From Left: Bill Crawford, Collin Insley, Danny Gandasetiawan, Dan Koogle
Most Saturday mornings I play a friendly game of pick-up hockey at The Rinks Huntington Beach – a roller hockey rink owned and operated by the Anaheim Ducks. I’ve written about it before in this space, but something pretty cool and unique happened this morning – Throwback Sweater Saturday.
Teemu Selanne flips a puck to a fan at the Fedorin Cup. (Collin Insley)
On Saturday August 25th, the Anaheim Ducks and Athletic Sports Fund of America (ASFA) put on the 15th edition of the Fedorin Cup – a charity hockey game featuring players ranging from the legendary (Teemu Selanne) to the somewhat less legendary (beer league player Nicole Birenbaum), and everyone in-between. I attended the event, which raises funds for worthy causes like Hockey Fights Cancer, the American Cancer Society, and the USC Norris Cancer Center, among others.
To read a full write-up of the event, make sure to check out my piece at the Sunbelt Hockey Journal.
After the jump, check out some of the additional photographs I took at the event.
From June 28th to July 8th, the Anaheim Ducks, Reebok, and the Amateur Athletic Union hosted a massive, two-part roller hockey tournament at The Rinks: Huntington Beach. The 2012 Inline Hockey Adult Nationals segment of the tournament was held from June 29th to July 1st, while the 2012 Inline Hockey Junior Olympics ran throughout the course of the week-and-a-half -long event.
I participated as a player in the Adult Nationals tournament, and played spectator to a large amount of both Junior Olympics and Adult Nationals games. This is my experience.
From June 28th to July 8th, the Anaheim Ducks, Reebok, and the Amateur Athletic Union hosted a massive, two-part roller hockey tournament at The Rinks: Huntington Beach. The 2012 Inline Hockey Adult Nationals segment of the tournament was held from June 29th to July 1st, while the 2012 Inline Hockey Junior Olympics ran throughout the course of the week-and-a-half -long event.
I participated as a player in the Adult Nationals tournament, and played spectator to a large amount of both Junior Olympics and Adult Nationals games. This is my experience.
(copyright Collin Insley)
From June 28th to July 8th, the Anaheim Ducks, Reebok, and the Amateur Athletic Union hosted a massive, two-part roller hockey tournament at The Rinks: Huntington Beach. The 2012 Inline Hockey Adult Nationals segment of the tournament was held from June 29th to July 1st, while the 2012 Inline Hockey Junior Olympics ran throughout the course of the week-and-a-half -long event.
I participated as a player in the Adult Nationals tournament, and played spectator to a large amount of both Junior Olympics and Adult Nationals games. This is my experience.
(copyright Collin Insley)
From June 28th to July 8th, the Anaheim Ducks, Reebok, and the Amateur Athletic Union hosted a massive, two-part roller hockey tournament at The Rinks: Huntington Beach. The 2012 Inline Hockey Adult Nationals segment of the tournament was held from June 29th to July 1st, while the 2012 Inline Hockey Junior Olympics ran throughout the course of the week-and-a-half -long event.
I participated as a player in the Adult Nationals tournament, and played spectator to a large amount of both Junior Olympics and Adult Nationals games. This is my experience.
2012 Adult Nationals, The Rinks: Huntington Beach Inline
From June 28th to July 8th, the Anaheim Ducks, Reebok, and the Amateur Athletic Union hosted a massive, two-part roller hockey tournament at The Rinks: Huntington Beach. The 2012 Inline Hockey Adult Nationals segment of the tournament was held from June 29th to July 1st, while the 2012 Inline Hockey Junior Olympics ran throughout the course of the week-and-a-half -long event.
I participated as a player in the Adult Nationals tournament, and played spectator to a large amount of both Junior Olympics and Adult Nationals games. This is my experience.
October 14th, 1967. The Los Angeles Kings play their first game ever, at the Long Beach Sports Arena, defeating the Philadelphia Flyers 4-2. June 11th, 2012. The Los Angeles Kings play Game 6 in the Stanley Cup Final, defeating the New Jersey Devils 6-1. Two victories separated by 45 years. Think about that for a second, from a fan’s perspective. Think about all those years in-between. All those years spent on a few great teams and a lot of not so great teams; spent on the fleeting promise of glory and the near-constant, bitter taste of defeat – time and time again. All those years spent waiting…waiting for a chance to watch the team you live and die by lift hockey’s most coveted trophy – the holy grail of the sport – and now, for the Kings franchise and their fans, that wait is over.
This is a piece for and about Kings fans. Real Kings fans. Not the bandwagon fans. Not the fans that started to pay attention once something interesting happened. This is a piece about the Fans that have waited those 45 years for a chance to say that their team is unequivocally the best in the sport, and that they’ve got a big, shiny piece of hardware to prove it. Fans who remember the Triple Crown line and the Miracle on Manchester. Fans who know, off the top of their head, that that Luc Robitaille scored 668 goals over the course of his illustrious (and largely LA-based) career, good for 1st all time among Left Wingers. Fans who remember an LA Kings team before Wayne Gretzky made hockey sexy in Southern California. Fans who still shudder whenever the spectre of Marty McSorley’s illegal stick is dredged up. Fans like my friends Mike and Brian Fletcher.
Taylor Swift, hockey enthusiast.
To pay the bills, one of my jobs is to drive around the Newport Beach/Irvine area and take a cooler full of boxed lunches (sandwiches, salads, spring rolls, your occasional quesadilla) into various office buildings and businesses, and sell the food. It kind of sucks, but it pays alright and gives me half of the day to do whatever else I need to do – you know, productive stuff, like reading Puck Daddy. One of the legitimately cool things about the job, however, is interacting with so many different people from so many different walks of life. People are generally happy to see you (you are, after all, bringing them food), so they’re almost always going to strike up a genial conversation, and over the course of a few months on the same route, you can really start to develop relationships with these people – it’s actually kind of cool (even cooler: this is how I met my awesome, hockey-loving girlfriend).
However, after about 9 months on this same route (basically, the entirety of the hockey season), without so much as an inkling that any of the people involved in the story about to unfold were even remotely into hockey, I walked into the break room of one particular office yesterday (the day of Game 4) and was greeted with a strange sight.
The Anaheim Ducks made a little bit of history on Thursday when they announced the signing of Ryan Lasch to a two-year contract. In signing with Anaheim, Lasch became the first Orange County born-and-bred player to join the organization. Aside from being a momentous occasion for Ryan Lasch and his family, this is a huge deal for not only the Anaheim organization, but also Southern California hockey at large – not so much because it’s rare for a Southern Californian hockey player to have this kind of opportunity (it’s growing more and more common, in fact), but more so because, if he can crack the line-up, he’ll prove to be a marketer’s dream.
A native of Lake Forest who attended Trabuco Hills High School, Lasch is a highly skilled, if undersized scoring winger who was a stand-out at St. Cloud State in Minnesota. Over the course of his four years at St. Cloud, Lasch became the school’s all-time leading scorer, finishing his collegiate career with 79 goals and 104 assists for 183 points in 161 games. A Hobey Baker Award finalist in 2007-08, Lasch was never drafted and never offered a contract by an NHL club, and so as many diminutive but skilled players opt to do, Lasch decamped for Europe. After spending the 2010-11 season with Sodertalje SK of the Swedish Elite League, Lasch packed his bags once again, moving to Finland to play in SM-liiga (the Finnish Elite League), for the Lahti Pelicans. (You may recognize the Pelicans from some of their ridiculously awesome commercials.)
As a Pelican, all Lasch did was lead the league in points during the regular season with 62, lead the league in points in the playoffs with 16, and help land the Pelicans a spot in the league championship before ultimately falling to JYP Jyvaskyla. For his troubles, Lasch was honored as a SM-liiga first team All-Star (along with Duck prospect Sami Vatanen), as well as becoming the recipient of a rare non-NHLer invite to the World Championships in Helsinki, where he suited up for Team USA along with Bobby Ryan, Cam Fowler, and Kyle Palmieri (who all three, no doubt, put in a good word to Bob Murray). So it’s been a bit of a whirlwind year for the SoCal Kid, but his work is far from finished. With the Ducks facing major questions on their 2nd line and in desperate need for some secondary scoring, Lasch just might, with a strong training camp in September (or whenever the new CBA is ratified [knock wood]), have a chance to do what no other Orange County native has ever done – suit up for the hometown Anaheim Ducks. So, what does this say about the state of youth hockey in Southern California, and in Orange County specifically?
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