Our second trip to the Wells Fargo Center was a different experience (as it was meant to be). It was a Legacy vs. Legacy extravaganza. It gave us a chance to play with and against some of our closest friends in the biggest arena imaginable (at the time, Citizen’s Bank Park was not even a remote possibility, so, I would argue that it wasn’t imaginable, although I guess you could argue the possibility that it was, but, whatevs).
Overall, I would say that the game was a success. it was close, competitive and there were very few complications. I think in hindsight there are a few things that I would change, but it is what it is. Everyone was able to enjoy it for what it was. We had one to two hundred people spectating, and it was something that many of us would never experience again (or at least so we thought).
Following the second Wells Fargo game, we returned our focus to finish our season at Skate Zone. Our C team would finish with a 20-4-1 record, 171 GF and 101 GA. Our C2 team would finish with a 15-10-1 record, 114 GF and 84 GA. Since it’s men’s league, each team is guaranteed a playoff spot, but we went further than that. We excelled in the playoffs, and both teams won against tough competition to reach the championship. However, in typical SkateZone fashion, it was announced that the Championship would no longer be a best of three series. Instead, it would be a single game elimination (remind me why people continue to pay this company $5600 a season?).
In C league, we would play Santucci’s for the championship. It was an incredible game. We loved playing them guys. They were good dudes, the games were tight and clean, it was everything that you could ask for. It was the ideal championship. The game was close, we were up by a goal with two minutes to go when they pulled their goalie for the extra attacker. The extended in zone pressure led to a deflection off of one of our own players into the top corner of the net and sent the game to overtime. In the playoffs, it goes to a five minute overtime. If the game is not decided in the first five minutes, it goes to a second overtime, etc.
Close to the end of the first overtime, the puck crossed their goal line but it was quickly pulled out before the ref could see it (honestly, the puck could have been in the back of the net for another fifteen minutes before Sal would have seen it, but that wasn’t the point). The point was they caught a lucky break and the game continued. It went into a second overtime where we just didn’t have it in us. We didn’t have the right match ups out, the bounces weren’t going our way, and when it came down to it, we just couldn’t put the puck in the back of the net. Santucci’s took it from us in the second overtime. I found out recently, they had a trophy made for winning that game.
Damn you, Joe.
Our C2 Championship was nothing like our C Championship. In C2, we got destroyed. Plain and simple. The other team played the trap and we fell right into it. We played like we had never seen it before, like we hadn’t grown up watching the New Jersey Devils win multiple Stanley Cups utilizing the system. Instead, we skated into them, over and over again, turning the puck over and having them come right back at us. We lost, and we deserved to lose.
From there, it didn’t get much better for Legacy (or SkateZone).
The Spring season was a joke. I branched Legacy out to play in Voorhees. The season started great, but like anything at SkateZone, it fell apart quickly. In fact, my team and I walked out of a game because it got so ridiculous. We played the cheap shot kings, the Chiefs. It was beyond anything that I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve played the Philly Fire for years. Needless to say, walking out of a game was certainly a first.
Back at North East, the hockey director had managed to screw up just about every facet of the league. Everything was slowly falling apart, including our team. The Spring/Summer teams are difficult to keep together because after a long Winter season some people lose interest, some people go down the shore, and well, some people just aren’t welcome back. We stayed a strong competitor, but didn’t excel like we had the previous season. When it came to the playoffs, our C team got screwed.
Completely.
Refs changed the rules in the middle of the game, wasted power play time with a running clock when they were trying to make a decision, and made some more than questionable calls. It was just about everything that we came to expect from Skate Zone in a single game. Needless to say we lost (surprisingly, so did Santuccis). The Championship game that season was about as exciting as a Florida Panthers/Phoenix Coyotes Stanley Cup Finals.
Our C2 team on the other hand managed to win the Championship. Sure, it was C2, but hell, it was a championship and at least we got to go out with something (even though again, our championship was cut from a best of three series to a single game). We popped champagne in the locker room (even though Matt O’Mara, a player on the team, had no idea we had just won the Championship until we were already celebrating, if you can call it that).
It was after that game that I announced that I was moving to Arizona, and that both Mike Kelly and Chris Whelan would be going with me. Our departure was going to be a big hit on a team that was already corroding far too quickly.
The team returned the following Fall/Winter season with Steve Reddell taking over captaincy in my absence. I played a few games until I was deemed “illegal” and that it was declared that if I showed up again, that they would call the cops on me over a monetary/ice time dispute. SkateZone’s actions were more silly and ridiculous than I could ever begin to describe, but I was done with the drama. I was done with SkateZone.
In October of 2011 I played my last game in their facility. My seven years of hockey was done, and my five year reign as the captain of Legacy was over, but somehow I was okay with that. Not that I didn’t miss Legacy, because I did, and not that I didn’t miss playing, because I did, but nothing was the same. I think that if you asked anyone from the core group of Legacy, that they would tell you the same thing. Something was missing. Maybe it was Drennen, maybe it was too many new faces, maybe it was me leaving, I don’t know.
But to me it was over.
Legacy was over.
It was kind of sad to think about because Legacy became so much more than a hockey team. It became so much more than a dumb hobby, or a recreational sport. It became so much more than I could ever imagine. I can’t make the argument that players don’t feel this way in every sport, but I’m going to say this, the bond that hockey players share somehow seems stronger. It somehow seems to be more prevalent than it is in other sports. In hockey, there is a level of respect for the players on your team that runs deeper, there is a level of loyalty that never strays, there is something about being on the ice that brings everyone together. Sometimes that respect and loyalty stays on the ice. It stays in front of the net when someone from the other team crashes into your goalie, or when you are two-piece turtleing someone for cheap shotting one of your teammates. Sometimes it makes it to the locker room, where somehow every conversation turns into laughter no matter how the game went, and sometimes if you’re lucky enough it makes it to Applebees, or Tiffany’s, or Santucci’s, or to North Carolina.
Sometimes, somehow it becomes so much more than you ever imagine that it could.
And it’s that feeling that makes you want to keep it going. It’s that feeling that you never want to fade, it’s that feeling that makes you want to try, and I wasn’t about to just let our Legacy fall apart. Even if I do move 2400 miles away, even if we do have our team spread throughout the country, it doesn’t make sense to just let it go. It doesn’t make sense to not try to do everything that I can to keep the core together.
For me, the first step was making the impossible happen.
It was selling a thousand tickets to the AHL Winter Classic in less than three weeks. It was getting jerseys designed, ordered and stitched in the same time frame, and it was getting all of these things done in order to host our own Winter Classic at Citizen’s Bank Park on January 8th, 2012.
And that’s exactly what we did.
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