When he retired in 2008 after a 15-season pro hockey career, he'd amassed an unassailable record of 4,493 penalty minutes in the American Hockey League, more than 1,500 ahead of his closest challenger and enough to earn him an induction into the league's Hall of Fame on Feb. 5 at the All-Star gathering in San Jose.

He fought in all levels of the game. From Junior A near his hometown in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, up to the NHL for the Oilers, Blackhawks, Penguins, Avalanche, Bruins, and Senators - wherever he could find a team needing two fists with something to prove. He fought top enforcers in an age when that role was inseparable from the game itself. If you ask, he'll reluctantly rattle off the biggest matchups. Bob Probert. Tie Domi. Gerry Fleming. One bout against Ryan VandenBussche lasted more than two minutes.

He fought until his hands were crooked and his body was spent.

But say the name Dennis Bonvie to anyone who played with him or crossed paths with him during his subsequent 15-year career as a pro scout - that is to say, much of the hockey world - and you won't hear a lot about fights, at least not at first. You're likely to hear a quiet laugh, a sigh, and the words: "Bonvie was a good teammate."

It wasn't just that Bonvie took penalties - it was the way he did it, with almost every minute of his HOF record traceable to a teammate he was protecting, some in less traditional ways than others.

"I wasn't one to drop the gloves at all, but I remember I had gotten into my first fight," says Stephen Dixon, a fellow Maritimer who played with a veteran Bonvie as an AHL rookie for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. "I went to the penalty box and I looked over and Dennis is standing up, giving me the thumbs up and talking to the coach. All of a sudden, they're getting the puck ready for the faceoff and Dennis jumps on, lines up next to a guy, and his gloves come off. He's in a fight as well."

Bonvie arrived in the penalty box with a grin. "Stand up and give me a hug," he told Dixon. "It's your first fight. I'm not going to let you sit in the penalty box alone.

"He sat there with his arm around me the whole five minutes."

For Bonvie, that three-word distinction - a good teammate - was the highest honor in hockey. "Hopefully that stands for what I did, for as long as I did it," he says.

That Bonvie had the career he did - he retired months shy of his 35th birthday - is owed, from start to finish, to his burning desire to stick around long enough to play another game. "There's nothing like being on a team, and there's nothing like competing," he says.

His career began rather inauspiciously in 1991 when he was drafted into the Ontario Hockey League by the Kitchener Rangers. He went in the 19th round, 277th overall, the sixth-last pick of the draft. "I think the janitor called my name out," he likes to joke.

He was later traded in a package to the North Bay Centennials and that's when he knew fighting would be his path up. "The coach said he liked tough Maritimers and I fit the bill. I told him I wanted to be the toughest guy in the league. I said, 'Just give me a chance to prove my worth.'"

Bonvie got to work, tallying 261 penalty minutes in 49 games in his first season and 316 penalty minutes in 64 games the next. But the effort wasn't enough to get drafted into the NHL. After a tryout with the Flames went nowhere, he enrolled in university back in Nova Scotia, but never made it to class. Instead, he reported to a tryout with the Cape Breton Oilers, then Edmonton's farm team, and his illustrious AHL career began.

"At first when I went there I was worried there wasn't a spot for me, maybe they didn't want to keep me around," he says. He promptly made himself useful by switching from defense to forward to fill a gap in the lineup. "I knew I was the underdog, I knew I was trying to prove I belonged."

While he was still trying to impress front offices, Bonvie already had the confidence of his teammates.

"My first experience with Dennis was when I got sent down to Cape Breton and got thrown into the lineup," says former Oiler Louie DeBrusk, who knew how to defend himself on the ice. "The first scrum that I get into in front of the net, I'm thinking the gloves are going to come off. All of a sudden he comes into the pile and separates me from another guy and wants to fight him. And I'm thinking, 'That might be the first time in my career that somebody actually stepped up for me.' He was so game. That was how the AHL was back then. There was a lot of toughness and a lot of skill. Dennis felt like he was protecting his players, which he did. And he was one of the best ever at it."

It was his work ethic, too, that gained notice. "I remember watching him lift weights after practice, he'd be in there bench pressing, he was just all-in," DeBrusk says. "He had that burning desire to make it. He never got satisfied. He was never content. He always felt like somebody could take his job on a nightly basis. You had to have that attitude in that role. Every single day, somebody might be looking to try and take your job. He was going to do whatever he could to make sure that didn't happen."

Bonvie didn't have to wait long for his big shot. "When I started, I wanted to prove and get respect from all my peers that I could do it, that I was as tough as everybody else. In doing that, you start thinking: maybe there's a chance I could play a game or two in the NHL."

By the 1994-95 season, what started as an outside chance at the NHL became a reality when Bonvie made his debut in Edmonton in a late-season game against the Kings. In his first shift, Bonvie immediately tried scrapping with L.A. enforcer Matt Johnson. When that didn't happen, Bonvie remembers the Kings dumping the puck into the Oilers' zone and bringing on their first line - anchored by Wayne Gretzky. "I think I just dumped it in and went off the ice, I was kind of in awe," says Bonvie. "Welcome to the show."

Bonvie spent the rest of his career going up and down from the AHL to the NHL. "I played 15 years just trying to play one more game." He collected 92 total NHL appearances.

"Every time you get called up to the NHL is the best day in the world; every time you get sent down, it's the worst thing in the world," DeBrusk says. "It's a really emotional roller coaster going up and down and trying to make the NHL on a regular basis."

But if the emotional whiplash ever wore on Bonvie, he didn't let it show. "I just love to play. I love to be part of a team. I loved to protect my teammates and make sure they felt comfortable. At first you start and you're trying to get up in the NHL. You're trying to get another opportunity to get up when you get sent down.

"Then, you get halfway through your career and realize, 'You know what, I might end up spending a lot more time in the minors.' Well, then you have to try to be the best veteran you can be and try to develop those kids."

Growing up in Nova Scotia provided Bonvie with the perfect framework for how to build community. "In Nova Scotia, you just drop in," his wife Kelly Bonvie says. "You just drop in to people's houses, you end up staying for dinner, there's always enough, and the door is always open."

"My mom was a tremendous cook," Dennis says. "My dad would come home on weeknights from the mill and my mom would always have meat and potatoes. Sunday was family dinner. Whatever holiday it is, you go to somebody's house and everybody is there. We were brought up like that."

So Bonvie brought that family tradition to his team. "I'm not sure if you can print about the bottles of wine at these dinners because that's what I remember," says Chris Kelleher, who played with Bonvie in Wilkes-Barre and who is now the Minnesota Wild's director of player personnel. "He'd invite anyone - rookies, veterans, whoever it was."

"He wouldn't want anybody to feel left out," Kelly Bonvie says. "He just wanted to make sure that these guys felt supported and there was always somebody to go to if they had a problem. I look back and I really treasure the memories of hanging out with some of these guys. You know, they were still growing up and they just appreciated having a home-cooked meal. It was just the simple things that they really appreciated. We were happy to be able to do it."

The dinners often led to swapping tales about on-ice antics. "When Dennis was around, he was always telling stories," says John Slaney, now an assistant coach for the AHL's Tucson Roadrunners. One of the favorites that still gets retold is a famous one-liner Bonvie would feed the opposition.

Kelleher's version of it takes place in Philadelphia. "Dennis was really our only legitimate, tough-guy fighter. He could fight anybody, right? So we go to Philly and everybody's nervous. Dennis was trying to keep it light. The puck doesn't even drop and he goes over to the Philly bench. He says to them, 'I got three fights in me. You guys decide which three it's going to be. Now let's drop the puck," Kelleher says. Three fights were the league maximum before getting ejected.

"He had a lot of chirps," Slaney says. "He would yell at the bench if everyone was looking down, 'Hey, did you lose all your quarters on the floor?' When Dennis got mad it was almost like when your grandfather got mad."

Bonvie became the first person to call when you needed someone. "I played one game in the NHL," Kelleher says. "It was for the Bruins. I got called up. The morning of the game, I realized with the travel schedule, I was going to get to the rink at 9 a.m. - I was just going to sit there for hours getting more nervous. So I called Dennis up. He played for the Bruins at the time. And he met me at the rink and sat with me. He was more excited for me than I was. That's something I'll never forget."

That empathy and leadership carried well beyond Bonvie's on-ice career and into his scouting pursuits. He's now the Bruins' director of pro scouting.

"What I admire most about my dad is how much time he makes for us," his 19-year-old son, Rhys Bonvie, says. "Sometimes he'll take me along to NHL games and I love being in the press box with him. He knows everyone. Even the elevator lady. He says she's the one who knows everyone but I know it's him, too."

Rhys says people who know he's Dennis' son assume he must be tough, like his father. But tough isn't the word he uses to describe his dad. "I would say he's a teddy bear," Rhys says.

Bonvie's never hidden that soft side off the ice. Learning about his HOF induction openly brought him to tears. "He called me and he couldn't even talk," Kelly says. "He was just so emotional. I was just so grateful that his hard work for all those years got recognized."

With hockey having changed drastically in the nearly two decades since Bonvie's heyday, with far more emphasis on skill and speed, his on-ice accomplishments might be overlooked. But many former players have pointed out that Bonvie's stats speak loudly: he had 84 goals and 191 assists in the AHL, so he could do more than fight. But still, his main role has become a bit of a throwback to a different era of hockey.

"It's an entirely different game," DeBrusk says. "Players like Dennis, the role that he had, call it the enforcer, call it the tough guy, you can even call it the goon, I really don't care. I think when you look over the history, they were so influential on how the game was played. They were incredibly popular in every market they played in - whether it was negative or positive, people knew who those guys were.

"I think Dennis worked hard, harder than anybody. I don't think people really understand how difficult that position is, to do it on a nightly basis and for as long as he did. The toughness is what got him to pro hockey, got him a job. But to stick around for as long as he did, you have to be a good teammate."

For Bonvie, when he reminisces about his Hall of Fame career, that's what he's usually thinking about. "I don't even like to talk about the fights too much because it's not fair to the guys I was fighting or vice versa," he says. "There's ones that I lost that I shouldn't have, and the ones that I did really well in I don't need to talk about because it could have been me on the other side. Proud of them? I just did my job."

Instead, Bonvie's far more proud of the designation he earned from the chirps, the dinners, from showing up when he was asked: "A good teammate."

"(A) coach told me way back in the day that when you retire, if your teammates can stand up and say, 'That was one heck of a teammate, a really good guy,' that's something to be proud of. I think I was the best teammate I could be."

Jolene Latimer is a feature writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

When Laura Stacey was growing up, rarely a family dinner went by when there wasn't a story shared about her great-grandfather and Maple Leafs legend King Clancy.

"One of the bigger stories that everybody talks about is how he was traded from Ottawa to Toronto thanks to a horse," she says. "That was how they won enough money in order to get him to come to Toronto. That's something we always joke about. Thank goodness the horse won because that's what allowed us to be Leafs."

Clancy won three Stanley Cups over his 16-season NHL playing career - two with Ottawa and one with Toronto. He won another three as part of the Maple Leafs coaching staff. Clancy is considered one of the best puck-moving defensemen of all time, retiring with 283 career points - a record among blue-liners at that time. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958 and his No. 7 hangs in the rafters at Scotiabank Arena as one of the Leafs' honored numbers.

Following his retirement, Clancy became an NHL referee for 11 years before spending three seasons behind the Leafs bench. He served in various capacities in the Leafs' front office, earning another four Stanley Cups as the assistant general manager and eventually becoming the team's goodwill ambassador until his death in 1986. In his honor, the King Clancy Memorial Trophy is awarded annually by the NHL to the player who best exemplifies leadership qualities and has made significant contributions to their community.

The love of the game ran in the family. From the time Stacey was 7 years old and saw the Canadian women take home gold at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, hockey had the same hold on her that it did on her great-grandfather.

"It just took up a lot of my heart and a lot of my passion," she says.

Even though there were limited professional options for women to play hockey, Stacey set her sights on achieving what she considered the height of the sport's success: Olympic gold. She made her Olympic debut at the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, where she took home silver before following that up four years later in Beijing with four goals and two assists on her way to a gold medal.

In 2023 she signed with the PWHL's Montreal team as one of the inaugural players. theScore recently caught up with Stacey to reflect on her hockey journey and family legacy in the sport.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

theScore: You recently found your great-grandfather's hockey card. How did that happen?

Stacey: eBay reached out to me because they had gotten into certified hockey cards and they messaged me saying that they had some of my great-grandfather. I was pretty excited about it. I thought it was awesome to see. I wear his number and he's a big part of our family. I had never actually seen his hockey card before. So to get that sent in the mail, and I have it at my house now, it's pretty cool to see. It's pretty rare. I never really expected that to happen. Just being able to have that little piece of history and his legacy is pretty amazing to me.

There must have been a lot of his memorabilia around when you were growing up.

All of the females in the family have a little gold puck necklace that he gave his daughters and his wife when they won the Stanley Cup. It's a little piece of jewelry to remember that moment and it's been passed down in our family. I actually now have a gold puck necklace as well.

Growing up, what was the family mythology around your great-grandfather?

Oh, everybody talks about him. I think our whole family's really big Leafs fans, in big part due to him. Every time we go to the arena and see his banner hanging it just brings back all those stories. I never got to meet him. But a lot of stories were shared about him and his legacy, his career as a hockey player, and also as a person. He had an amazing hockey career, but the way he did it, his giving back to charity, and his leadership throughout the Leafs organization, I think really hit home with me.

He obviously didn't make a crazy amount of money at that time in the NHL, but every Christmas he would go around and give a little bit of his salary to all the janitors and every person who was a piece of Maple Leaf Gardens. What stuck out to me is that he did want to give back so much.

Did you think you were going to be playing professional hockey like him one day?

I think for sure, there was that thought of like, 'How come I can't do what he got to do?' Or, 'How come I couldn't have that as my career?' But to be honest, I was so excited to chase my dream of playing for the national team that I was going to do whatever I could to get there.

So I think that I was never disappointed because I was always so excited about the opportunity to potentially play for my country.

When I was a kid, I only saw women's hockey at the Olympics on TV, in 2002. That was the first spark where I went, "Whoa, I want to be on that team, I want to play for Canada, I want to represent my country. I want to be an Olympian." But I never saw anything else (as it relates to women's hockey). I think that was really my only dream, to be one of 23 who made the Canadian Olympic team.

I don't think I really ever had my eyes set on playing professionally. I love the Toronto Maple Leafs. I always said, 'Oh, I wish I could play for them.' But I kind of knew it wasn't really a reality. I think a lot of girls will still dream of playing at the Olympics. I think that's still obviously the pinnacle of our sport. But I think (the PWHL) just allows so many more kids and young girls to dream because now it's not just 23 Canadians, it could be up to 150 or 200, or whatever the case may be when those kids grow up. So I think (the PWHL) just allows so many more kids and young girls to dream because there's way more spots available.

Now, it's not just, 'Hey, we go to college, and we either make the Olympic team or we don't.' It's now, 'I have a chance to play pro, and maybe still chase that other dream of representing my country.'

Throughout college when I hadn't quite made that senior team yet, it was, 'OK, what's next? Do I just get a real job? Give up the dream if I haven't made it yet? Or do I keep pushing and going after it?' Luckily, there was that CWHL to fall back on still to at least push me a couple more years. But now I can only imagine how much it's going to help people when they graduate from college. Now it's like, 'Hey, I still want to make that senior team. Now I have the chance to get even better playing professionally in this league as well.'

Your great-grandfather was in the early days of men's professional hockey. You're in the early days of women's professional hockey. Do you ever draw that parallel?

He was a part of the Original Six and played hockey when it wasn't really a thing. The salaries weren't huge, and it was just for the love of the game. That's exactly what we're doing with the PWHL. Obviously, it's getting bigger and better and it's growing. And I can't wait to see what it is when I'm no longer competing.

Jolene Latimer is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2024 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

"There was one occasion where I hit my brother a little too hard, a little away from the wall, and he put a big hole right in the wall," Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk says. He's not recounting an epic family feud with his brother Brady, but rather an average day playing the childhood classic: mini sticks.

"We played all the time. My parents built us a mini mini-sticks rink in our basement with the plastic synthetic floor so we could just slip around. We put two nets at each end and there were boards on one side, so we always thought the most fun was hitting each other over the boards.

"My parents were like, 'Why are we going to fix this? You guys are just going to keep doing this.' So we just kept building a bigger hole and it was a fun part of the rink."

The Tkachuks got off easier than the McCarron brothers.

"My brother put my head through the drywall," says Predators forward Mike McCarron. "We got in a battle and he pushed me from behind and I went right into the drywall. My dad made my brother and I fix it."

Many have memories like that. Some aren't about demolition and are even heartwarming. "I played a lot of goalie and my mom would shoot on me, I think that was some of the most fun I ever had as a kid," Panthers center Steven Lorentz says. "Back then, I obviously would play all day with her if I could."

Others prove sibling rivalries never die. "There were a lot of tears from my little brother," Lightning defenceman Haydn Fleury says. "I think I won most of the games."

Not so fast, says younger brother Cale Fleury. "He for sure had an advantage being two years older, but I was more feisty than he was," says the defenseman currently in the AHL. "I'd say I had my fair share of wins, too."

From amateur hockey fans to professional athletes, everyone has a mini-stick story to tell. And in a world increasingly spent immersed in social media and video games, this offline pastime is hotter than ever. While Bauer won't release exact sales numbers, it says it sells "hundreds of thousands" of mini sticks each year. How did a lowly promotional giveaway transform itself into a full-blown part of hockey culture?

Mini sticks' early days

"They started back in the 1930s," says Mike Wilson, a Toronto-based sports memorabilia collector. Hockey might have taken a page out of baseball's book. Bat days, which Wilson says began in the 1900s, were once a common way to fill seats in the ballpark. "When hockey came along, they started doing the same thing but with a hockey stick," he says. Wilson's collection features sticks from the 1930s that are about 18 inches long with facsimile autographs and team logos along the shaft.

"In the '30s and into the '40s, it was just an easy way to collect signatures from a player and for teams to have," hockey historian and author Jon Waldman says.

Wilson owns one-piece sticks dating to the 1950s, but mini stick construction had evolved by the '60s. "I remember going to Maple Leaf Gardens back in the early 1960s and they gave away little sticks. There were two pieces of blade attached to the shaft. It wasn't very strong. There was a picture of the player on it. But they're very tiny. I played with them, but they broke all the time."

Using them to compete against friends and siblings evolved out of normal child's play. Wilson describes a form of knee hockey that was often played with whatever was available - broken hockey stick blades, coat hangers, or homemade wooden sticks. At a 1960s peewee hockey tournament in Quebec, Wilson says everyone got one-piece sticks with a little rubber puck from tournament organizers. It was a game-changer. "I don't think there was one kid at that tournament who didn't have a stick. I remember going back to the billet's house and playing in the basement on the floor with these things," he says. "It sort of evolved from there."

In the 1970s, teams leaned further into the marketing potential of mini sticks, using them to expand their team memorabilia. "It was usually around the commemoration of a particular player," Waldman says.

Wilson says that practice became increasingly prevalent through the 1980s. "But I would say they really took off in the '90s. Now they're part of the fabric of every kid growing up."

A Bauer representative said production of mini sticks is believed to have started in the late '90s, and there are only unproven theories as to what caused the exponential rise in popularity around this time. Wilson thinks it was a combination of their plastic construction and an uptick in minor hockey registration.

Another guess has to do with the memorabilia market. "It was in the '90s that, as the hockey-card market grew, everything around it grew as well," Waldman says. "When you look back at the sports-card world, it really started to pick up in the mid '80s but ignited as more companies came on board, especially in hockey in the early '90s. And with that, it sort of just took the whole memorabilia craze on this incredible journey. The hockey-card market didn't last very long as the hot piece. It sort of ran until 1993-94. But after that, a lot of the other memorabilia stuck around and teams started to see more value in having giveaway items.

"It became something that if you didn't have a program or you didn't have a ticket stub or a puck, a mini stick was one of the pieces that went hand-in-hand with a special event," he says.

While that might have been the collector's mindset, minor hockey athletes had a different vision for mini sticks - and that passion would catapult the collectible into a bona fide pastime.

Rules of engagement

The allure of playing mini sticks seems to be in its purity; it's a game of unorganized chaos with no purpose other than fun. "It's kind of almost all for the love of the game," Panthers forward Ryan Lomberg says. "It kind of gets to why we all started playing hockey - just because we love it. It's about having so much fun and just so many countless memories."

That said, certain aspects of mini sticks have become standardized, if not codified. One: location. A brief polling of professional hockey players showed a majority of mini-sticks games occur in one of two places. First, the basement.

"My parents didn't have their basement finished at the time. So it was just basically me and my brother duking it out on the cement floor downstairs. They put some plywood up so we didn't wreck the insulation in the basement," Haydn Fleury says.

"They were a gong show, so many holes in the walls in the basement," Oilers center Ryan McLeod says of battles with his brother Michael, who now plays for New Jersey. "The drywall was ruined, completely ruined, from body checks and slashing the wall."

Even NFL stars Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce have basement mini-sticks memories from their Cleveland-area childhood. "I remember the mini-stick arena, in the basement, that was carpet on cement, and we would run around on our knees," Jason Kelce said on a recent episode of their weekly podcast, "New Heights."

When games don't take place in the basement, the hotel hallway is most likely to serve as venue.

"That was the best part of minor hockey. People staying at the hotel probably didn't like it. But you got your team track suit at the start of the year, and the first tournament of the year you got holes in the knees from being on your knees playing mini sticks," Haydn Fleury says. "One of your teammates brought the net and all the boys brought their mini sticks and you played in the hallway."

"Every kid just knew after the game, win or lose, you were going to play mini sticks in the hallway with your buddies," Cale Fleury remembers.

Naturally, those hallway faceoffs have a way of perturbing hotel staff. "I remember we would be on a top floor and get in trouble because we were stomping and running around. So then we would move to the lobby floor but then still get yelled at by the main office in the lobby," says Saroya Tinker, a former professional hockey player and PWHL analyst. "We were definitely getting noise complaints and banging on doors with sticks and things like that."

To be sure, hotels have grappled with how to best manage the mini-sticks phenomenon. "We put (hockey teams) on certain floors - not on the top floor, but on the lowest floor," says Richard Wong, chief operating officer of Nova Hotels, a family-owned chain with 14 locations across western and northern Canada. When that doesn't work, Wong encourages his staff to find a dedicated space for hockey teams.

"'The good hoteliers are good about accommodating. It's about being flexible. We try to move (minor hockey players) into a meeting-room space where it's not constricted like it is in the hallways," Wong says. "The holes happen and things break, but I look at it as the cost of doing business."

Wong admits he has a soft spot for mini sticks from his own childhood. "For me, mini sticks equals fun."

Not every hotel manager is as accommodating or patient. Some have a no-tolerance policy on their website or that's bolded on reservation forms, and that might be due to one of the most recognizable elements of playing mini sticks. For a game passed down through generations almost exclusively by word of mouth, there's a surprising amount of continuity when it comes to how games are played, with the most enduring aspect being general lawlessness. No rules, just chaos.

"You can be on your feet or your knees. You can pull the goalie and play one extra offense and leave the net out there. You can body check, you can do all that stuff. The only rule was really there are no rules," Lomberg says.

"It was jailhouse rules," Oilers forward Evander Kane says. Although the Kane household did have one health and safety consideration. "I would play with my dad in the living room, and you get a little rough trying to push your dad around. There was a fireplace in the living room and if the ball went over there, we made sure no one went over there - we didn't want anyone to crack their head open," he says.

"Someone would take a ball or stick in the face or chop to the finger, but that's just stuff you have to live with and play through," Lorentz says.

As mini-stick technology has improved, that physical toll has only grown. "As we got a little bit older, they started coming out with fiberglass mini sticks. Bauer started coming out with their little mini versions of the sticks they use - to get kids into seeing those and using them early," Cale Fleury says. "I got high sticked with one of those at school in Grade 9 and it was actually pretty deadly. I have a scar on my eyebrow."

"We got the composite sticks and that just completely changed the game. It got pretty dangerous to be honest," McLeod says.

Obsessive habits typically reserved for on-ice equipment extended to mini sticks in the age before the new technology. Curving your mini blade was an art form, involving either boiling water or a gas stove's open flame.

"They used to just be little plastic things and I'd spend hours after school bending over the stove curving them. If I wanted to try a new curve, I'd grab another stick and I'd be bringing like seven or eight sticks in my backpack to recess to try out. I was all in," Lorentz says.

"I would just put mine right over the flame," Tinker says. "I remember the smell of burning plastic. The stick would end up being brownish-yellow by the end of getting the curve right."

Getting that curve right wasn't just about winning games; it was about belonging. "Growing up, we never were able to have new equipment or anything along those lines," Tinker says. "We definitely didn't grow up having the accessibility that many others did in hockey. So I think playing mini sticks, it was cool to just go pick up, like, a $10 stick and be able to curve it your own way and be good at hockey."

Mini sticks today

Perhaps as a counterbalance to kids' hyper organized and scheduled lives today, mini sticks are more popular now than ever.

"It's unbelievable, actually, we just can never get it right - as much as we ramp up the production and the forecast and everything, we're sold out," says Mary Kay Messier, Bauer's vice president of global marketing. "It always feels like the latest and greatest, hottest toy. Everyone's getting texts and emails, 'How do I get my hands on these mini sticks?' Kids are trying to trade, it's gone bonkers.

"People feel really nostalgic about mini sticks. Whether it's to give it to a young child when they first start, whether it's the kids who are playing in the tournaments, or kids wanting to hang them on their walls, it's just a part of hockey culture. Everyone has a mini-stick story, right?"

Messier adds that Bauer's popular Mystery Mini packs are part of how her team is trying to keep the product fresh. "We're doing more and more fun things like the Mystery Minis where you don't know what you're going to get. It's fun that it's kind of back to an old style of play that brings us all back and we can still pass that down to kids," she says.

Ten-year-old Willem Ostopowich is one of those kids. In his first year of Tier 1 for the Edmonton SWAT Huskies, his life revolves around hockey - and he has the stats to prove it: 10 goals and three assists in eight games. He recently fielded a call from theScore from the back of his family SUV on the way home from a travel tournament.

"We had about 15 guys playing mini sticks in the hotel this weekend," he says. "We had to keep finding new spots in the hotel where the manager wouldn't see us. We got caught five different times."

In the family's unfinished basement, Willem and his three younger brothers created their own league: the Mini Sticks Hockey League, or MHL, as they call it. Often their dad will join, or their 18-year-old neighbor.

"Sometimes I pretend I'm playing against Ryan McLeod," Willem says. He's broken a basement window during his imaginary matchups against his favorite NHLer; his dad is insisting he help with the repairs. And so far league play has resulted in one younger brother sustaining a facial injury that required stitches - the result of what appeared to be, on review by the MHL's Department of Player Safety, an accidental high stick. No disciplinary action was taken. As the oldest brother and de facto league commissioner, Willem's adopted the time-honored mini-sticks rulebook: "It's pretty much a free for all," he says.

The sum of all the parts - collecting tiny sticks, curving your own, running through hotel hallways, and challenging your siblings in the basement - is what makes the mini game great.

"Little things like that are where you fall in love with the game," Lorentz says. "When you're that age, you're pretending you're the next Sidney Crosby. Then you get to this league and now you're playing against him. It almost puts things in perspective. Those kids just love the game so much and it's so pure."

Willem says he uses mini sticks to practice his shot. But that's not what he likes most. His answer on that front isn't too different from what his NHL idols said: "My favorite thing is spending time with my friends, my brothers, and my dad."

Jolene Latimer is a feature writer for theScore.

Copyright © 2023 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

During the peak of the Cold War in the 1970s, a new front opened: a cultural battle between the top hockey players in North America and the best from the Soviet Union. The winner would not just determine hockey dominance but would symbolize the triumph of an ideology.

The Soviet system had moved to the forefront of the international game, dominating the world championships and Olympics in the 1960s by skirting the rules of amateurism with jobs that allowed them to train as hockey players full-time. Professionals were not allowed to compete in these international events, so the best players from the NHL had never faced off against the dominant Soviet teams.

That changed in 1972 when the Summit Series pitted an NHL all-star squad featuring 13 future Hall of Famers against the Soviet national team. They repeated the event in 1974 against WHA players. Canada won in 1972, the Soviets triumphed in 1974.

For 1975-76, an event was planned to have two Soviet league teams play eight games in North America during December and January: Super Series '76.

"This was a groundbreaking event in not only NHL history but in hockey history. It was the first time that the Soviet teams played NHL teams, as opposed to playing NHL All-Star teams," says Ed Gruver, the author of the new book "The Game That Saved the NHL," which chronicles what happened as a result of the 1976 event both on and off the ice.

Early series results heavily favored the Soviets; CSKA Moscow, the famous Red Army team, bested the New York Rangers 7-3 at Madison Square Garden while the Soviet Wings defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins 7-4. In perhaps the most famous game of the series, the Red Army had a New Year's Eve date with a Montreal Canadiens team on the cusp of winning the next four Stanley Cups. Montreal outshot the Soviets 38-13, but the magnificent play of goalie Vladislav Tretiak earned them a 3-3 draw.

By the time the last of the eight games came around on Jan. 11, the Soviet Wings had won three of their four games and the Red Army was 2-0-1. The last NHL team standing: the two-time defending Cup champion Philadelphia Flyers.

Almost 50 years have passed since that matchup, but its results are still felt throughout the NHL today. The Broad Street Bullies, as the Flyers were then known, managed to exact a measure of revenge with a 4-1 victory.

The Flyers, known for their physical, domineering approach, stunned the Soviets with their aggression, and they left the ice in protest 10 minutes into the first period. When they did return to play, the Flyers didn't back off. The crowd roared when Flyers defenceman Ed Van Impe leveled a ferocious hit against Russian star Valeri Kharlamov, whose ankle had previously been shattered by Flyers captain Bobby Clarke in the 1972 series. Still, when the final whistle blew, relations between the teams improved, with players from both sides sharing drinks in the locker room after the Flyers' win.

While that win might have saved face for the NHL, its legacy can be seen not just in what was proven that day, but in what was learned. The collision of two disparate styles of play led to significant on-ice changes for both the NHL and the Soviets. Meanwhile, the cultural significance of the series opened the door for more international competition between professionals and the eventual influx of Russian and Eastern European talent in the NHL.

theScore spoke with Gruver, whose book focuses on that final game of the series in Philadelphia as well as the impact the series had on two hockey cultures.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

theScore: Why is this an important story right now?

Gruver: Today, the story is especially important when we see relations between East and West, between the U.S. and Russia. The detente that came about after the fall of the Berlin Wall seems to be faltering again with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and all the negativity that has brought about.

Can you describe the prevailing public sentiment around mixing sport and politics in 1976?

It was very much an us-versus-them outlook, and that prevailed on both sides - whether you were North America, or whether you were Russia. Since the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union saw sports as a way to emphasize their political system. Their teams were seen as kind of Cold Warriors. The thought was, if they can defeat North American athletes in head-to-head competition, that proves to them that the Soviet system is superior to the North American system or, you know, democracy.

The flip side was that from the standpoint of North America it was seen as: If we can defeat their athletes in head-to-head competition, we're proving that our system of government is superior to what's being practiced in the Soviet Union. It was very much an East-versus-West, us-against-them, democracy-versus-dictatorship matchup.

That's why the players who were in this Super Series, and particularly the Flyers, no team in NHL history ever felt the pressure, or will ever feel the pressure, again, of what they went through. It was left to the Flyers to uphold the honor of the NHL, which is kind of ironic because they were the Broad Street Bullies, they were almost universally hated outside of Philadelphia. But, it all came down to this.

(NHL commissioner) Clarence Campbell went into their locker room before the game and said, "Boys, you've got to win this game." The players talked about that intensity - they were representing not only their team and the NHL, but North America, our form of government, everything was on the line for 60 minutes of hockey.

If the players lose to the Soviets, then what does that mean for the NHL? What does that mean for the Stanley Cup? Now suddenly, it's all devalued? The Stanley Cup is no longer representative of the best team in hockey? Because the best team in hockey would have been in the Soviet Union. It was for hockey supremacy in the world, both sides understood that.

Was the pressure the Flyers felt for this game comparable to the atmosphere of a Stanley Cup final?

In 1972, when the Soviets played the NHL All-Stars, it was an eight-game series, and the NHL All-Stars pulled out a victory in Game 8 to win the series. Two years later, the Soviets soundly defeated the WHA All-Stars in the Summit Series. That set the stage for the Super Series in 1976 where you had the top two Soviet hockey clubs coming to the U.S. and North America to play some of the best NHL teams.

But this matchup against the Soviets and the Flyers was just a one-game situation. It wasn't a best-of-seven. It wasn't like if you had a bad game, you can rebound and come back the next night like in a Stanley Cup Finals scenario. The Red Army team were the champions of the Soviet league. The Flyers were the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions of the NHL. It was the best against best in a one-game showdown. The players (interviewed for the book) told me that the Stanley Cup pressure was nothing compared to this.

You talked to a lot of people who were present at this game, what stood out to you the most about what they remember almost 50 years later?

Talking to the players involved and the media and everyone else involved who was there firsthand, what stood out was the intensity of the series and, in particular, that final game. The schedule makers really did everyone a huge favor by scheduling that game for the final game. I'm sure it was done for a reason because they wanted to match the champions up in the climactic game. It worked out well.

The Red Army team rolled into Philadelphia to play the Stanley Cup champs and the Russians were undefeated. The Red Army team was unbeaten. There's no coming back from a loss in a one-game scenario like this.

By the 1970s, the NHLers and the Soviets had developed two distinctly different styles of play on the ice. What made their approaches both so unique?

The Soviet style was born out of a game called bandy. That was a sport that had been played in the Soviet Union. At the end of World War II, when the Russian government turned its attention away from war and to sports and entertainment, and the arts and things like that, they used the Canadian game as a building block to a point. But they more heavily relied on bandy because it was something they knew and had played. It was kind of like field hockey on ice. So the Soviets played a game that was less linear than what the NHL played.

The NHL played end-to-end hockey. They played a dump-and-chase system. The Soviets played what would be considered more of an east-to-west game with more passing. They never did dump and chase, it was short passes basically aimed at trying to lure the opposing players out of position, which would give them the best shot possible.

The NHL favored high-volume shots. They would just shoot anywhere inside the blue line and sometimes even just inside center ice. The Soviets would hold the puck for several stretches and then try to score with what they thought would be a premier opportunity. To the Soviets, a missed shot was like a turnover. The NHL didn't see it that way, they were willing to pepper the opposing goalie with as many shots as possible.

It was such a contrast between Soviet hockey and North American hockey that it was very visual when you watched the game. It's very evident that these two teams were playing a brand of hockey that was completely foreign, in many ways, to one another.

How did both sides influence each other's style of play in the years that followed?

It brought together two schools of thought on how hockey should be played. In the bringing together of these two contrasting styles, the clash between them made them both better in the long run.

Interestingly, both claimed victory in the Super Series. The two Soviet teams won the Super Series by a 5-2-1 score. But, the NHL's viewpoint was that the Soviets had beaten some of their lesser teams, but not the three top teams.

While both sides claimed victory, they also saw that they had to make changes. Following the proceedings, the Soviets began getting more physical in some of their games. They never resorted to the fighting that the NHL did, and particularly the Broad Street Bullies, but they did become more physical with their body checks and they did rely less on looking for the perfect scoring opportunity and began taking more shots.

The NHL adjusted as well. They looked to improve their conditioning, which at the time was sorely behind the Soviet conditioning because the Russians trained year-round and the NHL didn't. NHL players also looked to improve their passing, getting away from the dump-and-chase and looking for better scoring opportunities.

In your book, you highlighted that the influx of Soviet players after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. marked "the greatest migration of talent from one league to another league since the Negro Leaguers joined Major League Baseball." Was this Super Series a foreshadowing of that?

I think so, yes. You start to see more of an influx of European players into the NHL from the mid-'70s on. When the Berlin Wall came down, then you started to see a heavy influx of Russian players coming into the NHL. Both sides realized that they could benefit from the other. In the end, the real winner was the sport of hockey because it truly became a global game.

Hockey isn't regional anymore like it was in the '70s when you had North American style and European style. Now, it's more of a worldwide game. It matters less now who won the Super Series back then because the ultimate winner was the sport of hockey. The migration of talent from one league to another really benefited the sport as a whole.

Jolene Latimer is a feature writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2023 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

"When she was small we lived miles from town - on a farm - and she would say, 'Can we go skating tonight?' and it'd be a blizzard," Campbell's mom Monique says. "You could not keep her off the ice. She had so much fun skating with people. She would beg for me to drive her in even though you could barely see the road. That's how much she loved it, she just couldn't miss a night."

Loving hockey was a birthright for the Campbells. As a young adult, Monique played hockey at the University of Saskatchewan, while Jessica's dad, Gary, grew up on outdoor rinks of Canadian lore.

"It's something I grew up with, my dad liking hockey so much," Monique says. "He passed it on in outdoor rinks and small rural teams we got to play on as girls. I got the opportunity (to play) from my dad and my husband got the opportunity from his family. So we just kept that going."

The four Campbell children followed their parents into a lifelong love affair with the game. Josh, the oldest, had big-league ambitions. By the time he was 17, he was up to nearly a point a game for his AAA team. Next in line was Dion, who played university hockey in New Brunswick before professional stints in the Central Hockey League and in Germany. Jessica's older sister, Gina, followed in her mother's footsteps to play university hockey at the University of Regina.

But back in the fall of 2002, when Jessica was 10, the family's passion for hockey led them to relocate to Melville, Saskatchewan, from nearby Rocanville to be closer to Josh, who signed as a rookie with the Yorkton Terriers of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League.

"I want to be a fan favorite here. I don't just want to be an average hockey player, I want to be one of the best, the best I can be," Josh said at a press event at the time.

By Canadian Thanksgiving in October, the younger kids were settling into their new schools. Josh, who turned 18 in September, would be heading home for the holiday.

But at 8 a.m. on the Friday of the long weekend, Monique received devastating news: Josh had been in a fatal collision. He wasn't coming home.

"I remember that morning very clearly. It's just a heartbreaking, devastating moment. You feel weak and lost," Monique says.

Josh had been Jessica's biggest role model. "She always connected with him because that's who we watched play hockey the most," Monique says. "She looked up to him a lot. He always helped her along the way, giving her tips on the ice, strategy. We went shinnying together and played a lot together. There was a really good bond there."

The pain pierced through Jessica's childhood. "Those were hard times on me as a young girl," Campbell says. The family leaned into what it knew best: hockey. "It was just a challenging time, but I think it only made us stronger," she says. "And, honestly, it made hockey a place for us where we could work through it. The game itself brought so much joy. I think the game of hockey is an amazing sport because there's a community of people. When you're from small towns, that rink, and the arena, it's a place of gathering where people have each other's backs and everyone knows each other."

That community sustained the family through the darkest days following Josh's death. "A lot of Josh's friends at the time on the Terriers - his teammates - would come out and watch (Jessica) play. I know that meant a lot to her," Monique says. "The hockey community - it is like a family, really. They seem to know what you're going through and are really compassionate."

As the family adjusted to its loss, hockey helped 10-year-old Jessica define her identity. "The avenue of sport and hockey for me was a place where we healed together as a family but we also could carry on my brother's love for the game," she says.

Even before Josh's death, Campbell had announced herself on the ice.

"I remember I was coaching novice hockey," family friend Leo Parker says. "We lose to this little novice team. House league teams. We lose, I don't know, 10-2 or something like that. Jess scored all 10 goals."

Parker paused to laugh. "My son Andre said to me, 'Dad, we have to get her on our team.' She was a perfect little hockey player."

Following Josh's death, Parker says Campbell always insisted on wearing his No. 8.

"You can always connect dots back in your life. Right?" Campbell says. "For me, that loss at such a young age and not really understanding why - you never understand why - that was always the driving force for me in my playing career."

Her goals crystallized in those years: get to the highest level of hockey. As a young woman in the early 2000s, that meant making the Canadian national team. And she had a skill that gave her an edge: skating.

"Jess was always, by far, the best skater on our team," says Bailey Bram, who represented Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics. "When it came to power skating drills, she was always the one who the coach was like, 'OK, Jess, you demo because you can do it best.' No one would ever race her to anything because it was just like, 'Jess is automatically going to win.'"

Campbell earned a silver medal at the world under-18 championship and gold the following year as team captain before playing four years of hockey at Cornell. After being cut three times in the final round of tryouts for the senior national team, Campbell was eventually named to the team in 2014, on Oct. 11 - exactly 12 years to the day of Josh's death.

"She called me the minute she found out. She was just sobbing," Bram says. "She was just like, 'This is supposed to happen this way. And it was supposed to happen this weekend.'"

That same year, Campbell signed with the Calgary Inferno in the Canadian Women's Hockey League, playing with them for three seasons. As her playing career began winding down, it was time for her to ask: what next?

Th answer was obvious to the people who knew Campbell best.

From her mom's perspective, it was natural Campbell would continue to leverage her high energy and love for people. "Jess was a high-spirited child who liked to do everything. She never missed anything. She wanted to be part of a lot of things," Monique says. Campbell loved hockey's team atmosphere; even when she was regularly the only girl on her minor hockey team, her mom noticed she formed instant, close bonds with all her teammates on road trips, at tournaments, and on the ice. Her mom couldn't imagine her doing anything but being involved with a team.

To Bram, skating definitely had to be part of Campbell's future. "We all thought she might end up doing something with hockey and skating because that's what she was so good at."

Putting those two together meant Campbell would be a natural fit to coach, so she took a position in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia coaching high school girls. Several years into her tenure, she called Bram from a Starbucks drive-through for an impromptu heart-to-heart.

"She said, 'I'm not unhappy here. I just feel like I'm not fulfilled. I love the girls. They're fun. But, I just feel I have more potential,'" Bram remembers.

"I wanted to continue to aspire to work with players of the highest level, regardless of gender," Campbell says.

To aim for the highest levels of professional coaching meant she would have to do something that hadn't yet been done by a woman: rise through the ranks of men's professional hockey and into the NHL.

"There is no true blueprint for anybody's pathway," Campbell, 31, says. "If you would have looked at mine, you probably would never have said, 'She's going to coach in the NHL or be in this position.' Because the reality was, nobody else was doing it. But looking back now, I feel if I connect my dots backwards, my upbringing and my story as a young girl with the boys has set me up for the right mentality," she says.

Campbell headed directly from the drive-through to her employer to give notice she was leaving. She had a plan: to launch her own power skating business. And that business took off.

Campbell briefly relocated to Sweden to launch JC Powerskating before returning to the Okanagan shortly before the NHL's 2020 playoff bubble was set to begin. At the time, many players were isolating in the Okanagan and looking for summer ice to brush off pandemic cobwebs, and before long, she was running 20-person skates with players like Luke Schenn - who won the Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning that year.

"I wasn't focused on trying to get to work with NHL players," Campbell says. "I was presented with an opportunity where one NHL player wanted ice time and asked if they could come skate with me. Next thing you know, there were 15 guys and I was running an entire NHL group. The realization for me was just to continue to bring that passion and not worry about any of the other barriers or perspectives that others may have about it."

After noticing her skates gaining momentum with NHLers, Brent Seabrook hired Campbell privately to help him recover from hip and shoulder surgery.

"I really hated her, to be honest," Seabrook says laughing. He clarifies: "I hated watching her skate.

"I'll never forget, we were working on pivots. And she's like, 'Hey, I want you to come up. And I want you to do like this.'"

Campbell demonstrated the skill and Seabrook shook his head.

"I'm like, 'Jess, there's no chance I'm going to be able to get that low and get my leg out that far. And then push and pump. It doesn't matter how healthy I am or how young I ever was. There's no way I can get down that low,'" he says. "She was very good with the technical parts of it."

Her sheer skill earned her respect. "Everything she was asking us to do, she could do," he says. "Everything. She did it, and she did it really well.

"I find the people that I've worked with (who) are really exceptional at what they do are the people that really stop you and correct you and make sure you're doing it properly."

But it wasn't only Campbell's skating that Seabrook liked; her demeanor was great, too. "She took the time to talk to us. It wasn't barking. I could talk to her. She'd follow up with questions. She was learning from us as well. She didn't take any crap from us. She was out there to do a job, and the mentality was, 'Let's do it properly.'

"Whatever level you're at, you want to feel like (your coaches) care," Seabrook says. "She would go the extra mile. She would text me after to see how I was feeling. Is it too much? What do you want to do tomorrow for the skate? Do you think we should go harder? Should we pull back a bit? There was a plan behind every skate. She cared."

That's Campbell's personality - on and off the ice. "That's a big piece of who I am as a coach," she says. "I want to be a coach who is willing to ask the hard questions and who is willing to be sensitive. I know that is my feminine self that comes through in coaching. It is that communication piece. That level of care. Making sure the guys know my coaching style is to lead with love and lead with service for them. Making sure they know I'm in the trenches with them, and all I want to do is see them succeed."

Opportunity knocked as her coaching reputation grew. In 2021, she headed to Germany to be an assistant coach of the Nuremberg Ice Tigers in the DEL under ​​Tom Rowe, the former Florida Panthers general manager and head coach. After the season, she and Rowe were assistants to Toni Soderholm with the German national team at the men's world championship.

That's where Campbell came to the attention of Dan Bylsma, the 2011 NHL coach of the year and winner of the 2009 Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins. When Bylsma met Campbell, he was an assistant coach with Team USA, and was also scouting upcoming additions for his staff, as he was set to start as head coach of the Seattle Kraken's AHL affiliate, the newly formed Coachella Valley Firebirds.

"I started my search with a couple of different names in mind. But I saw her coaching the German national team and I started an investigation into where Jessica was at and where her coaching path was at," Bylsma says.

He was even more impressed when he learned about her skates in the Okanagan. "NHL players reached out to her and asked her to put them on the ice and through the paces to keep their game fresh and relevant," he says. "That struck a big chord with me in terms of what kind of coach she is. She can put a player on a path to be relevant."

When Bylsma hired her, she became the first woman to have a full-time coaching position in the AHL. Now in her second season on Bylsma's staff and with an NHL preseason game under her belt, she's close to the pinnacle she sought when she left her high school job.

"I think that my hardships and the challenging times in my life were actually the days that prepared me for the work in this job," Campbell says. "There are a lot of hard days, there are a lot of sleepless nights. And, I am alone in this space. As much as I feel completely supported by my staff, by Bylsma, by the organization, by the Kraken - everybody has been so supportive of me - there isn't another female coach specifically in my position that I can call at the end of the day and just communicate with on that same level.

"I think the strength comes from some of the challenging times in my life where I can lean in. I can dig in and access the place of strength."

Campbell's in charge of the Firebirds' forwards and power-play unit. In her first season, Coachella Valley was the AHL's third-highest scoring team, with 257 goals. The power play hummed at 20.3% efficiency. The club marched to the Calder Cup final, eventually losing to the Hershey Bears in seven games.

Along the way, Campbell did exactly what Bylsma thought she would: show players how to become relevant. She helped transform forward Tye Kartye's play and jumpstart his NHL prospects. Kartye, an undrafted free agent, led AHL rookies with 57 points in 2022-23 and was named the league's top freshman. He was called up to the Kraken for the 2023 NHL playoffs.

Kartye had a similar experience to Seabrook, back in Campbell's early Okanagan days. "She was really good at telling you how the game went and what you needed to improve on," Kartye says. "Little conversations like that, when you talk one-on-one about how you're doing and how you can improve and how the games have been going, conversations like that build a lot of trust."

It's an approach that proves itself in the details and the staggering amount of hours she devotes to developing players.

"Last year, I was a rookie. I came in and it was a bit of a slow start," Kartye says. "Being able to work with her after practice - she was always out on the ice before or after practice - whenever I needed to do something, she was always there. She'd pass pucks, give advice, go over video. She helped me an incredible amount as I was trying to reach my goal to get to the NHL."

Campbell traces that dedication back to her brother. "That mindset of really not holding back and just going for it has always been inspired by my brother and the way he lived and in the athlete and person that he was," she says.

That work ethic and people-centered approach keep providing her chances to see her brother's dream come to fruition. "I think every day about how I get to live out my brother's dream of working or playing at the highest level on the men's side. I do feel a sense of pride and honor with my family that they get to also experience this with me, and there's just so much joy around the game. The game has always been a place where we, as a family, have been able to connect and celebrate."

If Campbell could say one thing to Josh, knowing what she now does about her career path, and her future dreams, she knows what it those words would be: "I'm here because of you. And I definitely am grateful every day. I'm never going to take the opportunity for granted to get to do what I love on the ice."

And if Josh could see Jessica now, Monique thinks he'd use her nickname, one he gave his little sister because she ran before she could walk. She thinks he'd say something like this:

"Boof, we always knew you were going to go far with hockey. Look what you've done. I'm extremely proud."

Jolene Latimer is a feature writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2023 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Weeks after the initial shock and public outpouring following the tragic death of former NHL player Adam Johnson, the debate over how to get athletes to meaningfully protect their necks hasn't subsided.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has said a neck guard mandate is a complex issue that would have to be negotiated with the players' association, and only a handful of players have adopted the added protection, but the Western Hockey League got in line with Canada's other two major junior leagues by issuing an immediate provision this month. Meanwhile, conversations are happening at every level of the game.

"My oldest son, Luke, plays professional hockey in Germany, and he played with Adam (Johnson)," said Mary-Kay Messier, Bauer Hockey's vice president of marketing. "He talked to me about how the players got together and discussed how they felt about it. It really impacted them."

The players decided they would try wearing neck guards.

"I was really shocked that my son and a bunch of players on the team came back afterwards and said it wasn't bad at all," said Messier, whose company is a leading supplier of neck guards. "He started texting me saying, 'What can we do about getting neck guards? The team wants to try it.' We have a distributor in Germany, so that came together."

It's an example of organic adoption that Messier and industry leaders hope will become the norm following Johnson's death. With an increasing number of hockey leagues mandating neck guards' use, it's logical to believe that as players advance up the ranks, they'll naturally continue to use them - even when they reach a level where they're optional. The same evolution introduced helmets and visors into the NHL. Bauer estimates a roughly 40% increase in neck guard demand in the weeks since Johnson's death.

"If we start to mandate this at the youth level, then all the kids are used to it. Young kids that graduated from junior went into the NHL wearing a visor, there was no issue - zero issue. So attack it at the youth level," Messier said.

The Ontario Hockey League mandated the use of neck guards 15 years ago after a player survived a jugular laceration in 2008.

"It, in my view, required immediate consideration. We convened a conference call of our owners, and they all supported it," OHL commissioner David Branch said. "You develop a culture of understanding, where you go, 'Hey, we have to do the right thing here.' Right away, we introduced it, and it was interesting because there was pushback from players."

The players might have been vocal in the media, but behind the scenes, Branch got calls from families that had a completely different sentiment. "They'd say, 'Mr. Branch, don't back down. Listen, it's so important for the safety of our son.'"

In the WHL, which mandated neck guards in early November, one coach believes their adoption will proceed without too much fuss.

"You see this throughout society. Something will come in that's good for us, but we don't like doing it - maybe it's seatbelts or whatever," said Willie Desjardins, head coach and general manager of the WHL's Medicine Hat Tigers. "But, once it's mandatory, then you have to do it. When referees enforce it, then you don't have any choice but to do it. This is a rule, and this is what we need to do."

For leagues and governing bodies hesitant to issue a mandate, part of the reluctance comes down to questions about the efficacy of neck guards.

"We want to make sure the material of the equipment that's available actually does what it's supposed to do. So players don't have a false sense of security out there," said Marty Walsh, head of the National Hockey League Players' Association.

Dr. Michael J. Stuart, professor of orthopedic surgery at the Mayo Clinic and USA Hockey's chief medical officer, told CNN he believes more players will adopt neck guards with better education.

Before Johnson's death, Stuart and his team received survey responses from 26,589 registered USA Hockey athletes to assess their neck laceration experiences. It found that 45% of athletes were voluntarily wearing neck guards despite no USA Hockey mandate. More than 60% of players under the age of 12 reported wearing them, but usage starts to drop off quickly after that; only 22% of players 19 and older reported wearing a neck guard.

A total of 1.8% of respondents (485 athletes) experienced some form of neck laceration from a skate blade, but most were minor injuries. As many as 27% of those athletes were wearing a neck protector at the time of the laceration.

However, survey results didn't indicate if neck guards played a role in reducing or adding to the severity of sustained injuries. Stuart believes the effectiveness of neck guards often comes down to their material and how they're worn.

"The protective device should literally go from the ear down to the collarbone because it needs to protect the area underneath the angle of the mandible (the lower jaw) and the area right above the collarbone where there’s also neurovascular structures," he told CNN.

Messier draws a parallel between this reasoning and the former conversation around helmets.

"We saw this with helmets in two ways. One argument was: helmets aren't always worn properly. And two: there was a discussion at one point about, 'Can helmets really prevent concussions?' But, the story kind of falls apart. Are you more protected with the helmet? I think we can absolutely say yes. And then you can make the same connection with neck guards. Would it eliminate any type of injury? Cut-resistant neck guards are probably not there. There might be some freak accidents. Will it really cut down on the number and the severity? Could it be life saving? If you have that opportunity, why wouldn't we at least go there?"

Branch backs her up here. After learning of Johnson's death, his immediate thought wasn't to question neck guards altogether but rather how to optimize their effectiveness. "My mind went to: We've got to revisit the proper wearing of neck guards by our players," he said. "We've got to make sure we've got the leading supplier, with Kevlar and other such things."

Kevlar may be the answer to the other major factor causing reluctance to wear neck guards: they can be uncomfortable and aren't breathable. "I'm satisfied that our current supplier is (using) Kevlar. There's nothing better on the market right now. We've got to keep challenging ourselves in that area," Branch said.

Bauer, which supplies the OHL's neck guards, has been consulting with elite athletes about ways it can elevate its product for enhanced wearability.

"We've been working with Kevlar for years, and we've been manufacturing a product that works: integrated base layers and cut-resistant neck protection," Messier said.

There's a chance that product could be put to the ultimate test early next year, with the NHL set to resume discussing neck guard mandates at the All-Star Game in Toronto. "A lot of companies now, I'm assuming, they'd be smart to come up with something," Walsh said. "I don't know if they'll have it ready by February, but the conversation is going to happen in February."

The Canadian Press reports the NHL is working on clearing 12 to 14 new neck guards from eight different manufacturers.

While the debate around neck guards remains ongoing, the conversation itself is a sign athletes are taking neck protection more seriously than ever before.

"I think if guys enjoyed wearing them, they would have been wearing them before," Desjardins said. "But they didn't realize the significance of them either. And so you know, if something tragic happens, then you realize maybe I should look at this a little different."

With files from John Matisz.

Jolene Latimer is a feature writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2023 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

When Christine Simpson began her career as a hockey reporter in 1998, Google did not exist. Viewers relied on broadcasters and print reporters to uncover information about their favorite players that wasn't accessible anywhere else. Today, information is instantly available and, as a result, the role of storytelling has changed.

But Simpson, who you can catch this season on Sportsnet's Hockey Night in Canada, has changed along with the times, leveraging her vast hockey knowledge and deep contact list to continue to develop feature stories that show a different side of hockey and its biggest stars. As more hockey players get comfortable showing their personality, people like Simpson are there to bring them out of their shell.

theScore recently caught up with Simpson to talk about the changing dynamics of storytelling in hockey and what stories she's paying attention to this year.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

theScore: How has the way you tell hockey stories changed from the beginning of your career to now?

Simpson: So much of storytelling comes out of the preparation that you do for the interview. I would say that is one area that has changed so much from when I began. Keep in mind, I started at Sportsnet in 1998. So if I were, for example, heading to California to do a story on one of the Los Angeles Kings, it's not like I could Google the player.

Back then, research started by looking up who is the beat reporter for the L.A. Kings and phoning them. Or, if I knew anyone from that player's past, like a junior coach where they played, a good friend, someone in their world, I would get a hold of that person. That would be kind of the only way that you could do research.

Now, with technology, the players themselves tell you a lot about themselves, especially the younger generation who have social media. One of the first things I would do if I'm interviewing, for example, Trevor Zegras from the Anaheim Ducks, is go to his Instagram and find out, where was he this summer? Did he travel somewhere? Did he go to a teammate's wedding? Does he have a cool hobby that I could ask him about? There are so many other ways to find out about a player. It's been nice to see a lot of players now are a little more open to sharing more of their personality.

How does hockey's culture of conservatism impact your approach to interviews?

Hockey players have always been known as the conservative ones that don't really want to be bigger than the team. I do respect that very much. It's a team sport, but it's nice that a lot of the newer generation can kind of let their hair down a bit and have some fun. Trevor Zegras is a good example of that. They can tell us a lot about themselves through their own channels. It's certainly a helpful tool when I am deciding, "How do I approach this interview and telling the story of this particular player?"

As far as interviews go, it all depends who the leader is. Any team that has, for instance, Lou Lamoriello at the helm - Lou's got his rules, and you will never be able to get around that. I mean, I remember being a rinkside reporter for the Toronto Maple Leafs when Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner were in their rookie seasons. Two of the biggest superstars to come into the game. Lou's rule was, during the game broadcast, I was not allowed to interview rookies. And again, I respect him. Obviously, he's a Hall of Famer. In his mind, they haven't really earned the right yet to have the focus on them. I think he wanted them to just put their head down, do their job, not be distracted.

Well, I'll never forget the very first game of that season: Auston Matthews' debut. They're playing the Ottawa Senators in Ottawa. I'm not allowed to talk to him at the pregame bench warm-up interview, intermission interview. The only caveat was if he does something truly special, then the Leafs' PR would go to Lou and see if he would rescind that rule and allow me to interview him. Well, of course, in Auston Matthews' first NHL game, he scores four goals.

I've got to think that this qualifies as something special. Lou did let me do the postgame interview with Auston Matthews, which I did appreciate.

That might be an extreme example, where leadership just does not want, in any way, shape, or form, anyone to feel bigger than the team. It's all about the culture for hockey players. It's always all about the team. If you're too flashy, you're probably going to have some veteran on the team kind of put you in your place. I guess it's the old-school way of thinking. I do feel that it's changing. But for players, I also think they need to respect what the rules are of their team.

It seems like many athletes today are also concerned about saying something controversial that could become a distraction.

A lot of teams media-train their players. In my experience, that teaches them how to say something without actually saying anything at all, which is why it is so refreshing when a player does open up or even says something controversial, which people can jump on them for. But in my mind, you can't jump on a player. All we want is for them to show more of their personality or to say exactly how they feel.

A huge example is Travis Dermott. Keep in mind, he is not a seasoned veteran with a 10-year deal, he's on a one-year contract. But it was so important to him to use Pride Tape, even knowing he's going against the NHL rules, that he did it. That takes a lot for someone like him to do that, because his convictions were so strong. I have all the respect in the world for him. It forced the NHL to look at their policy and change it. So there's an example of kudos to Travis Dermott of all people, who stood up for what he believed in and felt was right. That's not an easy thing to do.

There's so much information online now - does this change your role as a storyteller? It's hard to bring the viewer something new when they could just Google it themselves. Does that mean you have to ask different questions today than in the past?

I feel like you do need to have a reason for wanting to talk to somebody. You're always trying to find a nugget of something about a great player that people wouldn't have necessarily known, or just get him to open up about something that he hasn't talked about before. Most of my favorite interviews are where we're actually not even talking about hockey. It's more about delving into something about that player - a passion they have, a story about their family, a story about their child, a story about what their goals are beyond hockey, anything like that.

It's also about trying to ask the questions in a way that doesn't allow them to give the cliche answers. And, if they do give the cliche answer, you need to follow up with another way of asking the same question, but wanting to delve a little deeper into it.

It makes you work harder to want to get an interview out of a player, where someone's going to say, "I learned something about them, or even just saw them in a different light."

Is there one career moment that stands out to you when you think about everything you've done?

I have been fortunate enough to be a part of so many Stanley Cup playoff games, All-Star Games, outdoor games, all of that. But, if you force me to pick one, I think I would actually say my biggest highlight was March 8, 2020: International Women's Day. I was part of the first-ever all-female broadcast of an NHL game in Canada. Myself, Cassie Campbell-Pascall, and Leah Hextall. We also had a female producer, director, and most of our truck was female. It was such an amazing feeling to have all of these women who do these jobs all together. I've worked with women over the years, but never kind of all of us coming together at the same time. It was just such an incredible feeling of pride for the industry. When I started in 1998, there was not a chance that any network would even try and do that. They wouldn't have been able to do it because there weren't enough women in those roles who could perform those duties. The fact that we did it, and it was such a huge, huge success, was absolutely one of the career highlights.

Which storylines are you personally most interested in this hockey season?

We all know that a Canadian team has not won the Stanley Cup since the Canadiens did it in 1993. When you saw all the pundits giving their predictions for the season, a lot of them had the Edmonton Oilers potentially playing the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Stanley Cup final. That would be a dream for us in Canada. The Oilers are going to have to get going, but I have every hope that they will.

The other thing I would look to is Connor Bedard. What a phenom. I know the season is young, but he's been living up to all of the expectations and accolades that he got coming into the season. It'll be exciting to see how his rookie season unfolds.

Lastly, for us here in Toronto, we've got the All-Star Game coming to town and that's always a fun event. To have it in our own backyard is something that I am very much looking forward to.

Do you have any cool features in the works that you can give me the inside scoop on?

I was actually just in New York City last week and did two sit-downs that will be coming up. One with Blake Wheeler, who was the captain of the Winnipeg Jets and had a bit of an awkward ending to his career in Winnipeg. He is now with the New York Rangers and will be traveling with the Rangers to Winnipeg on Oct. 30. We talked a lot about how it ended in Winnipeg and how he thinks he'll feel going back there as a member of the Rangers.

The other one I got, and I'm very excited about this one, I sat down with Henrik Lundqvist, who will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Nov. 13. I spent a few hours with him in Tribeca, where he co-owns a restaurant. We did the interview at his restaurant and walked the streets of Tribeca. I remember interviewing him in his rookie season back in the day. So, just to have him in a very relaxed state and look back on his career and what some of the highlights were was fun for me.

Jolene Latimer is a writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2023 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

From Damar Hamlin to Bronny James and, most recently, one of Alabama's most promising high school basketball stars, the sports world has had many recent reminders that cardiac arrests are a legitimate risk for even the healthiest and youngest athletes.

When every second counts, preparedness is essential to saving lives. The world's top athletes can rely on trainers to perform life-saving measures, but most - from high school gyms to community hockey arenas - must rely on bystanders. They rely on you. Do enough of us know what to do in the event of a sports-related cardiac arrest?

"I always give credit to those five individuals that went on and off of my chest, performing CPR for 11 minutes, for saving my life," Breanna Sudano says. Back in 2011, while playing for Perry Hall (Maryland) High School's junior varsity field hockey team, Sudano had just scored a go-ahead goal when she collapsed. Her heart and breathing stopped. At the age of 13, she was in cardiac arrest.

Because there was no automated external defibrillator (AED) present on the field, a bystander had to run into the school to locate it, which caused a delay in restarting Sudano's heart. Those 11 minutes could have had profound neurological consequences had it not been for Sudano's luck that day - three cardiac nurses were at the game and immediately began hands-only CPR.

"It didn't cause any brain or organ damage because of how perfectly they executed it," she says. Other athletes might not be so lucky; that's where trained bystanders and functional AEDs come into play.

​​"I think it's an individual's responsibility to have a basic understanding of CPR, and the use of an AED and how they might intervene in an event of an emergency. I think that's a life skill," says Andrew Lotto, senior manager of business development and engagement at the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

"Cardiac arrest is not discriminatory to age - it can happen to young kids in sports, it can happen to young adults playing sports, it can happen to the elderly. I think it's really important that sports and athletic facilities be equipped with AEDs and that individuals at those facilities know how to use them," he said.

In professional sports, and in most college sports scenarios, trained medical staff are on hand with the proper equipment to respond in a cardiac emergency. That's what helped Danish soccer star Christian Eriksen when he collapsed on the pitch during a Euro 2020 match. Swift medical intervention saved his life.

But even the professionals can't always make a miracle happen.

Hank Gathers led the NCAA in scoring and rebounding as a junior for Loyola Marymount during the 1988-89 basketball season. But early in his senior season, he collapsed on the court due to a mysterious heart condition. Without fully diagnosing Gathers, doctors cleared him to return to play. He later fatally collapsed on the court during a West Coast Conference tournament game. Even though a defibrillator was courtside, Gathers didn't receive a shock until he was taken off the court. Despite attempts to resuscitate him, Gathers' death underscored the need for improved medical protocols and screenings in sports.

Today, the NCAA is still advocating for improved medical standards, not just within their own colleges but for high school athletes too. "Prompt recognition and treatment of cardiac arrest with CPR and AED placement in student-athletes leads to survival rates approaching 90%," NCAA chief medical officer Dr. Brian Hainline said via email. "Studies demonstrate that survival rate decreases for every minute that AED is not utilized. The low-hanging fruit of mitigating death from cardiac arrest is widespread certification of CPR/AED for student-athletes and athletics personnel coupled with strategic locations of AEDs."

Lotto has already done a lot of work in Canada to ensure every athlete has access to these lifesaving tools. His organization worked with the Canadian federal government to place 32,034 AEDs in any athletic facility that requested one across the country.

"What Heart and Stroke had intended to do was make sure that defibrillators were as commonplace as fire extinguishers," Lotto says.

In the United States, the NFL has led a similar initiative in the aftermath of Hamlin's cardiac arrest. In collaboration with the NBA, MLB, MLS, the NHL, and the NCAA, the league has advocated for better adoption of emergency best practices in high schools and clearly marked AEDs at each athletic venue where high school practices or competitions are held. Plus, they're pushing for CPR and AED education for coaches. Just a few months into the coalition's work, they've seen some meaningful progress.

“Since the launch in March, the Smart Heart Sports Coalition has grown in members and momentum," Jeff Miller, NFL executive vice president of communications, public affairs and policy said via email. "During the past several months, we’ve seen policymakers in states such as New Mexico, Indiana and Kentucky take action and we’ll continue our advocacy in the months and years ahead until every state in the country adopts these life-saving measures.”

Specifically, in April, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed SB 450 into law, mandating that all licensed coaches employed by school districts obtain CPR certification with knowledge of AED use. Indiana passed legislation that emphasizes the presence of AEDs where students face a heightened risk of sudden cardiac arrest.

But while this momentum might catalyze action, the success of these efforts comes down to maintenance. "It's one thing to get the AEDs on the ground, it's an entirely different thing to keep them up to date," Lotto says. "The maintenance is really important - that can't be perpetually funded by the government and Heart and Stroke. Local facilities need to make a commitment."

Not only do AED batteries need to be changed regularly - every two to five years depending on the model - but the pads that are placed on a patient in an emergency also need upkeep. The adhesive gel dries up, so they need to be replaced every two years. An AED's location should also be indicated with good signage and registered with emergency services so bystanders can be directed to the nearest one in a lifesaving situation. There are currently no federal regulations in Canada or the United States that mandate the upkeep of AEDs.

And even a nearby and well-maintained AED is useless without someone who knows how to use it. Often, that life-saving task comes down to onlookers. That's where you come in. Recently, a group of recreational basketball players in South Brunswick, New Jersey saved one of their teammates with CPR and AED knowledge and quick action.

"If somebody collapses, your best bet is to call 911 and shout for a defibrillator," Lotto says.

"In the meantime, push hard and fast in the center of the chest. As soon as the AED arrives, put it on the person. It coaches you through voice prompts, it will tell you what to do. They are foolproof. The average citizen needs to know what to do and what actions to take. And they're as simple as those three steps."

Jolene Latimer is a video producer and feature writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2023 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

In the summer of 1983, Dominik Hasek - future Hockey Hall of Famer and six-time Vezina Trophy winner - learned he had been drafted into the NHL by happenstance after his traveling companion glanced at a newspaper while visiting France.

Not only was getting drafted a surprise but so too was the rookie contract he was later offered by the Chicago Blackhawks: five years and $1.2 million, which he had absolutely no intentions of accepting. Hasek, who was visiting France with his longtime Czechoslovakian national team teammate Frank Musil when he learned of the NHL's interest, could only relocate to the United States if he was willing to defect from the then Soviet-controlled nation, something hockey players had been tortured and imprisoned for attempting in the past.

Hasek eventually did play in the NHL, becoming one of the league's most celebrated goaltenders. In fact, a talented core of Czech and Slovak players put its mark on the NHL once the Soviet Bloc started to crumble in the late 1980s, including Hasek, Musil, Jaromir Jagr, Patrik Elias, Milan Hejduk, Petr Nedved, Bobby Holik, and David Pastrnak for the Czechs, while Marian Hossa, Marian Gaborik, Peter Bondra, and Zdeno Chara led the Slovaks. How hockey flourished there to become a pathway to the rest of the world is a story that began more than 75 years ago in 1946. It's a story detailed in Ethan Scheiner's newly released book, "Freedom to Win." It's a story that begins with Holik's father.

"By far the most important thing is what the men of that previous generation did for our generation to have opportunities," Holik said.

In 1948, on the heels of World War II, the Communist Party seized power in Czechoslovakia, heavily guided by Soviet influence. The regime was repressive from the outset, and dissent was out of the question.

These circumstances would color the childhood of Holik's father - Jaroslav Holik Jr. - who was born in 1942, just in time to fall in love with hockey in the brief lull between their Nazi occupiers and the rise of the Communist Party. It was Christmas morning in 1946 when he received his first pair of skates - money for which his parents had scrupulously saved from the proceeds of their small butcher shop that also doubled as the family's living quarters.

The idyll didn't last long. Two years later, the Communist government forced Jaroslav Sr. to sell the butcher shop at a price they named, and the future began closing in on the family, like most in the country at the time.

"We would never say, 'I want to do this with my life,'" said Bobby Holik, who was born into the repression in 1971. "We had no idea. Because, at any given moment, the government was so powerful that it could end any path."

But at the start of the Communist Party's rule, Bobby's grandfather - Jaroslav Sr. - imparted a fateful lesson about the future. He told his sons, "If you want to get anywhere in life, you have to play a sport. It won't happen any other way." It was their path out of tyranny.

In the late 1960s, Czechoslovaks were increasingly dissatisfied with their stalled economy, and signs of defiance grew, causing their new leader, Alexander Dubcek, to initiate the "Prague Spring" reforms at the start of 1968, which seemingly signaled a period of political transformation and increased civil liberties.

But those who dared to believe the era of Soviet dominance could be drawing to a close were disappointed. The Soviet Union was prepared for a show of military might, and on the evening of Aug. 20, 1968, it launched a full-scale invasion with four allied nations - the Warsaw Pact invasion - that sent shockwaves through the nation.

Initially, Czechoslovaks resisted. But as the Soviets clamped down, the avenues of resistance narrowed. That's where hockey comes into play.

The occasion: The 1969 Ice Hockey World Championship. The event had been awarded to Prague, but organizers sought to avoid trouble and moved it to Stockholm. Czechoslovakia would have to wage its proxy battle against the Soviets on neutral ice.

"Sometimes you have no other outlet," said Scheiner, whose book delves into the Czechoslovakian team's two triumphs over the USSR at the tournament. "This was actually one of those cases where there was no other way for these people to get back at the Soviets or to express themselves in any way."

By then, Jaroslav Holik Jr., following his father's advice to create his future in sports, had made a name for himself as a dominant force on the ice. He had earned a spot on the national team, along with his brother Jiri, and they took their fighting spirit to the ice - something that took on a special weight for fans.

"Hockey was basically the national identity," Bobby Holik said. "We didn't have much at the time; we were occupied by the team that was far superior than we were. We were occupied by a country that had a hockey team that was the most superior hockey team in the world."

The Soviets came into the 1969 tournament having won the previous six world titles and the last two Olympics. The Czechoslovaks hadn't won a match against them since 1961. So prolific was their losing record that a rumor had circulated in the intervening years that they were forbidden from winning against the region's political masters.

That said, by 1968, the Czechoslovaks had improved greatly on the ice and managed a high-stakes win against the Soviets at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble but ultimately placed second in the tournament after tying with Sweden in their subsequent matchup.

"Originally, the Soviet Union had no interest in competing with the West in these sports," Scheiner said. "But once they saw that they could get actual, real propaganda out of it, then they were really enthusiastic about doing it."

The Czechoslovaks sought to prove that while their country's liberalizing reforms might have been rolled back, at least on the ice, they would still dominate.

The 1969 tournament was a six-team affair that also featured Sweden, Finland, Canada, and the U.S. Each team would play the others twice in the round robin, with the title being decided by the team with the best overall record. Czechoslovakia would have two swipes at their tormentors.

"The situation just presented itself to make it stand," Holik said. "It wasn't politics. It was a national pride. It was national identity."

The first of their matchups fell on March 21. Czechoslovakia came into the game with a 3-1 record, having beaten Canada, the U.S., and Finland by at least three goals but losing 2-0 to Sweden. The Soviets had rolled to four straight wins over the same teams, scoring 34 goals and allowing just six. Half of those goals came in a 17-2 drubbing of the U.S.

The Czechoslovak players didn't let that bother them. In an intense battle - with the Swedish crowd adopting the Czechoslovaks as the hometown team - they secured a stunning 2-0 victory. Jaroslav Holik Jr. celebrated the first goal by ripping the net from the ice and tossing it toward the boards. Emotions were running so high on the Soviet side that coach Anatoli Tarasov suffered a heart attack before the final whistle blew.

In their second encounter on March 28, the intensity ratcheted up another level. Both teams were 7-1 with two games left to play. Czechoslovakia drew first blood and secured a two-goal lead - the first goal of which was scored by Jiri Holik. But then the team faltered, giving up two before the end of the second period. Both teams remained locked in a stalemate until the middle of the third period when Czechoslovakia rallied with two goals - one of them by Jaroslav Holik Jr. - and held off a late Soviet rally to clinch an extraordinary 4-3 triumph.

The victory of the Czechoslovakian hockey team roused the nation to action. Half a million Czechoslovaks took to the streets in celebration that turned to defiance and protest. Not even Soviet military barracks were safe from the unleashed anger of the masses.

But the tournament and the protests didn't have a Hollywood ending. Czechoslovakia lost its final game to Sweden and was relegated to the bronze medal, while the Soviets earned gold. The protests also didn't result in any gains. "After these hockey matches, the repression got even worse in Czechoslovakia. That led to the reformist leader getting kicked out of power," Scheiner said.

With reform fully squashed, Jaroslav Holik Jr. did what he knew best, returning to hockey while passing down his father's nugget of wisdom to his own children: Sports were the only way out. Those children happened to be Bobby Holik and his peers, Musil and Hasek.

"One of my favorite parts of the story was all these boys who grew up in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and the 1980s. They were living in this horribly repressive society. But their parents would tell them, 'OK, in 1968, we were invaded by the Soviets. Their troops are still here. But, back in 1969, our hockey players were some of the few people who were able to fight back," Scheiner said.

The memory of that victory and its national importance spawned a generation of world-class hockey talent. A few defected: The Holiks' teammate Vaclav Nedomansky escaped in 1974; the Stastny brothers went out in 1980. Nedved was the last to go that route in 1989.

"It was just like, 'You have to be a really good athlete, and that will help you find your way out, or you're going to live in this country forever,'" Bobby Holik said.

Czechoslovakia would endure another two decades of Soviet rule before it successfully toppled the Communist Party regime through the Velvet Revolution in late 1989. While some hockey players - such as Musil, who defected in 1986 to play for the Minnesota North Stars - found escape routes during the Communist Party rule, other Czech and Slovak stars, such as Jagr, Holik, and Hasek, realized their NHL dreams following the fall of the regime. Jagr chose to wear No. 68 in the NHL in tribute to his grandfathers and the brief taste of freedom the country experienced that year.

In 1998, they did get their Hollywood ending. The Czechs bested the Russians 1-0 in the ice hockey final at the Nagano Winter Olympics to earn gold.

"There's no way (our parents) could change what happened or what was going to happen - the oppression that was going to be there. But they had an opportunity to just say, 'You know what, occupiers or not, we can still compete on the ice,'" Holik said.

Jolene Latimer is a video producer and feature writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2023 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The group that could "swipe before they could wipe" is growing up, and they're poised to change the landscape of pro sports fandom.

Gen Zers are now a vital group of consumers. As they enter the workforce, their spending habits and cultural sway are making them game changers in a number of areas, notably sports and media. While the sports fans of yesteryear were once content to wear a jersey, sit in front of a TV, and watch the game, Gen Zers are demanding more, and they're forcing industry executives to come up with a new game plan.

"Reaching Gen Z - and Gen Alpha - should be a point of concern for every single senior sports executive across teams, leagues, media companies, federations, brands, you name it. If you're a key stakeholder in the industry, this is probably something that you should be focusing on … especially when you see some of the data," said Mark J. Burns, a senior sports reporter at the business intelligence firm Morning Consult, which has surveyed Gen Zers to better understand their sports preferences.

Professional sports' revenue and franchise values have exploded in this century, and the industry is not in danger of going extinct - yet. The value of the North American sports market is projected to surpass $83 billion in 2023. But Burns found that one major challenge executives will have to navigate in the coming years is pleasing the whims of Gen Z, who don't pledge their fandom easily.

Unlike their elders, Gen Z consumes sports much differently. It's no secret that the rise of cord-cutting has disrupted the sports-viewing landscape - fracturing the TV industry's one-stop shop on cable and satellite. A tangle of licensing agreements, regional restrictions, and exclusive broadcasting rights has limited the variety and accessibility of sports options on streaming platforms. This has resulted in a fragmented viewership and increased frustration for sports fans. Streaming services, which are moving toward sports programming to increase their subscriber bases, are costly, and the sheer number of them can deter some fans.

"Gen Zers are consuming sports less than U.S. adults, and in a different way," Burns said. What it ultimately comes down to is that everything isn't in one place like it used to be, and people aren't willing to sign up for every streaming service that has sports.

Morning Consult's recent survey of 1,000 U.S. Gen Zers, defined as being between 13 and 25, found 33% of them don't watch live sporting events. Only 24% of U.S. adults and 22% of millennials said the same thing. Gen Zers aren't turning on TV news or flipping to the sports pages of a newspaper anymore, rather they're getting their news from Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. That is, if they're consuming sports news at all. Two in five Gen Zers said they "don't look for sports news anywhere." When this group spends time online, music, movies, and pop culture trends outrank sports when it comes to grabbing their attention.

​​And, unlike the sports fans who came before them, Gen Z isn't particularly keen on attending games in person. Nearly 50% of Gen Zers surveyed said they’d never attended a live professional sporting event. When they do watch sports, it's not enough to just be a good athlete. Burns' survey showed Connor McDavid, who has stunned the NHL with his generationally exquisite play, is not even in the top 15 of Gen Z's favorite athletes.

"I've Tweeted this once or twice over the last couple years, and I still stand by it: McDavid is one of the best hockey players in the world, if not the absolute best. And the casual and maybe even the avid sports fan in the U.S. will never know him," said Burns.

Youth sports participation is also on a steady decline. In 2018, only 38% of children ages 6 to 12 regularly participated in team sports, down from 45% a decade earlier, according the the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, as cited by the New York Times,

The pandemic worsened the trend, forcing the temporary closure of many sports leagues. As per the Times, in 2021, 28% of parents with children in youth sports said their kids weren't interested in playing anymore, up 19 percentage points from a year prior, according to a survey conducted by the Aspen Institute's Sports and Society Program.

Does this spell the beginning of the end for sports fandom? Not quite. In 2021’s The Belong Effect Report, which surveys millennials and Gen Z globally, only 11% of the 8,000 young adults surveyed were season-ticket holders, but 85% of them engaged with sports on social media.

And a 2020 Washington Post article on the relationship between Gen Z and sports found that, according to ESPN’s internal data, 96% of 12- to 17-year-olds still identify as sports fans. It's just that they aren't as passionate as they used to be - the number of kids who claim they're avid sports fans dipped from 42% to 34% over the previous decade.

So how are professional leagues adapting to grab and hold the attention of Gen Z?

For starters, they're embracing new forms of content.

As a 2020 NHL-led focus group found, fans of today are largely interested in seeing athletes in their real lives. Because of that, both leagues and teams are creating content to show the human side of their athletes. Docuseries featuring behind-the-scenes access to athletes have boomed in recent years. When this strategy works, it really works. For example, Formula One's title as the world's fastest-growing sport can partially be attributed to the success of Netflix's "Drive to Survive."

Younger fans also want more than just a formulaic game broadcast. Google research showed 74% of survey respondents interested in sports visit YouTube several times a week. And the value of that content is poised to significantly increase. A Washington Post story used Two Circles data to show short-form video sports content is predicted to increase in value by more than 100% in the next year. In contrast, live TV viewing rights are only expected to increase in value by 18.7%.

Leagues also are leaning more heavily on non-TV metrics to measure engagement success, with online external data sources, like social media, increasingly serving as the north star. The 2020 NBA playoffs - played in a bubble during the COVID-19 pandemic - averaged 3.04 million viewers, according to Sports Media Watch. That's a paltry total compared to the social media views for the year, which the Washington Post reported at 13.2 billion.

Gen Z also doesn't merely want to watch, they want to actively participate. For leagues, harnessing this involves finding ways to bring the game directly to fans. "There are a lot of barriers that might keep kids from participating in our game," said Andrew Ference, a former NHL player who now works for the league as the director of social impact, growth and fan development. "Everything from the cost of equipment, to access to ice, scheduling, pressure from coaches, parents, not having a family history of being involved in hockey." Fan development begins young, so Ference has launched an initiative called NHL Street to expose kids to the game in a low-stakes environment through street hockey.

"We want someone who isn't involved in hockey, doesn't know anything about the culture of ice hockey or know what it's 'supposed to be like,' to have a blank canvas and make the game whatever they want it to be," he said.

As fans, they want to connect with their favorite athletes, prioritizing personal connections, interactivity, and the ability to shape the narrative surrounding their teams.

That's where social media and video gaming play a significant role. The NBA is ahead of the game in this area. With 40% of the NBA's core fan base under the age of 35, they have a heightened interest in capturing the attention of Gen Z. The league now has over 285 million followers across the major social media platforms. That's more than the other U.S. leagues combined.

And the NBA is encouraging active participation in another way: by acknowledging Gen Z's desire to align with brands, athletes, and teams that are representative of their social and environmental beliefs. They've led the charge in empowering athletes to take a stand on important issues and actively contribute to social change. With Gen Z being a highly values-driven cohort, this is essential to connecting with the younger crowd.

Lali Toor, whose network of South Asian hockey players, Apna Hockey, hosts regular hockey camps for young athletes across North America, sees this first hand with the kids he works with.

"The kids, and even the parents, gravitate toward sports that are accessible, yes, but also those that have outspoken leaders," he said. "When you look at the NBA and you look at leaders like LeBron James, him and his team want to grow the game, they want to make sure that there's no barriers, no racial barriers. The athletes that are garnering the most attention are the ones that embody another aspect of growing the game."

And to Toor's point, the available data seems to support what he's noticing on the ground. Fifty-three percent of the Gen Z respondents to Morning Consult's survey said they were either "avid" or "casual" fans of the NFL. The NBA came in second with 47% saying the same thing, next was college football at 41%, then MLB at 35%, college basketball 34%, and esports at 33%. The NHL was only above MLS with 25% of Gen Z respondents saying they were avid or casual fans - MLS earned 16% of the audience.

While some athletes might not feel comfortable leaning into their personality to promote the game, Toor says leagues and teams can do some of the heavy lifting here. He's been working with some NHL teams to facilitate cultural nights focused on bringing more fans into the arena. "I see multi-generational families coming out to these nights, which is the key thing," he explained. "You see elders come with their kids, and their grandkids."

Morning Consult data confirms these nights are a big win with Gen Z. While only 23% of Baby Boomers surveyed said they had interest in attending a team's cultural night, 69% of Gen Zers said they did. With only one in two Gen Zers having attended a live sporting event, this could be a crucial strategy to get them out to games and build their fandom.

And Gen Z is causing one more shift on the horizon - not merely how we consume sports, but what sports we consume.

For decades, football has been the seemingly unshakeable fan favorite among North American sports fans. But that could start changing. The same Kantar survey above found that today, while 42% of all sports fans follow the NBA, a majority of Gen Zers - 58% - follow it. And it's not just the NBA they like. They'll watch college hoops, too. While 35% of general sports fans watch NCAA men’s basketball, 41% of Gen Zers do.

"I firmly believe that NFL football will remain the top sport in the States for years to come. But, with that said, basketball is certainly growing in popularity," Burns said.

In Burns' eyes, a lot of that has to do with online presence. "Basketball in general is sort of a perfect sport, when it comes to social and digital and highlights," he explained. The NBA has leaned into what Burns called the "game after the game."

"The players in the league are so active on social (media). And there are so many storylines that come through that are not limited to what's going on with the game itself," he said, citing as an example The Draymond Green Show, hosted by the current power forward for the Golden State Warriors. He contrasted that with the NHL. "In hockey, I don't even know if that would occur. I feel like that would be so taboo," he said.

Basketball stars also figure highest amongst Gen Z's favorite athletes. Morning Consult data shows LeBron James and Steph Curry are tied for favorite athletes in Gen Z's eyes, both with net favorability ratings of 41. And NBA stars made up six of the athletes on the list's top 10.

Gen Z is the first generation to never know a life without the internet and most can barely remember a time before smartphones. They're doing things differently, and the changes they're creating are already disrupting the landscape of pro sports as we know it.

Jolene Latimer is a video producer and feature writer at theScore

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