Taylor Willard prepared for a game change, in hockey or food science

(Photo by Brian Jenkins via UVM Athletics)

 

Taylor Willard studied, and may keep studying, in a state that lends its nickname to a popular brand of coffee.

In her future, though, the conventional kickstarter and perk-up potion for an American workday may assume positions outside drinking cups.

This past week, several outlets highlighted a study suggesting coffee’s cardiovascular benefits. That study spread one week after California regulators decided against plastering cancer-warning labels on the product’s containers.

In February, Forbes was apt to note conflicting contemporary findings regarding java’s effect on cancer risk and treatment.

The moral is no ruling is final in science, just like no lead is safe in a hockey game. That is why, if and when she applies her major in nutrition and food services from the University of Vermont to a vocation, Willard will have her head on a swivel.

“It’s always changing,” she said in a recent phone interview with Pucks and Recreation. “So it’s really hard to have a perspective on something.

“Every year something new comes out about certain food or certain nutrients. Certain fats are better for you, or not. There’s not one set thing with nutrition.”

Nor is there one set path in Willard’s post-collegiate career. Not that she is ill-equipped for the multitude of potentialities.

Coming to Vermont via suburban Chicago, Willard established herself as a playmaking two-way defender on the ice. She has a tinge of international pedigree, having represented Team USA at the 18-and-under level. And she is entering the CWHL Draft this August.

If she lands with Les Canadiennes, she would have a prime position to juggle hockey with her continued education. For now, she is favoring an extended stay in Burlington, building on the horizons she widened here.

“There’s a lot of different ways you can go with nutrition,” she said. “I knew I wanted to do something science-related.

“When I went to school, I originally went into dietetics, where you’re a dietitian and you help people with their diet. But I felt like I wanted to go broader.”

Fostering a finer grasp on the ever-evolving studies on food safety and resultant recommended regulations hit home. One of the many doorstops Willard has whipped out props open the threshold to medical school.

Photo courtesy of Taylor Willard

 

Without any prompting, she explained how that possible path became personal.

“I always really wanted to be a doctor or nurse, or just be in the hospital to help people in general,” she said. “Nutrition is a very key part of that. I could work on nutrition in a hospital setting.

“For example, I thought about going into oncology a lot…cancer affects a lot of people.”

Her voice briefly broke when she added, “my dad actually passed away from cancer.”

Through her father’s experience, Willard witnessed the ongoing, universal, team-oriented push for better survival and recovery rates among cancer patients. Besides the emotion of her father’s memory, she has her education to bring to her role in the battle.

“When you’re on chemo, you can’t eat certain things,” she noted. “There is hospital food, obviously, but sometimes hospital food isn’t the best option.”

When the time comes to devote the majority of her time to food science, Willard will have her chance to influence an improved breadth and quality of options. Whether she stays at UVM or latches elsewhere, she is presently eyeing a master’s degree in nutrition.

The legacy of another dearly-missed figure, one from her sport’s extended family, will be attached to that endeavor. Through her academic prowess, on-ice performance and community involvement, Willard garnered this year’s Sarah Devens Award.

Open to women’s players in Hockey East and the ECAC, the award memorializes a former three-sport star at Dartmouth. Devens was dubbed “the Devil” in the most endearing context for her fastidious drive to better herself and, by extension, her teams. She was a plugger in the classroom, defying any real or perceived assertions that she was below Ivy League caliber.

Of her personal appeal, then-Dartmouth field hockey coach Julie Dayton once told Sports Illustrated, “It seemed she was everyone’s older sister.” Those in ostensibly thankless positions always felt her thanks through her gestures.

Author Sonja Steptoe added, “She would have lunch with someone she met at the rink after a game, drop off a bag of caramel cremes to Dayton, visit a friend in the hospital, mail a gag gift and fire off a dozen E-mail messages--all between classes and practices.”

When Devens took her own life in 1995, attendance at her funeral came close to the thousands. One season later, the ECAC inaugurated the award in her name for “leadership and commitment both on and off the ice.”

Since six programs seceded to create Hockey East in 2002, the award has applied to both conferences. Although Willard is only the second WHEA player to win it, breaking up an ECAC dynasty that started after Karen Thatcher of Providence prevailed in 2006.

She is also among the first Devens Award winners whose life did not overlap with Devens herself.

More than two weeks after her selection, Willard’s struggle for words evoked the prize’s namesake.

“I’m just really honored to be recognized and chosen for this award between both conferences,” she said. “I know it’s a big honor to have. From everything I’ve heard and read, Sarah Devens was just an amazing athlete and person. I’m just honored to be chosen for this award.”

Photo courtesy of Taylor Willard

 

The Devens Award yields $10,000 toward the recipient’s continuing education. With that aid, as she breaks out of her zone, Willard sees the passing lanes proliferating.

The best news may be that this game offers more time for a scenic route toward her ultimate goal.

“I have a lot of different things that I feel like I want to do,” Willard admits. “I would want to work in a hospital, but I have a love for hockey still.”

A part of Vermont’s leadership structure as a junior and senior, Willard would not rule out a college coaching job. But the comparatively finite nature of a playing career has her seeking and savoring every sip of that cup.

“You’re never too old to coach,” she reasoned, “so I want to keep playing for right now.”

Still, an assistant assignment behind the bench would sustain her blended brew of studying and skating.

“Being a coach at the collegiate level, I could always get my degree while I’m coaching,” Willard said.

Ah, yes, the master’s in nutrition, and every avenue that unlocks. Once she steps in there, much like in her sport, she will be primed to expect the unexpected and adjust on the fly.

But whatever her vocation and task, Willard will want to be all-in all the time. Missing a commitment, particularly a practice or contest, was always a taboo setback from beginners’ to Burlington.

That adamancy paid off in shaping her legacy at UVM. A mild injury barred her from playing in the 2017-18 season opener. Otherwise, she dressed every night as a Catamount, joining classmate Amanda Drobot with a new career program record of 145.

“Growing up playing hockey, and also in college, any athlete learns time management,” she said.

“That really helps in the real world too. You still have to manage your time with your job and then also with real life, with possibly family.

“And then, being a captain for two years at UVM really taught me how to be a leader, work on my communication skills. Just developing as a person and handling the responsibility factor.

“College hockey is a lot like a job. It’s a fun job to have, of course. But you still have to make sure you’re showing up every day and giving everything 100 percent. Otherwise, you’re not doing your jobs the way you should be.”

Jobs, plural? Better keep the Green Mountain pot brewing. That is assuming Willard and company’s educated findings keep coffee’s green light shining.

South Carolina Stingrays at 25: Secrets of the ECHL’s longest-running brand

Photo credit: South Carolina Stingrays

 

The South Carolina Stingrays have long zapped the platitude of a “non-traditional hockey market.” But beyond that, they have outlasted all of the other ECHL mainstays, including those in Northern markets. Their unique formula lies largely in catering to a champion community for natives, tourists and transplants.

The blurb in the visitor’s guide at a North Charleston hotel room started with the obligatory, albeit cliché, Q-A combination.

“Hockey in the South? You bet.”

The rest of the text used its limited space for a fundamental explanation of who the South Carolina Stingrays were. Most guests might have overlooked it, but exceptions did not even need it.

The date was Tuesday, March 18, 2003. Two tourists were heading south for spring break, and North Charleston was their last overnight stop. As it happened, the Stingrays game would the crux of their evening in town.

That had been their plan coming in. These out-of-towners were heading to Florida, but first went out of their way to see how Low Country did hockey. They had looked for it, which was strange considering the organization’s most influential figures had admittedly not when they came.

Yet by this time, the Stingrays were celebrating their 10th season as an ECHL franchise. They were looking like a refreshing mark of stability in the ever-volatile minor-league hockey landscape.

Of course, the average sightseer could have been forgiven for not having the slightest idea. Most people passing through the city on their own brief getaway who decided to check out that night’s action would have been startled.

“It’s a football region,” admits Rob Concannon, who last played in 2003 and has been the team president since 2010. “But it seems like the interest in hockey picks up in December.”

“As the season goes on,” he continued in his recent interview with Pucks and Recreation, “more people come out.”

Even with the 2003 playoffs looming, there were stark challenges selling tickets to this particular game. Perhaps topping that list was that it was on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Debates swirled in every circle of the sports world over whether continued competition was appropriate back home. But like everyone else, the ECHL heeded the government’s encouragement and carried on, officially stating its intent the next day.

No official attendance record is readily available, but enough would-be attendees were convinced to come out. The crowd easily eclipsed 3,000 in the 10,000-seat North Charleston Coliseum for the Stingrays-Peoria Rivermen matchup.

The visitors surmounted a 3-0 deficit, making good on a mid-game goalie change to seize a 4-3 shootout victory. But the Stingrays’ early assertiveness on the scoreboard invigorated the audience. So did the scraps, one of which reportedly clocked in at two minutes and 10 seconds. That’s 10 seconds longer than a minor power play with no stoppages.

The cheering for the home squad’s regulation goals, shootout strikes and interspersed fights left one’s ears momentarily ringing back in the hotel.

That was none too shabby for a mid-level minor-league hockey game. All the more impressive for a weeknight when surely not everyone was on spring break.

Still more outstanding for a nonconference matchup with a team from western Illinois. Peoria could hardly expect to draw the same animosity or anticipation as Augusta, Columbia or Greenville that year.

And yes, not bad for a “non-traditional hockey market.” But really, given the other factors, it was not bad for any speck on the map.

Fast-forward 15 years. The ECHL is twice as old now as it was then, and only five of its teams from 2002-03 have stuck.

For their part, the Stingrays have cemented an unprecedented distinction. They just finished the formalities of playing 25 consecutive seasons under the league’s banner, all with the same moniker.

Wheeling has fielded the same franchise for 27 years, but it has assumed two identities as the Thunderbirds and Nailers. Meanwhile, Toledo’s team has logged a quarter-century of ECHL play, but that run was disrupted by a two-year dormancy. The Toledo Storm dissipated after 16 seasons in 2007, resurfacing as the Walleye in 2009.

A handful of other brands currently in the league have a longer uninterrupted tenure than the Stingrays. But the Fort Wayne Komets, Kalamazoo Wings, Tulsa Oilers and Wichita Thunder sought ECHL auspices when other Double-A leagues caved in.

South Carolina stands alone as an ECHL original that liked what it was doing from the start. North Charleston is one of the few bona fide coastal markets in the circuit formerly known as the East Coast Hockey League. Next season, Jacksonville, Norfolk and Portland will be the only others.

But South Carolina especially represents a throwback to the league’s origins. It also typifies the ECHL’s rise to prominence above all leagues of its level.

“It’s one of those places where guys want to play,” said Concannon.

Concannon is living proof, being one of 10 men to have skated in all or part of six or more seasons in North Charleston. Six others have stuck around or returned for five. Another 15 logged four.

In either a matter-of-fact or detracting manner, some pundits assert that warmer-climate leanings have upset the NBA’s balance of power. Cleveland and Golden State aside, recent memory has seen superstars prefer Florida, Texas or Southern California. The pool of contenders and scroll of champions reads accordingly. Only six of the last 20 titles have gone to “cold-weather” cities since Michael Jordan left Chicago.

But when the ECHL was taking shape, it built its nucleus around North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. The Stingrays, who were almost the Sharks until San Jose’s NHL team stole their thunder, were the first South Carolina-based team.

As Concannon reflected, the fledgling league was indistinguishable from other Double-A unions around the continent. It was far from the definitive training ground for NHL prospects not ready for the AHL that it is today.

As such, building teams hinged far less on affiliations. The front office could sell the city of Charleston at will. That measure of autonomy compared to the American League was itself a selling point for the club’s ownership group.

Through a Stingrays spokesperson, Concannon and team office manager Julie Thoennes concurred “that there are a lot of great things about Charleston. The city is consistently voted highly as one of the top cities to visit in the US and in the world.

“There’s great golfing year-round, the local beaches, excellent food from restaurants in addition to great nightlife. For those same reasons, a lot of our players’ girlfriends and significant others enjoy staying here.”

Perhaps due to infectious hockey humility, they left out one jutting detail. Per an annual reader’s survey in Travel + Leisure, Charleston is the five-time defending champion among top U.S. cities. Last July, it was also deemed the second most-attractive town in the world.

Even today, as partners of the Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals, the Rays round out their roster with independent players. The nightlife and no need to wait to hit the links until the offseason can still hook key cogs.

It is a continuation of a marriage built on once-hidden compatibility.

Sticking out and going all-in

Hockey in the South?

At this point, around here, to elicit the “non-traditional hockey market” label is to sting a dead seahorse.

Even at their inception, though, the Stingrays were debunking the doubts. They were an instant hit at the brand-new Coliseum, and ticket sales buried some behind-the-scenes stumbles with ice chips.

Jon C. Stott’s 2006 book, Hockey Night in Dixie, devotes a substantial section to South Carolina. D.J. Church, the team’s first equipment manager, confessed to Stott he had never heard of a skate sharpener before joining the Stingrays.

Church later left the team, only to return when they needed a new athletic trainer. As he explained in the book, “I was the only one they had with any hockey experience.”

That didn’t mean no one wanted their first hockey experience. The Stingrays’ attendance means for its first two seasons were 9,151 and 8,589, respectively.

Playing their inaugural home game on a Saturday, the Stingrays drew 9,363 ticketholders. More than a few had surely already gotten a weekend sports fix through homestretch high-school football, the Gamecocks or Clemson. But they craved some shaved ice for dessert.

According to Stott, South Carolina’s second season opener also fetched a crowd north of 9,000. And Church noticed that novice spectators took a shine to the game for its reminiscence of NASCAR.

“They liked the hitting and the noise,” he told Stott.

More seasoned spectators displaced from Northern states, now living at nearby military forts, added quantity and quality to the crowds. But pure-bred Palmetto Staters, especially those who worked for the team, needed to lean on local pride. And maybe a little happenstance.

Thoennes is the lone Stingrays employee who has witnessed their entire quarter-century. She started as an administrative assistant, then wore several other lids on her rise to office manager. The team enshrined her in its hall of fame in 2011.

But if not for a timely stride across the great pond and one shot yielding a rebound, it all may never have happened.

“I never actually applied to any job with the Stingrays,” Thoennes confessed to Pucks and Rec. “My husband and I had just moved back from Germany in 1993, and I was sending out resumes, looking for a job.

“One of the jobs I had applied to was no longer available. But they forwarded my resume on to the Stingrays, who called me and said they were interested.”

The interest was mutual, and Thoennes has inevitably embodied the club-community dynamic with her daily presence at the Coliseum. Her current profile lists among her tasks, “accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll and the day-to-day responsibilities of the front office.” Moreover, “she assists the team’s coaching staff with player operations which include worker’s compensation and immigration issues.”

“Julie’s not a flashy person,” Concannon said. “She’s very loyal and very, very proud of the accomplishments of the team. I don’t think the team would be here if it wasn’t for Julie.

“She’s the one who understands the ins and outs. She’s not only helped me, but whenever we transition to another coach, assistant coach or office staff, she’s the one we go to for guidance.

“Her kids grew up going to the games, and she’s been instrumental in continuing our tradition.”

The framework and philosophy that fostered the tradition came from another unlikely source. At their inception, the Stingrays were owned by Jerry Zucker, an Israeli-born businessman and philanthropist.

By the time the team came, the Zucker family had been a Charleston-area staple for 15 years. There is now a North Charleston science-specific middle school and several local charity events in Jerry’s name.

But having moved from Zucker’s wife, Anita’s, native Florida, they were a quintessential “non-traditional” hockey ownership group. Except their exemplary presence around the city matched the sport’s principles of humility and selflessness.

When Jerry died of brain cancer in 2008, then-Stingrays president Darren Abbott fondly recalled his approach in the Charleston Post & Courier.

“First and foremost,” Abbott told the paper, “he really wanted everybody in the organization to be community-driven.”

Not every member of the organization got to know Zucker on a significant personal level. But everyone who was with the team for its 2008 playoff run attended his funeral.

Afterwards, Zucker’s widow, along with his son, Jonathan, retained majority control for another decade. They expressly sustained relationships with as many players as possible, particularly those who made the area their post-hockey home. And they savored the franchise’s third Kelly Cup championship in 2009, then four additional multi-round playoff runs.

“I think the reason we’ve had such great consistency is due to our ownership,” Thoennes said. “The Zucker family gave so much to the team for so many years.”

In mid-April of this year, the family gave the team to an enthused Northeastern migrant. With his purchase, Todd Halloran has fulfilled a longtime dream of owning a hockey club. He told the local press that he had limited his horizons to familiar territory, but made an exception for the Stingrays.

Neither party in the transaction is taking many C-cuts around an uncomfortable reality. Yearly attendance has melted, never reaching the same heights as the 10th anniversary, let alone the honeymoon or sophomore seasons. In this decade, yearly averages have been more like what a single nonconference weeknight game once drew.

Still, Halloran sees the staying power of the club’s values, along with its value to the league as a signature franchise. By all accounts, he intends to keep the South Carolina Stingrays as they are, where they are.

Concannon’s conversion

Hockey in the South?

Halloran is a Connecticut resident with other business interests in New York City and Los Angeles. But like so many Stingrays players, coaches and rooters before him, he plans on being a precocious snowbird.

Per Patrick Hoff of the Charleston Regional Business Journal, Halloran said, “what happens in a market like this (Charleston) is the team takes on a greater importance. It is a team in the truest sense of the word. The popularity, the interest, isn’t in any one player or any one star, but in the team and what it brings to the community.”

The way the Rays drew Halloran in supports Concannon’s statement, “I think we’re an oragnization that people know.”

Indeed, like those two tourists in 2003, Halloran went for the Stingrays experience head-on. Yet his epiphany from afar was one Concannon needed to test two-plus decades ago.

If he had his way as a 24-year-old, Concannon would have played in North America’s most intensive hockey market. Undrafted out of Division III Salem State, the Massachusetts native pounced on an invitiation to Toronto’s training camp in 1995.

The Maple Leafs soon sent him to their AHL affiliate in Newfoundland. St. John’s, in turn, cut him, and Charleston was his next option.

Rick Vaive was entering his third season as head coach in as many years of the Stingrays’ existence. A 15-year veteran of mostly NHL play, he had started his own career in Dixie with the WHA’s Birmingham Bulls.

But try as he did to twist Concannon’s arm over the phone, Vaive had trouble spinning the southward spiral. The geographic trajectory into uncharted ground appropriately reflected the bubble-bursting sense of demotion.

“I still wasn’t sold on it,” Concannon admits, looking back.

It would have to be something he saw before he could believe it. With that said, a pair of fellow twentysomething Massachusetts transplants convinced him to give it a look.

Twin brothers Mark and Mike Bavis had played together for the Stingrays’ in 1994-95, each catching AHL breaks in the process. Mike would retire from playing after that season, but Mark came back for more. Yes, more Double-A hockey and more life in Low Country.

And even while one was leaving, the Bavis brothers collaborated on one last assist. Their pitch to Concannon effectively enabled a move that led to his current position as Stingrays president.

“They said if I go to Charleston, I’ll love it and never go home,” Concannon recalled.

To that point, Concannon played the better part of the next five seasons for the Stingrays. During his rookie campaign, he enjoyed a 20-game call-up to the St. John’s Maple Leafs. In 1999-00, he played five more AHL tilts with the Saint John Flames, under a since-promoted Vaive.

Otherwise, he stuck in South Carolina, partaking in its first Kelly Cup in 1997, among other highlights. And after one year out of state and out of the ECHL, he found himself pining for Palmetto.

“I felt like my heart was in Charleston,” he said. And officially speaking, his home has been there for the last 20 years.

In 2001-02, he came close to setting his situation right again, playing for the intrastate rival Greenville Grrrowl. But then he reached the point where being in town year-round eclipsed his desire to play.

He would suit up for all of three games in 2002-03, all with the Stingrays, before retiring in earnest. Throughout the current decade, he has run the team’s front office.

While Concannon was away, South Carolina demonstrated its two-way street of staying power under the most horrific circumstances.

Besides encouraging one of the team’s most vital on-ice figures, Mark Bavis scored 68 points in 87 games for the Stingrays. He added 10 points over 17 games in two playoff tournaments, then retired as a Ray in 1996.

Five years later, he was on the Los Angeles Kings scouting staff when he boarded United Airlines Flight 175 with colleague Ace Bailey. They had been in Boston, and were about to fly cross-country for the start of the team’s training camp.

A month after Mark died in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, South Carolina retired his No. 12 jersey. The banner bears his name and numerals, the dates of his Stingrays tenure and an American flag. The unveiling made for an evening of mixed emotions, as that home opener was also banner night for the 2001 Kelly Cup champions.

Per a team spokesman, Bavis “made a big impact here in the organization and in the community, even though he was only in Charleston for a short amount of time. He and his brother were very popular.”

No one who comes to the Coliseum will forget that. Nor will anyone with inside knowledge forget what the Zuckers, their partners and their employees have done.

“I think it’s a pretty cool achievement that, next to Wheeling, we are the longest-tenured team at the ECHL level,” Concannon offered. “We’ve had a lot of good people here who have been able to carry on that tradition on and off the ice.”

And now the new boss in town is tackling that task to begin another quarter-century. That is what every natural-born and naturalized Charlestonian hopes, and trusts.

“It’s exciting to see that Todd Halloran has lots of energy and excitement,” Thoennes said. “We’ve done really well throughout the transition.”

So, hockey in the South? Now and for a long time to come?

With Charleston, North Charleston and the Stingrays, that looks like a safe bet.

Life After Hockey: Muskegon Fury dynasty lives on at the dealership

The Muskegon Fury employed one or more of Rob Melanson, Robin Bouchard and Todd Robinson for 15 of their 16 seasons. The three contributed to one or more of the brand’s championships, combining for eight rings between them. Now they service Muskegonites as teammates – and as bona fide townspeople themselves – once again.

2002 United League playoff MVP Todd Robinson on Fury Night with the Muskegon Lumberjacks. (Photo by Derek Wong)

Muskegon’s L.C. Walker Arena is barely a five-minute stroll from Lake Michigan. Its artificial pond is practically an inlet of the lake’s basin.

The Betten Baker Chevrolet-Cadillac-GMC dealership is a mere five-minute drive straight north to the Port City Princess Cruises docks. Another 10-minute drive, tops, will take you to the town’s Lake Express terminal, where Milwaukee-bound ferries arrive and depart.

Given what is on the other side, the lake is not quite, to quote a tourism campaign, pure Michigan. After all, Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois all have a piece of the slender waterway’s borders.

But perhaps you can call it pure America. After all, it is the only one of the five Great Lakes not touching Canada.

Yet from this side, at least, it is the backdrop to a fountain of fondness for various voluntary imports from the northern neighbor. Ditto a few from overseas. They came and made things happen on the indoor pond, then decided there were more reasons to stay than their laurels.

“I’ve got my wife here, my kids,” Todd Robinson, a veteran of nine glorious seasons playing, three coaching and now eight satisfying months of auto sales in Muskegon, told Pucks and Recreation. “If hockey didn’t bring me here, none of these things would be around. I enjoy being a part of a community here.”

Muskegon is a modest mammoth of a town along Michigan’s “west coast.” Despite boasting fewer than 40,000 residents, its size eclipses the eponymous state’s other municipalities brushing the lake.

It is thus little surprise to remember that, for exactly a half-century, this was a stable minor-league hockey market. Here the original IHL’s Muskegon Zephyrs/Mohawks/Lumberjacks won four Turner Cups over a 32-year run. Afterwards, the Muskegon Fury of the Colonial/United/International League nabbed four Colonial Cups.

The pros have since given way to juniors, as they have in most medium Michigan cities. But the affectionately dubbed Skeetown’s small side lends it a magnetic grip that transcends the transition from athletic to “normal” careers.

Three maple-leaf men became mighty Muskegon men upon making Walker Arena their workplace in the 1990s and 2000s. As of the 2017-18 hockey season, they were teammates again at Betten Baker.

One former blueliner is now monitoring the bottom line as a finance manger for the dealership. Meanwhile two one-time prolific forwards are still on offense, scoring sales in the used-auto lot.

And it is safe to ascertain that neither they nor the time-laden townspeople would have it any other way. Case in point: Fury Night at the USHL’s Muskegon Lumberjacks game this past November.

The Lumberjacks averaged a respectable 2,168 fans per home game in 2017-18. But two nights after Thanksgiving, they swelled that average by nearly 50 percent to 2,917 spectators.

Surely the presence of Fury threads on the home skaters had something to do with that. Even without that element, the ceremonious presence of former Fury fan favorites had to have been the main thrust, right?

Not if you ask Robinson. Having served as a USHL Lumberjacks assistant coach the previous three seasons, he has the distinction of having participated in Muskegon hockey at both levels. So naturally and forgivably, that residual, habitual hockey humility will affect his assessment.

“It’s not fair to compare,” he cautioned in a recent phone interview.

Indeed, there are limits inherent to the junior ranks that are not enforced in the pros. As a team, and with an age-based revolving door in play, the current Lumberjacks can theoretically strive to match their forebears’ precedent. But the individuals who played the game here in the past have their own legacies.

(Photo by Derek Wong)

 

Transition made easy

Rearguard Rob Melanson began his association with Muskegon in 1991-92. One year removed from going to Pittsburgh’s pipeline in the fifth round of the NHL Draft, he was promoted from the ECHL to the Penguins’ then-IHL affiliate, the original Muskegon Lumberjacks.

After the Triple-A Lumberjacks gave way to the Double-A Fury, Melanson stuck and rode through the expansion club’s lean years to Colonial Cup contention. He left the game with one ring in 2001.

Within another 15 years, after career stops at two other dealerships, he was teammates with Robin Bouchard again. Melanson transferred from crosstown rival Great Lakes Ford in June 2016.

At 44, Bouchard is practically a player-assistant coach on a new team of 20. That is, the 20 men and women listed and pictured under the used-sales heading on the Betten Baker website. An eight-year dealership veteran, he has risen to one of his division’s two management slots.

This is the same Bouchard who logged four years as a player-assistant coach for the Muskegon Fury, including back-to-back championship runs in 2004 and 2005. Who gave all or part of 13 seasons to the Fury/Lumberjacks franchise, saturating the scoresheets in the goal, assist and penalty columns alike. Who in the twilight of his skating days reached a minor-league record career count of 683 goals, then added five more.

And who, after spending his first 20 years of existence in Quebec, has since logged more time in Muskegon. At the dusk of the previous millennium, he had spent his mid-20s forging a new relationship for the next century.

By the dawn of that century, Melanson had already cemented that adulthood adoptions and moved on to his new field. Ditto veteran Russian striker Sergei Kharin, who started working at Great Lakes Ford in 2001 and has been employed at other regional dealerships since.

Meanwhile, in 2000, the British Columbian Robinson began his own conversion from Canadian to Muskegonite. As of his first non-hockey season, he has consummated that conversion.

Make no mistake, Robinson’s arrival at Betten Baker was not in the camp of Johnny Upton’s lament, “(Expletive) Chrysler plant, here I come.” He had exhausted his energy for formal involvement in his lifelong pastime. But he knew when and where he wanted to start tapping into new pursuits.

“I was transitioning,” he said. “Trying to find something else to do so I could spend more time with my kids.”

He added, “I never had a weekend off during the winter my whole life.”

Such was the price of success and stability. Robinson’s otherworldly scoring output in major junior’s Western League never translated to staying power in the high-end professional ranks. But that production rate did translate smoothly to Double-A for 15 seasons, nine of which he spent fully or primarily in Muskegon.

Of those nine seasons, three culminated in a Colonial Cup championship. With Robinson, Bouchard and other Muskegon mainstays constantly brushing their ceiling, the Fury forged a rare modern-day minor-league dynasty.

In his crack at coaching, Robinson almost recaptured that glory. His first USHL season saw the Lumberjacks reach the Clark Cup Final. But they were swept by Sioux Falls, and have not been back since.

Today he is happy to limit his athletic involvement to volunteer coaching his daughter’s youth basketball team. Even so, his competitive streak idled no longer than the summer, just as it had for three-plus decades running. He joined the veteran Bouchard in Betten Baker’s used-sales sector this past September.

Here he had built enough familiarity with the town, the personnel and the expectations to quell any qualms about entering an uncharted line of work.

“I never really had many normal jobs,” Robinson said. “I was in the hockey world my whole life…I didn’t know a whole bunch about cars when I started.”

But Bouchard, five years Robinson’s senior in life and seven years in auto sales, “taught me the ropes.” Ditto other ex-players who preceded him in the department.

When they worked for rival dealerships, Melanson and Bouchard alike dangled a reunion with Robinson as an eventual option. It was simply the thing to do for Muskegon’s pucksters when they needed an occupation for the offseason or their next professional life. And so, in Betten Baker’s case, Robinson joined Bouchard and Melanson to complete what he calls “the trifecta.”

“There’s some similarities (to hockey),” he said. “It’s competitive. They keep a scoreboard every day.

“I’m a competitive guy. I like to win at things, and the more you put in, the more you get out.”

Determining Betten Baker’s equivalent of the Fury’s treasure trove may be just as hard as reaching it, though. The brand lasted 16 seasons, yet secured a spot on this site’s top-10 list of the greatest defunct minor-league identities.

 

Swirling state of affairs

When one rehashes minor-league hockey tales, Slap Shot references can constitute a trap of triteness. But it works too well when assessing Muskegon’s timeline.

From the sport’s pre-helmet era through the country’s Reagan/Bush years, this town was a fixture in a league one stride from The Show. The largely independent development circuit had the Zephyrs/Mohawks/Lumberjacks partaking in scores of feisty regional rivalries. At least four fellow Michigan markets — Flint, Kalamazoo, Port Huron and Saginaw — were regular dance partners most years.

With a nominal downgrade to Double-A came a similar brand of bus-league spiritedness. Many of the same cities had undergone the same change, sustaining or reviving classic feuds. And for anyone who went to a CoHL/UHL game in the ’90s or ’00s and has bothered to watch the first game scene of 2002’s Slap Shot 2, one experience likely reminds you of the other.

Then the Slap Shot franchise produced a third movie in 2008, with a new Charlestown Chiefs team playing in the junior ranks. It turned out to vaguely and inadvertently foreshadow what was to come in Muskegon.

In its 58th year of usage, Walker Arena has aged well. It began with the arrival of the Zephyrs, and has housed the city’s whole hockey story since.

Once pro gave way to junior in 2010, the building finished immersing itself in the 21st century. That summer the facility refurbished its locker and training rooms and installed a center-ice video screen to replace the old scoreboard’s rectangular LED message ticker.

The building got younger in accordance with the VIPs it puts on its pond. But with four Turner Cup and four Colonial Cup banners, its hallowed history is indispensable. As long as a given entity is synonymous with winning, it suits the snug, seasoned sports house.

Besides its revolving door of Zephyrs, Mohawks, Lumberjacks and Fury players, Muskegon can claim a few prominent hockey residents pre- and post-fame.

Native son Justin Abdelkader (born 1987) was around for the better part of the Fury dynasty. He was still attending and starring on the ice at nearby Mona Shores High School the year of the team’s third Colonial Cup victory. After one year out of state with the USHL’s Cedar Rapids Roughriders, he gradually moved eastward to Michigan State, then Detroit, where he is coming off his 11th NHL season.

Jeff Carlson — Jeff Hanson from Slap Shot — finished his playing days after the movie with parts of four seasons as a Mohawk. He subsequently settled in Skeetown for a second career as an electrician.

And with the current Lumberjacks refining aspirant collegians and NHL prospects, there can always be more to come. But no one has directly represented the city during his peak quite like Bouchard. Nor have many filled the same comparable chronicles as Melanson or Robinson.

Bouchard’s 823 games for the city trail only the 888 outings Brian McLay aggregated as a Zephyr and Mohawk. He was the lone constant through the Fury’s four championships, making him the most ring-laden puckster in Muskegon history.

Like the NHL team across the state, Muskegon’s Double-A franchise made six appearances in their league playoff final between 1995 and 2009. Uncannily enough, it too sandwiched its four championships with two runner-up statuses at the bookends.

The Fury arrived in 1992 as a replacement for the first version of the Lumberjacks, who had caught their league’s big-city bug and moved to Cleveland.

Joining the upstart Colonial League, the Fury felt their share of growing pains on the ice in the mid-’90s. They failed to advance beyond the first round of the playoffs in four out of five seasons, minus a run to the 1995 final.

Apart from one full AHL season that year and portions of three others at the next level, Melanson was a Muskegon mainstay through that time. A stay-at-home specialist, he translated his aggression to 552 penalty minutes in 117 games his first three Fury seasons. His 260 PIM fell three notches shy of the team lead in 1995-96.

Meanwhile, as a second-year pro, Bouchard led Flint with 107 points en route to the 1996 Colonial Cup. Over the subsequent Thanksgiving weekend, the Generals dealt him to the Fury. It would be one of several midseason Muskegon imports that paid maximum dividends at decade’s end.

Crowd-pleasers, though, made for one measure of instant gratification. Jeff Carlson’s onscreen and real-life brother, Steve, cited in a Slap Shot 2 featurette the two developments in a hockey team guaranteed to arouse applause. Namely, “When a goal is scored or a fight breaks out.”

Bouchard promptly brought the whole package in peerless quantities. Despite only being available for 52 of Muskegon’s 74 games in 1996-97, he placed second on the goal chart (34), fourth in points (52) and first in the penalty-minute leaderboard (220). He would start being voted most popular player in the club’s annual season-end awards regularly.

For Bouchard’s first full campaign in his new home, the league and the team transformed. The Colonial League had rebranded as the United League. The Fury added purple, then gold to their simple San Jose Sharks-like teal-and-black scheme, giving them one of the loudest looks in the league. Meanwhile, their straightforward tornado-and-puck logo morphed into a snarling stick-wielding twister.

With the mutated identity came one of the most extravagant pregame presentations in the low-level minors. Atop a house-shaped tunnel, an inflatable rendering of the new logo looked like Gumby just swigged the serum in Dr. Jekyll’s lab. A crew set up the display at the Zamboni entrance as the building darkened and pulled strings on each end, as if to simulate wind gusts.

The arena sound crew complemented the visual by playing Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “The House Is Rockin.” Then they cued up the era’s all-the-rage Michael Buffer/2 Unlimited mashup. And the Fury mascot (a Tasmanian devil named Furious Fred) and players entered to the distinctive techno tune while four red lights and a disco ball supplemented the spotlights from the scoreboard.

That was about as much as the small-to-medium building could do in its pre-videoboard era to rev up the audience. With that said, it wasted no assets to that end.

The franchise’s fortunes elevated hand-in-hand with the energy. For the second time in six years of operation, the Fury made it past the first round of the playoffs. Along the way, Bouchard was one of four forwards to break triple-digit points. Although he placed three spots behind Kharin, a Russian league, NHL and IHL veteran obtained from Port Huron the previous winter.

Among other transactions, the hiring of a new coach and director of hockey operations proved the last prerequisite boost. Rich Kromm came to Muskegon for 1998-99 with five years of Triple-A tutelage experience to his credit. As an assistant on John Anderson’s staff, he had just helped the Chicago Wolves to the IHL’s Turner Cup.

Under Kromm, the Fury were slightly less ravenous on offense, but more efficient on defense. For his part, Bouchard finished third on the team with 82 regular-season points. Melanson ran away with a leading 251 PIM.

As a team, Muskegon finished first in the UHL standings, then followed up with a Colonial Cup victory. The road included a seven-game semifinal triumph over Bouchard’s old friends in Flint and a six-game vanquishing of the two-time defending champion Quad City Mallards.

After the Fury failed to repeat, Kromm enlisted a fellow Portland Winterhawks alum as one of the drops of new blood for 2000-01. Robinson came to Muskegon after spending his professional rookie season in the West Coast League.

Like Bouchard and Kromm, he came with a proven winning pedigree, having co-piloted Portland to the 1998 Memorial Cup. His 109 points that year led the team, eclipsing even Brenden Morrow and Marian Hossa.

For nine of the next 10 seasons, the exception being 2007-08, either Robinson or Bouchard topped Muskegon’s scoring charts. As Robinson’s first impression, his touch erupted to the tune of 100 points, 16 more than the runner-up Bouchard.

For his encore, he topped the team chart again with 92 regular-season points, 23 more than the runner-up. By that point, his importance was magnified by the aforementioned offseason retirements of Kharin and Melanson.

He then ran away with another lead in the postseason, tallying 24 points en route to the franchise’s second Colonial Cup. While the bulk of his output was always in the assist column, he helped himself to the deciding play. In overtime of Game 6 in the final round, he picked off the puck at center ice as the visiting Elmira Jackals tried to regroup after a Fury clear.

Robinson wasted no time bolting down Broadway and roofing a breakaway conversion. The sudden-death strike ended what would be Muskegon’s only home-ice championship clincher, after which he collected the MVP trophy.

By entering a more interactive field this season, Robinson has afforded himself bottomless opportunities to hear fans rehash that moment. “I get chills when I think about it,” he said. “When people bring that stuff up it brings back great memories. It’s near and dear to our heart for sure.”

Bouchard had spent most of that 2001-02 campaign with the Central League’s San Angelo Outlaws, but returned to Muskegon for the homestretch. His 17 playoff points tied Brant Blackned for second on the Fury’s 2002 playoff leaderboard.

Bouchard would lead the club in each of the next four seasons, including two more championship campaigns in 2004 and 2005. Robinson was a close second in 2003-04 with 106 points. In addition, he tied Blackned for the playoff lead with 22 points in 2005, cementing the notion that his acquisition was the key to ensuring a bona fide dynasty in Muskegon.

Robinson reclaimed the regular-season throne with a career-high 123 points (his third triple-digit season) in 2006-07, the year Bouchard played in Italy. Robinson had his own year abroad in Denmark the next season. As he abdicated his regal spot on the Fury leaderboard, the returning Bouchard tied Bill Collins for the team lead while playing in six fewer games.

Upon the tag team’s reunion, a change in management yielded a change in brand. Though the switch to a new incarnation of the Lumberjacks met mixed reviews, the Cup contention continued.

And in their final year together, Robinson and Bouchard were a runaway one-two punch with 109 and 101 points, respectively. When Bouchard broke the minor-league goal record at home, an eight-minute ceremony put the game on hold.

One year after losing on a return trip to the championship round, and with Kromm back behind the bench after leaving in 2001, the 2009-10 Lumberjacks fell one win shy of reaching the yet-again-rebranded IHL’s Turner Cup Final. None other than the Generals spoiled their swan song, winning Game 7 at Walker Arena.

Bouchard struggled to keep his eyes dry upon meeting local news cameras afterward. It is easy to ascertain why. He and Robinson are second and fifth, respectively, on the Fury’s all-time games chart with 709 and 429 appearances. (Melanson is fourth overall and second among defensemen with 439.)

Bouchard’s 919 points and Robinson’s 613 are good for the top two slots among anyone who ever wore the sneering tornado crest. The next runner-up, Brett Seguin, accrued a meager 366 points in his Muskegon career. And that was when the twister on the team’s thread was non-anthropomorphic. Before Bouchard was obtained from Flint over that Thanksgiving weekend in 1996.

In their two years as Lumberjacks, Robinson racked up 221 points, Bouchard 168 and everyone else double digits at best. Throughout its dynamic duo’s tenure, Muskegon won at least half of its games and filled more than half of the 5,400-seat Walker Arena every year. It was a straightforward system of supply and demand, and it worked.

“We won most nights at home,” Robinson noted. “And if we didn’t win, there’d be four, five or six fights. So even if we didn’t win, there was something to cheer about.”

(Photo by Derek Wong)

 

Plenty left to prove

For their eight nonconsecutive seasons as ice colleagues, Robinson watched Bouchard maximize his assets and block out bitterness.

When the Lumberjacks retired his No. 32 jersey in 2012, Bouchard confessed his mild regret over never having touched NHL ice to the Muskegon Chronicle. But he also implied that he reached a point where this was the only city he could live and work in, with or without skates on.

“People in Muskegon are a simple kind of people, hard-working people,” he told reporter Mark Opfermann at the time. “That fits me.”

Between the Betten Baker “trifecta” of Fury alumni, Bouchard had the most meager stints at the next level. He had played two games for Fort Wayne of the original IHL in 1996-97, then four with Grand Rapids of the AHL in 2004-05.

Yet he embraced his riches in a town blissfully oblivious to its gargantuan Lake Michigan brethren in Chicago and Milwaukee. To that point, when he theoretically could have continued his career when the Lumberjacks relocated to Evansville, Ind., he stayed.

On the flipside, he played five seasons strictly in North American Double-A and overseas after last Triple-A sip of Joe. When he could have theoretically conceded, he stretched his participation in pro hockey for as long as Muskegon did.

“He always wanted to do well as a player,” Robinson said. “When he got older, I think he got better. He took care of his body and prolonged his career.”

Robinson stretched his playing days by stopping in four more cities in as many years. Beyond 40 games in Grand Rapids in 2004-05, he too never got back to the AHL. But he added to his trophy case with the 2013 Central League champion Allen Americans, then led the Tulsa Oilers with (surprise) 57 assists in his final season.

That helper’s instinct has served him well in his gradual crossing from playing to post-playing to post-hockey altogether.

“I think it’s just talking to people and being honest,” he said of the secrets of successful sales reps. “There’s a stigma about them a little bit. But I try to do things the right way, be honest with people.”

Hardly any regular Walker Arena ticketholders, past or present, need convincing that hockey players are far from hulking, huffing haymaker-seekers. More broadly, it takes extra effort for a used-car hawker to contrast oneself from a Roald Dahl character. And no one in the field will be getting any help from Carvana commercials.

Some Betten Baker customers may develop into the equivalent of a Flint/Fort Wayne/Quad City fan or player. But like when the ice chips settle on an intense playoff series, one must be ready to seek and keep good relations post-sale.

That has become the rookie Robinson’s mantra. He has his head up, ready to respond constructively if and when a buyer comes back with complaints.

Anything less on his part and “I wouldn’t be able to sleep well at night,” he said.

Even if not every sale is an outright win, he will fight to set things right. That incentive to ensure everyone always leaves with something to be pleased with may never leave him.