Game changer

Suiting up in black and gold this season are Ben MacAskill, Nick Croft, Brett Plouffe, Patrick Daley, Justin Javorek and Dan Joyce. (Nick Pearce Photo)

One of the first-year recruits to the Dal Tigers hockey team, Patrick Daley doesn’t remember there being a barrier for him to overcome as a black player. That said, if he stopped long enough to look around, he was usually the only black player on the ice.

Which is why the right winger from Whitby, Ont. is enthusiastic about a new community initiative the Dal Tigers are involved with: to introduce young black kids to the game and get them excited about hockey.

'It's for people'

“After all,” he says with a shrug of his shoulders, “hockey’s not just for white people. It’s for people.”

The Tigers will act as mentors to 30 children between the ages of five and eight at regular Saturday morning practices running from October to March. With the Tigers acting as big brothers, giving them coaching and encouragement, Hockey Nova Scotia will outfit the kids with needed equipment.

From Digby, Lee Francis grew up playing hockey and still keeps active suiting up for gentleman’s hockey. But he noticed that there weren’t other black players coming up through minor and junior hockey ranks in Nova Scotia. Without the tradition of having your dad (or your mom) playing hockey, young black children weren’t getting involved in the game. “A black child in hockey is as rare as a pink elephant on Barrington Street,” he says.

And that’s despite Nova Scotia’s rich hockey heritage. Nova Scotia stakes claim to being the birthplace of hockey, when students from King’s College School in Windsor adapted the Irish game of hurling to the ice around the turn of the 19th century. It was also the home of the Maritime Coloured Hockey League from 1895 to 1930.

“These players had skills that rivaled the best players in the NHL,” says Mr. Francis, whose group, the Black Ice Hockey and Sport Hall of Fame Society, approached Hockey Nova Scotia to see if they could come up with a solution and get black kids back in the game.

“We did have a past here, so we thought, let’s work on the future,” he says, adding the initiative is not solely about hockey. "With student athletes acting as mentors, we can put them on the ice and give them skills. But it could also plant that seed: hey I can go to university too."

The announcement of the community initiative was made during a media conference for  the 2010-11 varsity hockey season, held Tuesday at Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame. Coaches Pete Belliveau and Lesley Jordan introduced their players and outlined expectations for the coming season.

Women's hockey

On the women’s side, Coach Jordan says she’s got a seasoned group of women to work with, including last year’s team MVP Jocelyn Leblanc and starting goalie Ashley Boutilier.

On the men’s side, Coach Belliveau wants to take the most-improved-team in the league to the playoffs. He’s recruited some new talents in Pierre-Alexandre Vandall (“a  blue-chip centreman”), Patrick Daley and Brett Theberge, first liners from the Peterborough Petes, Dan Joyce from Saint John, N.S., and Brad McConnell from Brandon, Manitoba. They join a solid group of returning players.

“We feel we’ve turned a corner,” says Coach Belliveau, who was hired three years ago when the Tigers were skating in the basement of the AUS.

That said, it promises to be tough when your cross-town rivals, Saint Mary’s, are the national champs. “I feel university hockey offers the best hockey in Atlantic Canada,” he said emphatically. “And we feel we can compete game in and game out.”?

The Tigers men’s team kicks off their regular season on Friday, October 15 in a home game versus Saint Mary’s at 7:30 p.m. while the women’s team will open up their season the following night, October 16, 6 p.m. when they face off against Fredericton’s St. Thomas University.