four fellow finalists will become apparent April 6 at the Men’s Frozen Four. First things first, assuming Muzzerall’s squad stays on its trajectory, it will nab one or more March milestones between the boards. If it does, those achievements for Spring and her senior classmates will lend an element of symmetry to her 2017-18 academic year.

 

OSU’s community service all-stars

If each school year or hockey season begins once its predecessor ends, then the start of last summer set a tone for a line of long-awaited gratification in Spring’s OSU swan song. Of joining the school’s Soles4Souls alliance, she said she “had been interested in doing something…for a while now.”

Born in the successive wakes of the 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, the Tennessee-based Soles4Souls equips underprivileged domestic and global communities. It accepts monetary donations as well as shipments of new or used footwear, the latter of which is repurposed.

But Spring craved the charity’s most personal option for involvement. She could not help but catch wind of OSU’s constant commitment to the cause, as then-teammate Alex LaMere went to Costa Rica for it in 2015. Another batch of Buckeyes represented the organization in a journey to Jamaica following her sophomore year. Later that summer, one more selected group made the same mission to Bolivia.

With Ecuador, the fourth time was Spring’s time this past May.

“I was super grateful I was one of those that got chosen,” she said.

Besides Spring, the 2017 Ecuador excursion included two football players plus one apiece from women’s basketball, women’s fencing, men’s gymnastics, men’s soccer, women’s soccer, men’s swimming and women’s volleyball. It was an oft-overlooked form of diversity she had long wanted to explore.

“That was close to my other favorite part of the trip,” she said. “We do our best to reach out and get involved with other student-athletes, to get out of our comfort zone.”

Barely two weeks removed from the academic year, Spring and her new OSU teammates gelled through an enhanced road trip. On May 11, they connected through Atlanta, where they had four hours of bonding in the busiest airport on Earth.

Once they set down their final leg and returned to ground transportation, the scenery solidified their motivation. The potential in the Ecuadorian people was evident enough, but so was the shortage of prerequisite needs. Through rides as long as four hours each way to each spot on the itinerary, the scenery seldom changed.

“Ecuador as a whole was all in poverty,” Spring recalled. “To see that constantly was really eye-opening."

Stepping outside to meet the locals at a given journey’s end was a more heartening revelation. On the group’s first day of service, Spring made a new kind of forward troika with the aforementioned fencer Falkowski and All-Midwest midfielder Nikki Walts. With each child’s shoe size established, they dug for matches in their inventory.

“It was hard work,” she offered, “but it was the most rewarding hard work that anybody could ever do.”

The subsequent work-play pattern was, most naturally, anything but foreign either. Once their young hosts were properly equipped, the Buckeyes engaged them in basketball, soccer and volleyball.

For Spring, originally from Kelowna, B.C., the lack of blades and frozen water to put them to was a second-nature sacrifice. This mission was bigger than the game that has defined her upbringing and participation in OSU athletics. But more recent developments have illuminated the chances of bringing winter sports to Ecuador and vice versa.

Getting the wheels rolling

Back in her study-skate vortex nine months after her mission, Spring absorbed a timely and intriguing revelation. With cross-country skier Klaus Jungbluth in Pyeongchang, Ecuador has its first native child in the Winter Olympics.

“I did not know that,” Spring admitted when the subject came up last week. “That’s very, very cool.”

Not so surprisingly, Jungbluth is a comprehensive cosmopolitan. Through his various athletic and professional journeys, he has become fluent in Czech, English, German, Italian and Norwegian.

But even in his Hispanophone homeland, Jungbluth has resorted to roller skis for sustained training. He often does the same in Australia, where he is still working toward a degree in sports science.

Having spearheaded the prerequisite establishment of an Ecuadorian skiing federation and passed the trial, Jungbluth is serious about solidifying a foundation. Prior to the Games, he told Australia’s ABC News, “I think what I’ve tried to do here is to set an example that if you want to achieve a goal, even if it’s difficult or its very far away, you just have to keep trying. That’s an example I want to set for my family, and my kids, but also for the people pursuing a sport in Ecuador.”

Could more roller skis and their ice-skating alternative cousin thus be in the country’s future? Spring knows that the necessary “pride” is there, and added that Jungbluth’s groundbreaker “speaks volumes for that individual.”

And while no stand-ins for skates, pucks or twigs entered the equation on her Ecuadorian expedition, her presence may resonate. It certainly does not hurt that staffers from the Nashville Predators also paid a Soles4Souls visit there in 2017.

Regardless, the mere word of Jungbluth’s travails through Europe, Australia and Asia could widen several avenues for his young countrypeople. The new soles from without will allow one to exert the newly inspired soul within.

And if Spring, as part of the assortment of athletic visitors from yet another land, can add more to those tangible and intangible necessities, she will take even an uncredited tertiary assist on the play.

“Hope is a really powerful tool,” she said. “With athletes from all different sports going there, it gives people a lot of hope. It can be extremely powerful, it could definitely be a motivator for a lot of those children. You would hope for that for sure.”

Spring intends to stay in Columbus and pursue a career as a physical education teacher. But she is not relinquishing her takeaways or connections from her coveted Soles4Souls stint.

“In the big picture, all children are the same,” she said. “Whenever I have the opportunity to help a kid grow and learn and become successful, whether it’s a small thing like they figure out how to tie their shoes that day or to jump a little bit higher, I take it.

“That’s the kind of impact any educator wants to have on their students. I think we did that while we were in Ecuador.”

Selfless service characterizes Sidney Peters

(Photo by Eric Miller/Gopher Athletics)

 

During the winter months, college hockey players rarely have enough time to sleep. With rigorous academic work, a long season and extracurricular endeavors, they must balance multiple responsibilities.

The offseason provides more opportunities for players to explore interests outside hockey. For Minnesota women’s goaltender Sidney Peters, this has amounted to countless miles traveled and countless hours of community service.

With some of the places those miles have taken her, Peters has seen the meaning of resourcefulness in a more profound light.

In the 2016 offseason, Peters worked in the Hospital Bernard Mev’s, Haiti’s only critical-care and trauma hospital as well as its only newborn and pediatric intensive care unit. She spent eight days in this hospital assisting with stabilizing and treating patients. She splinted broken bones, dressed wounds, performed CPR and learned how to suture.

“This was my first trip outside the country related to my interest in medicine,” she told Pucks and Recreation. “This trip put me in a different mindset to learn and serve others. It helped me appreciate the resources and opportunities that the United States can afford.

“Sometimes we can take for granted what we have. In Haiti, they don’t have the same finances to meet their healthcare needs. There were four beds and one wheelchair in this whole hospital. I also had to think twice about using something like gauze because you never knew who would come into the hospital next.

“We had to make do with what we had. It was heartbreaking at times to see the lack of money or resources that Haiti did not have.”

For her part in healing those physical and emotional wounds, Peters is now formally on appreciation’s receiving end. Recently, the 2018 Hockey Humanitarian Awardcommittee narrowed its list of finalists to five. Peters was among the remaining contenders for the prize presented to college hockey’s “finest citizen” for leadership in community service.

“It is a huge honor to be a top-five finalist for this award,” she said. “This award is pretty special because it recognizes people outside hockey and shows that we are not just athletes. A big part of my life is volunteering, and it is a special feeling to be considered one of the top five finalists for this honor.”

Since the Illinois native arrived in Minneapolis in 2013, she has devoted herself to serving others. That impulse shows in her major in kinesiology and her hopes of attending medical school and later working in the Air Force. 

“I love learning about the human body because there is always more to learn,” she said. “I love working with people and building relationships with them."

This passion sparked Peters’ involvement as a campus EMT. In 2015, she joined the rapid-response team that volunteers to support the university on weekends when its facilities host collegiate or professional sports, concerts, conventions and graduations.

Less than a year later, her work as an EMT led her on a trip with Project Medishare. The American nonprofit strives to support and improve healthcare services in Haiti by donating human resources, technology and medical supplies.

Upon returning from her trip, Peters learned many lessons that she incorporate into her future career goals. 

“My trip to Haiti was powerful, terrifying, and wonderful all at once because I had the chance to serve people who were even more uncomfortable and scared than I was,” she said in a Gophers release. “It takes courage not to run the other way when you encounter the pressure of being responsible for someone else's life, but it is the best feeling in the world knowing that you were there to take care of them when they couldn't take care of themselves.”

Since then, Peters has recommitted herself to getting involved in healthcare to serve people. Meanwhile, she has spent the last two hockey seasons getting rewarded for her equal devotion on the ice.

As a fifth-year senior, Peters is already a two-time national champion. She has appeared in 75 games with a career record of 49-14-6. After serving as current Buffalo Beauts netminder Amanda Leveille’s backup, she led the Gophers to a 2017 Frozen Four berth.

Even with that much demand from the Gophers, Peters does not limit her on-ice energy to competition. Back home in Chicago, she volunteers as a goalie coach with Hockey Ministries International. This organization offers camps combining a love of Christ and a love of hockey.

In Minnesota, Peters volunteers with HopeKids, Special Olympics Minnesota and the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital, among many other organizations. Of those experiences, she fondly remembers the first in particular.

“HopeKids is an organization that supports kids with life-threatening illnesses,” she explained to Pucks and Rec.

“There is an event held each year called Hope Day, which is a big event at the football stadium. It is a highlight of the year because we play games with the kids. I am grateful for days like these because it shows that you can choose joy in the midst of adversity. This day and my other service experiences have changed my perspective on a lot of things.”

With two regular-season games left on Minnesota’s slate, then another high-expectation playoff run, Peters’ transition to med school is imminent. But her love for service remains as strong as ever, due in part to her strong spiritual life.

“I think my faith in God has taught me the value of love and serving others,” she reflected. “It is so important to get involved in your community. We have been given a lot, and I hope that I can continue to spread love and way that I can.”

- John Morton

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

For Eric Lindquist, the ice is right with Worcester Railers HC

Photo by Rich LeBlanc

Eric Lindquist likes to be a full-fledged human on the job. He is not the mere eyes and ears of the Worcester Railers HC. And he will certainly not settle for the limitations of being a disembodied voice from above.

No, the Massachusetts- and California-seasoned sportscaster must move about his workspace, taking his audience with him. Families on hand and in the Railers network lean on him as a pivotal infotainer.

“There are 20 sets of parents listening to their sons play,” he told Pucks and Recreation. “It’s a long season, and calling X’s and O’s game in and game out can get a little tiresome and stale.”

So he animates the real-time chronicles the easy way — by living the game-night experience himself. During media timeouts at the DCU Center, while the ice-level laborers slug down sports drinks, he sneaks slurps of small talk in the stands.

At intermission, he savors longer helpings of the same while stretching his legs on the concourse. When the Railers score, he can and will reach out for high-fives with perfect strangers.

Sometimes, before any of that, he dons another metaphorical hat while guests are asked to doff their lids. He ventures from his perch within the seating bowl and enters the spotlight to perform the national anthem.

It is a welcome reversion for a man who prefers making his money and memories in an interactive manner. As the adage goes, caring means sharing. Depending on the setting and situation, Lindquist cares with creativity. He shares his experience and enthusiasm where appropriate — home — and divvies the details like a tourism guru on the road.

“I’m a fan, bottom line,” he said. “I want to be able to share what a hot dog tastes like in a visiting arena. What it’s like in the press box. What the fans are like. Where to get lunch in a certain city.

“I might not be the smoothest when it comes to play-by-play, but I think people recognize my energy.”

His five employers in his minor-league broadcasting career should expect nothing less. After all, Lindquist has obtained the most pizzazz on his resume by competing on game shows defined by contagious energy.

As a young teen, Lindquist fulfilled a dream by appearing on Wheel of Fortune, where he won a whopping $60,000. Later, while working at a Los Angeles sports agency, he won The Price Is Right’s Showcase Showdown. In all, his various stints in Southern California yielded 11 onstage game- or reality-show appearances.

“That’s generally the first thing anybody wants to talk about,” he said of subsequent sportscasting job interviews. “It’s kind of helped me in a strange way to be able to do what I’m doing.”

He could easily say the reverse as well. A North Andover, Mass., native who got his start as a student-broadcaster at Northeastern University, Lindquist calls a sport that requires swiveling heads and open-ended expectation. Anything can take a twist before or during game time (or show time). Accordingly, anyone’s agenda for the day can be altered on the fly.

Lindquist’s initial post-college dabbling in L.A. coincided with the birth and boom of reality TV. With his Showcase Showdown victory, he had cemented his name on the scene at and around CBS Television City. He was part of the pipeline that game-show and reality-show agents go picking at in a pinch.

“Like any other business, everyone sort of knows everyone,” Lindquist explained.

Odds are Lindquist’s affinity for sports made his name jump to precipitate one of his stranger improvisational experiences. While his penchant for pucks has defined his career, he admits he knows little about ball games. (Although he later did broadcast Lowell Spinners baseball for a time.)

Yet one morning, a representative from a dating show called to inquire about serving as a stand-in.

“‘But you have to pretend you know how to play tennis,’” Lindquist remembers being told. “I don’t think I picked up a racket once in my life,” he added with a chuckle.

Nonetheless, he got to the studio, got into uniform and got into character.

And when he was not letting cameras and makeup fall on him, Lindquist granted others a flicker of fame. When his tenure in sports agency “didn’t work out,” he tried working as a casting director for Fox reality programs.

The itch for ice, however, eventually resurged. When the AHL’s Lowell Lock Monsters dangled his first chance to return to the Bay State and broadcasting, Lindquist bit.

He has since made two more end-to-end moves each way. Before the Railers, he called the ECHL’s Long Beach Ice Dogs (2006-07) and AHL’s Worcester Sharks (2007-15) and San Jose Barracuda (2015-17).

The one season in Long Beach coincided with Bob Barker’s 35th and final year of hosting The Price Is Right. The coincidence made for a rare and timely joining of Lindquist’s passions.

As a team-building exercise, he led a 45-minute journey back to his old glorious haunts at CBS Television City. Leading scorer Ash Goldie even answered the coveted “Come on down!” call, though he did not advance beyond the podium.

Back out east, Lindquist occasionally experiments with game-show-inspired activities to keep players loose or humanize them before the fans. He has variously drawn inspiration from the defunct Three’s A Crowd and the time-honored Family Feud.

Of the latter, he recounted, “That didn’t work too well. Guys were cheating.”

Otherwise, in the past 14 years, he has at least put his formal game-show involvement on hold. With that said, he is always open to an eventual stint on Big Brother, Survivor or The Amazing Race.

For now, he expectedly watches from the living room with more-informed-than-average eyes. Just don’t expect him to revisit the grounds he has already covered.

Since Barker retired, Lindquist has eschewed The Price Is Right. When reached by Pucks and Rec, he hinted at giving Wheel the same treatment when Pat Sajak and Vanna White pass their torch. He fears the flavor of the shows may take a turn for the ’80s Coca-Cola formula after that much upheaval.

“I kind of like the old-school mentality,” he said, adding that he has a similar view of his beloved sport.

“I’ve always been a big fan of the hockey fight and the physical aspect of the sport. Not tradition, but things in the way that I enjoyed it or how I remember it.

“I’m not saying I don’t want change, but I grew up in the mid-’90s with Bob Probert, Tie Domi, Lyndon Byers, Chris Nilan. That’s what got me into hockey. I want to get back to how I grew up with it.”

As it happens, per hockeyfights.com, the Railers have engaged in 28 fisticuffs through their first 39 games. This past weekend, leading pugilist Yanick Turcotte engaged Wheeling counterpart Jeremy Beirnes twice in as many days.

Conversely, at that same mark in their schedule last season, the Barracuda had logged 18 fights. In 2015-16, San Jose recorded 22 scraps in its first 39 outings.

The ECHL yields generally chippier action than the league immediately above it. That aspect has ample company in befitting Lindquist’s move back to Worcester this past summer.

Railers HC foretold its advent in 2016, one year after the San Jose Sharks moved their AHL affiliate from Worcester to their own building. Effective a year later, Worcester’s first Double-A hockey franchise followed a self-proclaimed “cue from the European sporting club model.”

“Worcester Railers HC is introducing a new way to be part of professional hockey in North America,” says the de facto mission statement. It has already followed through by engraving the names of season-ticket holders on the backs of their respective seats. It has also spread its own name around the neighborhood without hesitation.

One block up the street from the DCU Center sits the Railers Tavern. A half-mile in the other direction will take you to the Fidelity Bank Worcester Ice Center. Opened one month before the club’s debut, the two-sheet facility also houses a restaurant, a café and a training center.

Two Division III college programs, two youth programs and Worcester Academy have all started calling the Ice Center home. There remains the question of whether the Division I Holy Cross men’s team will ultimately hop over. The added ice also allows Railers personnel to introduce beginners to the pleasures of leisure skating.

“We do have that sense that we want everyone to be a part of what’s going on,” Lindquist said.

As an outspoken, outgoing middle man between the team and fan base, Linquist suits that system. He jumped at the chance to return to Worcester after two fish-half-out-of-water campaigns with the Barracuda.

With the Railers, the 12,239-seat DCU Center wedges its radio booth between its seating bowls. As an NHL facility indefinitely sheltering the organization’s child club, San Jose isolated Linquist above its entire 17,562-spectator space.

But naturally, being a minor-league club, it never filled that cavernous coliseum. The largest audience the Barracuda drew in Lindquist’s lonely SAP Center tenure was 7,664.

“I was sitting all the way up in the ceiling, and I didn’t feel as close to the fans, the players and the action,” he recalled. “I wasn’t in my comfort zone.”

And so that Bay Area fling may be the 38-year-old’s only career stop in a major-league mansion. His return to the Double-A league after a decade in Triple-A is a step down in technical terms only.

Linqduist’s eye-catching game-show track record speaks to his poise before substantial, major-level audiences. But his success formula there of “don’t take it too seriously and don’t take yourself too seriously” also reaffirms his mutual fit with Railers HC and its “eccentric” European marketing model.

“I enjoy doing it at the ECHL level. I’ve have more fun this year,” he said. “Sometimes you kind of have more freedom in minor-league sports to have more personality.”