01/30/2022
College Club Hockey Write Up: SIUC Wild Dogs, 1992-94.
Late one night, I was snooping around online and came across two definitions of “College Club Hockey”. The first went like this, “club hockey generates images of college players playing late-night hockey in mismatched uniforms under loosely applied rules”. The second indicated, “club teams would play a 15 to 20 game schedule against a mix of university teams, local community teams and some adult league teams”. Having partaken in such action in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I would say the two mentioned quotes are spot on.
For me, hockey began in St. Albans, Vermont: two years of mites. The rink was like an old warehouse and they used a green tractor to clean the ice. Occasionally, we had games up in Quebec. Then it was down to Cincinnati, Ohio and playing in the house leagues. My dad coached the first two years there. At the end of the second season, the parents gave him a glass mug with the team name on it. I finished up in the “I-75 High School Hockey League”, a recreational league made up of kids from various high schools. There were three teams in Cincinnati, two in Dayton and one each in Northern Kentucky, Hamilton, Oxford and Troy, Oh.
After high school I took a break, but then slowly got back into the game. First, it was open skate and then progressing into men’s league. The best league was in Northern Kentucky at the Dixie Ice Bowl. It was totally organized and a lot of fun, but I got kicked out halfway through the season after butt ending some bruiser across the face. Man, blood was everywhere!
After that, I showed up at the University of Cincinnati’s club team. UC practiced twice a week and it ended about mid-night. A lot of the games were road trips- once in Maryland after a Capitals/Rangers matchup. The driving and late practices were more than I was interested in. So, it was back to another men’s league and open hockey.
A guy who’d played pro in Sweden told me I had good fundamentals, but needed to develop my skillset. “It wont happen here”, he added. Regardless, it was kind of encouraging. At the time, I read the Hockey News a lot and followed the Miami Redskins. Somehow, I thought, if I got on a real club team, I could work my way into the CCHA. So, I enrolled at BGSU. That was short lived too.
Hockey was an afterthought until I ended up at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, a few years later. Surprisingly, they had a club down there. It was made up of skaters from around Chicago and a few other places. So, what the heck, I thought, and then had my dad express ship all my gear.
Definitively, “Wild Dog” ice hockey was college club: driving long distances, winning or losing by extreme margins, getting drunk after the games and reconnoitering at strip clubs. There were 15-20 games a year, mostly on the road and club fees were $150.00 or something (pretty cheap, actually). The school even subsidized some of it. However, all other expenses were paid out of pocket and that added up.
The closest rink was two hours away in Evansville, IN (across a maze of state and county highways). So, practice was once a week. Games were usually late Friday and Saturday nights even further down the road. Driving four plus hours to be crushed by the Pekin Stars or Bradley University was totally demoralizing, but whaling on guys from Nashville and Memphis made up for it.
When you play on a low tier team in the south, there are a couple of general rules regarding scoring. For every hour you head north, your loss will increase by two goals. EX: four hours upstate, your opponents will win by eight or more goals. When driving south, expect to score at least one goal for every hour on the road. If your squad is tying or losing to teams in Tennessee, Kentucky or further south, you suck.
Typically, there were four to five car convoys to the game. We’d book three rooms at the cheapest hotel: one for the nerds, another for the drinkers and the last for the dopers.
In the beginning of the season, we had three lines, five defensemen and two goalies. By the end, we still had the goalies, but were always in need of extra skaters. Somehow, we got registered as ACHA Division III. It wasn’t very clear what that meant, but the league patch looked cool on our jerseys.
At the time, I saw Wild Dogs as no more than a checking beer league and really gave the team officers a hard time. We lost a lot and one game the cops showed up. I had one notable fight and a reputation for playing a very physical game. The guy in the article dated 1993.B (see 1990s photo album), Tracy Powell, once said, “man, you really rack ‘em up!”
For that, I employed a few tricks imparted by my I-75 league coach, Frenchie: slashing, cross-checking, and butt ending guys in front of the net. The most effective move was choking down on my stick, leveling it along an opponent’s waist and then kicking him in the back of the knees. Of course, I took a couple of minutes, but if it was during the first period, who cared? The beneficiaries stayed out of the slot for the rest of the game.
Another time, some scrub gloved me right in the face (I didn’t wear a mask). After smacking his hand away, the ref kicked me out for fighting. Man, I was pi**ed! It was half-way through the first period and I’d almost scored twice. The pinnacle of my “Wild Dogs” days was probably sending some dumb bastard through the boards at Swonder Ice Arena.
At one of our few “home” games, a local TV channel profiled the team for their sports segment. This also happened in the I-75 league. Oddly enough, I got notable airtime in both pieces.
Man, that was thirty years ago. Looking back, I probably would have had more fun if I’d trained smarter and got along better with my teammates (a shout out to the guys who organized that club!), but it is what it is. At least I still have my old jersey and the ball cap.
In closing, I’ve included some articles about the team from the Daily Egyptian’s archive. If you skated with the Wild Dogs post your story and a few pictures too! I, and surely others, will be happy read them.
