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My Hockey History and Hockey Fandom Story (Show 14) · Biscuit Breakdown

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's time for biscuit breakdown, where hockey is the only thing on the menu.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And welcome back to Biscuit Breakdown.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever you root for, wherever you live, whenever it is, I'm happy to have you here today.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for tuning in.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow me wherever you get your podcasts.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to rate five stars and leave a review if you could be so kind that I would really appreciate that.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow me on Instagram, Biscuit Breakdown, Twitter, Biscuit Breakdown without the O, or Gmail biscuitbreakdownpod at gmail.com.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it is summer and there has not been a lot of NHL news and things that are happening.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So today I thought I would go ahead and kind of give a little bit more background as to who I am and how I became a hockey fan and how I became a fan of the teams that I root for, and basically, you know, let you guys in on who I am so that you can get to know me a little bit more, maybe have a little bit more of a connection.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um so basically it all started with me growing up in New York, about an hour north of New York City.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just woods, suburbs, and a lot of good times.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um so basically one day I went to my friend's house.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was probably I don't know, five or six years old, and we watched the Mighty Ducks, the good old Mighty Ducks, Mighty Ducks One, Emilio Estevez, all those crazy kids, legendary movie, and it got me so in love with the game of hockey, I just wanted to play hockey, and I'm sure it had that effect on a lot of kids around that age, and it really caused a hockey boom around the United States, I'm sure, definitely in New York and in my hometown.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I saw the effects of it, so I feel like it really got a lot of kids wanting to play hockey.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I joined a roller hockey league when I was six years old, got all the necessary equipment, and they decided to have a league, and our town did not have a roller hockey rank, so we had to play in a makeshift rink behind our town's middle school, and basically they just painted lines, threw two nets out there, and that's what it was for the first year of our town's roller hockey league, the WRH Washingtonville roller hockey.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a bunch of um rocks and shit that were constantly causing kids to trip, so you know it wasn't a super well-maintained roller hockey rink, obviously.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: There was no boards, um, one side of the rink was the brick wall of the school, and then everywhere else there was like um wooden border basically along the ground, but the wood was only I would say five to six inches thick, so the puck was constantly going into the grass, and then you know the referee or parents had to throw it back into play.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it was rough that first year, but it was still fun, and I'm sure we all made the best of it.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one time I scored a goal from the opposite blue line, like my own defensive blue line.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was skating up with the puck and I just hit it forward uh through a mass of bodies, and then all of a sudden I just heard it hit the back of the net, and I was like, oh, I guess I scored, so I don't know what that goalie was doing.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: But uh that was the my long-range goal that year when I was six years old.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but considering the conditions of that rink, the dads, a bunch of dads, pitched together and they built a brand new rink in our town that was really awesome.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was an official roller hockey rink.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they put down the right um, I guess, asphalt with the coating, and we had legitimate boards and benches, and there was a concession stand, like a shed, there was a playground there, so it was all good, and that was our hockey hub for a long, long time.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: We had so many kids in our town that were interested in hockey that I would say from you know the birth years of nineteen eighty-eight to nineteen ninety-five, there was eight teams like per grade level, basically.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it was just a massive amount of kids that were playing hockey, constant action at the rink, and it was just super fun, a lot of great memories, a lot of friends made there, still good friends with a bunch of those people that I played with.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um one time in third grade I scored seven goals in a game, and my coach at the time must have taken the game puck and he brought it somewhere and he got it like not engraved, but he put it in a plastic like cube case, and then he got a plaque to go on the front of the case, and it says my name, it says the date, and it says seven goals, and I still have it, so that's um you know, it's like a special memory.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you might be thinking to yourself, like, oh wow, this guy's a real puck hog, he was just out there just you know, not passing.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I actually was a very generous player.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you might not believe me, I have no real proof, I guess, but I was not afraid to pass, and definitely as I got older and my teammates got you know more used to playing with each other, whatnot, you know, we definitely spread the puck around.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: So um I never really cared about scoring goals or getting assists or whatever.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'd rather win the game.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I just I hate losing.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um I basically hate losing more than I like winning.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: So anything that I had to do to help our team win, I was gonna do.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was never one to really take penalties, so I was always just trying to play my position the right way and uh not hurt the team, whether that be you know playing hard defense or passing the puck or shooting the puck, whatever.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we had a lot of kids in my town that were playing hockey a lot, and a lot of kids uh tried out for the town travel team.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: We were the Wolves, um so that was really awesome.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: We had a lot of kids to choose from.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying we as if I was choosing, but there was a big talent pool, and our travel teams as a result ended up being really stacked, basically, and we kicked a lot of asses from the age of I would say uh probably eight to eleven when I was eight to eleven.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we would go, you know, we'd have home games at our rink, we would go travel to other towns and play their travel team, you know, the best of the best that they had to offer, you know.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So whether we're whether we were playing with um a puck, a ball, a home rink, and away rink, it really didn't matter.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: We won a lot of games and it was fun as hell.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still good friends with a lot of those guys, like I said.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um our team played with a puck on our home rink, but sometimes we would have to travel and go play a team that used a ball.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if you were at their rink, you had to use a ball.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So um obviously it's a little bit harder to play hockey with a ball because you you can't stick handle it as well, and it's more about being strategic and just kind of passing it around or just hitting it down to the other end of the rink and chasing after it and you know, letting the other team make a mistake basically.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it was like a fun challenge.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um there was a travel tournament called Breakout in 2000, and the 2000 one was hosted in Rye Playland, which is in Westchester, New York.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: You may have heard of it.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a really old amusement park basically.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um not a super big amusement park, but they have some roller coasters, they have some rides.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, we were going to breakout at Rye Playland, and the thing that made Breakout interesting was that the rinks were smaller than normal and they were made with basically like bounce house material.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um the boards were inflatable, so this was all just set up in a parking lot, and there was a couple rinks, and they just have them like hooked up to electricity so that the um boards are constantly inflated.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if you skate into the boards, you basically bounce right off.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that was an interesting twist.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but breakout was played with a ball, and in 2000 we won the tournament for our age group, and we made nationals as a result of it, which was in Orlando that year, but we um we didn't win at nationals, which was a bummer, but still awesome.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then in 2001, we went to breakout again.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: We were good enough to make it, and we won that a regional breakout tournament.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: That one was in Long Island somewhere.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure exactly of of what um town in Long Island at the time, but in the championship game of that tournament, my friends scored, I scored, and then one of my other friends scored, and we won the game 3-0, and obviously got the medals, we got the trophies, took a team photo, all that jazz, and that was on September 9th, 2001.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone knows about the infamous tragedy that happened just two days after that, um, and we will never forget, and rest in peace to all those people that were tragically um killed that day and lost their lives trying to save others.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um so as a result of 9-11, a lot of the parents were a bit uneasy about flying to Nationals, um, which were gonna be in San Diego that October.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we didn't end up going to Nationals uh as a result.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I was really bummed out about that at the time because I didn't understand like the magnitude really of the situation.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, now I get it as an adult.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um totally understand that it was a time of you know major grieving and major uncertainty, especially for the people in New York and New Jersey, like we were right near the heart of New York City, basically, where everything happened.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it was just a very um sad time.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, we didn't end up going to nationals that year, but that would have been fun.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows what have what would have happened there?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um at eight years old, so going backwards a little bit, is when I started playing ice hockey, and we actually won our league championship in ice hockey the first year that I ever played, and that was a classic game.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: We were actually the underdogs in that game, and it went to overtime.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was three to three.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: No one scored in overtime and went to a shootout and we won.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't think I shot in the shootout, I don't remember shooting, so I don't think I was the one of the kids that was chosen.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I was happy that we won.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my friends, mom's bought us bottles of seltzer so that we could shake them up and spray them around the locker room like they were champagne.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a really awesome um thing that you know still sticks with me to this day.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then some parents brought ice cream, so we had ice cream after that, and I have a picture um sitting next to one of my uh good buddies um, you know, eating some ice cream with half our equipment on, just soaking up the championship victory.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we can skip back ahead to 2002, 2003.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was the captain of our travel ice hockey team that year, and we had a really awesome year.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot of success.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um we you know, we won a bunch of games, went to some tournaments.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we actually won any tournaments that year, I don't remember, but uh a lot of fun was had, scored a bunch of goals, had a bunch of assists, me and my two good my two best friends on that team, we were the top line, and uh we put up a lot of points, and that was uh really fun.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I did play in eighth grade and it went fairly well, but it was but I wasn't totally loving it anymore.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I s actually stopped playing uh for three years after that, and I rejoined my school's varsity team when I was a senior.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I had run cross country in those in the year like one year uh in between there, but overall um I had lost a lot of basically skills um in terms of hockey and you know I didn't play great that year.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was okay.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was responsible with my you know defense and whatnot, and you know, didn't take a lot of penalties, but as far as getting goals and assists, I was not a major factor.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um we did have a very good team though because a lot of the you know kids on that team had been playing, you know, since they were five, six years old.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a lot of skill.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um we ended up losing the championship uh that year to the favorites of that um league, and I think it was a three-game series.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty sure we lost the final game three to one or something like that, three-nothing.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like a blowout, but we were obviously bummed that we lost, but it is what it is, you can't win them all.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um when I moved on to college, I went to SUNY Cortland.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: You may have heard of it, it's up near Syracuse.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very competitive uh Division III school, and I had absolutely no chance of making the Division III ice hockey team.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So my roommate who I had been playing ice hockey and roller hockey with since I was eight years old, he was the one that was sitting next to me in the picture eating the ice cream.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um we decided that we were gonna try out for the club ice hockey team, and I got cut after the first tryout.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: He got cut after the second and final tryout, which was very surprising because he was a very good player, um, and I thought for sure he would make the club team, um, but he for some reason they didn't choose him, which I thought was dumb because I know there was some other people chosen that I was like, well, I don't know.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I think my roommate's better than that guy, but anyway, um we found out that there was going to be a roller hockey team at our school, so we made that team, and our first two years were very, very rough.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: We lost a lot of games, there was a lot of turmoil with the team, we had no coach.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um we didn't have a coach all four years, but no coach was part of the problem in the early goings.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um I have a lot of funny stories with all the roller hockey college adventures, but we'll save that for another day.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: But um, by the time we got to senior year, we had a legitimate team, a lot of good players, um, and we won the league that year, so we got to finish on a high note.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: In my adult life after college, I continued to play roller hockey a few of those summers um near my hometown, and then when I was 25, I moved to Florida just to get to nicer weather and better vibes and wanted to switch things up.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I played men's league ice hockey down in Florida for a bunch of years, and that was really fun.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And now I live in Virginia.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So um I met my now wife down in Florida.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: We ended up moving up here to Virginia to be closer to family and to take on the adventures of parenthood, um you know, with more support around.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that was um that was a nice smart decision by us.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Shout out to my wife.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that's basically my hockey story.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as far as my fandom, the first NHL game I ever went to was in New Jersey.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was the Devils game.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: My aunt took me to a Devils game because she lived close to their arena, and from then on I was in love with the Devils, and it was easy to love the Devils at that time because it was the late 90s and they were really good.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I got to see them win the Stanley Cup in 2000 against the Dallas Stars, and then again in 2003 against the Anaheim Mighty Ducks at the time, as they were called, just like the movie.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that was super cool.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was kind of torn in that one, obviously, because I kind of rooted for the Ducks as a side team, um, but you know, I still stuck with the Devils as my main my main um team, and they ended up winning.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: That was a wild series.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you ever heard of you know the story of how Scott Stevens just completely blindsided Paul Korea at center ice and he was like knocked out.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: He goes to the locker room, clearly concussed, he doesn't know what the hell happened.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: For some reason, you know, the medical protocols were different back then in the day, and he convinced the training staff to let him go back out there.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: He goes back out onto the bench and starts playing again, and he scores an amazing slapshot goal past Martin Burdeur, and to this day he has no memory of it.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, holy crap, like that was so dangerous for his uh brain and mental health, but wow, what a moment.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's a pretty cool little story there, if you never heard of that.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then so when I moved to Florida in 2015, I was on a very tight budget, and I was not gonna buy the NHL package to keep watching the Devils, so I started watching the Florida Panthers, and you know, naturally over time I started rooting for them because they became my new home team, and obviously they have become a formidable, you know, franchise over these past few years, and have won the Stanley Cup in 2024 and 2025.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking like strong contenders this year, as long as they can avoid the injury bug.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that is basically an all about me in terms of um my hockey playing history and my hockey fandom.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the underlying theme of why I love hockey so much is just the um camaraderie of it, you know, the team aspect.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I love being part of a team, working towards the same goal, um, literally and figuratively, of getting the victory.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um so just all the funny times, all the great memories, all the friendships made.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's really just about the camaraderie.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um that is what really made me fall in love with the game of hockey.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: And nowadays I'm just a huge fan of the NHL in general.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um I will watch any NHL game any night now.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: I listen to a bunch of hockey podcasts.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to break into the hockey podcast space.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've got some plans um for this show, for the upcoming season, and I hope that you can uh continue to tune in.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're enjoying what you hear, be sure to give me a follow wherever you get your podcast.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: I would love it if you could rate me five stars and leave a review.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Always reach out on social media.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Instagram is biscuit breakdown, Twitter biscuit breakdown without the O in the name, and Gmail is biscuitbreakdownpod at gmail.com.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to hear from you guys, talk some hockey, answer any type of hockey questions, or anything outside or adjacent to the game of hockey will be fun to talk about and connect with.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Biscuit Breakdown.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Consider yourself served.