Lake Placid Pond Hockey Tourney – 2005

This is something I should have wrote about a long time ago, but of course I just never had the time.  Tonight I started going through my old docs on my computer just to clean things up.  I stumbled into some old hockey albums and just started laughing as I went through the pics.

The Pond Hockey Tournament

Back in January 2005, I was lucky enough to be invited to the USA Hockey – Pond Hockey Tournament in Lake Placid, NY.  The coolest part about the trip was that I would be traveling and playing with 5 of my closest friends.  Some I have known for the greater part of my life and grew up playing hockey with (Flink & Tad) and others were some of my favorite college hockey teammates (Dommer & Campbell).

The tournament went through the weekend, so while we were there we had quite a bit of free time to check things out.

When we got to our hotel we couldn’t believe that our hotels were right next to Lake Placid.  We could literally see the pond from our rooms.  Better yet, directly across the street was the Miracle Rink.  This was where the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” team made it happen.  While we there we even got to watch a few junior games.  Seriously, how many people can say they’ve been there?  I wish I had more pictures of it too.

Here are just a few pics of what the rinks looked like on the pond.

The Pond

The Pond Again

I can’t remember exactly, but I think we went through 3-4 different games.  We won all of our games and eventually made it into the Championship game.  Along the way, our bodies started to feel the effects of the cold weather.  We would play games at 9 AM and the temperature was as cold as -35 degrees below.  They did their best to keep the players warm but it was just too cold.  They had several fire barrels burning for heat and cases full of Vaseline.  The Vaseline was used for your face to keep the cold weather from giving you frost bite on your face.

After the first game we decided to get creative to keep ourselves warm.  Dommer had a pair of sweat pants that we cut up to make beanies for our heads.  This picture is a bit blurry but you can see how ridiculous we looked.

Game Day

Unfortunately during the first few games Dommer’s feet got so cold he actually got frost bite.  It was pretty bad.  During the Championship game he got slashed in the skates by a few sticks and with the frost bite he couldn’t handle it and had to leave the game.

The whole tournament was an awesome time.  Here are just a few more pics of our time in Lake Placid.

Pre-Game Meal

Dommizzle Thug Life

Flink & Tad

The Team

After the Championship Game

After we finished our tournament we found out that the weather at the JFK airport was so bad that we weren’t going to be able to fly out as planned.  We needed to stay at least 2 more days for the weather to clear up.

This part of the trip just added to the awesomeness level of the whole experience.  Flink made a phone call to his family and they willingly let all of us stay at their house.  During the time we were there, his dad was the Assistant Head Coach of the Devils and the pro head scout.  The first night we were there he brought out the coolest hockey memorabilia any of else will ever see. The Stanley Cup ring.

He was part of the 2003 New Jersey Devils team that won the Cup.  Check out some pics of this thing!

The Stanley Cup Ring

Sporting the Ring

Over the next few days, we went into New York city and walked around Time Square.  I still can’t believe we did all of this in a weekend.

Empire State Building

By the end we were all ready to go home

This tournament continues to happen every year and maybe of these years we can go experience the trip again.  Hopefully, you guys that were there got to see this post and your thinking about just how cool it really was.

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