Metro Pulse/Gamut/Knoxville Hockey

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Puck-slinging appears to be experiencing a local resurgence

by Scott McNutt

Saturday night, Feb. 15, a sold-out crowd of 4,755 is watching the Knoxville Ice Bears face off with the Orlando Seals. Like a giant hockey snooze alarm, every few minutes, a burly guy way up in the bleachers rumbles, "It was holding, ref! It was holding!"

He may be right, but the periodic hurtling of entangled opposing players into the side glass, the frequent crashing together of bodies and subsequent thrust of a hockey stick around a torso to check a combatant's escape, and the occasional flurry of arm- and leg-pads tumbling to the ice—they all appear to happen with impunity. Once or twice a player is sent to the penalty box, but the announced charge is lost in the din of the crowd.

Whistles most often seem to blow, not in the midst of the melees, but as one or the other team charges down the ice toward the opposing goal. At the sound, the skaters immediately straighten from their bent, focused postures and with deceptive ease break off the charge to sail in graceful arcs around the striped figure with the whistle. These incidents usually resolve into face-offs in one of the circles delineated in each rounded corner of the rink.

Two players hunker down, others arrange themselves in predetermined positions around them, the referee tosses a puck down and lurches out of the way, and the whole drama begins again.

Who's into Hockey?

Preston Dixon, assistant coach of the Ice Bears, says that "hockey is growing in popularity in the Southeast.... [A]lmost every city in the Southeastern U.S. has a semi-pro hockey team playing in either the East Coast Hockey League or the Atlantic Coast Hockey League." In particular, Knoxville hockey's popularity seems to be growing, if the Ice Bears' success on the ice (they recently qualified for the ACHL playoffs) and in the stands (besides their Feb. 15 record-setting attendance, according to the ACHL's official website, the Ice Bears lead all of minor-league professional hockey in increase of average attendance).

But professionals are not the only people in Knoxville taking to the ice. It's being played at the amateur and collegiate levels, in several different leagues, with age groups ranging from 6- and 7-year-olds in the Southern Youth Hockey League, to college-agers on the Ice Vols team in the American Collegiate Hockey Association, Division III, to 20-somethings to 60-somethings on the four teams that comprise Knoxville's Dirty Dog League. And, although still small in number by UT football standards, hockey's Knoxville devotees are ardent about their sport.

Says Donnie Brown, hockey director of the newly opened Icearium and former Fulton High School and UT player, "There are two groups, and they're both passionate about the physical aspect of the game. One is passionate about the fights—It's unfortunate, but that's still part of the game—and the other is passionate about the grace of the game."

John Cox, president of the Knoxville Amateur Hockey Association, explains ice hockey's attraction as "the speed of the game.... With football and basketball, your speed is limited to how fast your legs can carry you. In hockey, you can move so fast, it's like flying. There's no other way to describe it. And when you see the look on the face of an 8- or 9-year-old kid when he gets the hang of it and can start moving down the ice...it's amazing."

The following Saturday afternoon, 79-year-old former player and referee "Zamboni" Ed Robins is holding forth on the floor of the Coliseum. On the ice, two teams of adolescent boys whip around, struggling to hold together formations similar to those used by the professional teams last week, formations that were not obvious to my untrained eye. They only become obvious in retrospect from their lack now. A smattering of parents, siblings, and friends occupy a few lower center rows on either side of the rink. No one hoots, boos, or otherwise displays unsportsmanlike behavior. The cheering is muted.

Ed says he's liked being here since he moved from Canada in 1965. He allows that he's pleased with hockey's popularity in the South, saying "People would ask you questions. They'd say, 'What's icing?' You know what icing is? It's where you shoot the puck all the way down the ice; but they'd say what's icing and I'd say "It's that stuff you put on cakes." Robins' good-natured face, with its prominent nose and many wrinkles, creases even more as he laughs at the memory. In the South, he continues "you got your football fans and your basketball fans, but you can't have football and basketball every day of the winter. [The fans] like the action. I've had people ask me when I was refereeing, 'Was that fight you had out there tonight—was that all a put-on, like wrestling?' Ha. You see guys, their teeth knocked out, been cut, got a black eye—that ain't no fun. They're dead serious. But [the fans] like that."

The years have not daunted Robins' love for the game. Asked if he still has enthusiasm for hockey, he says simply, "Oh yeah," then, gesturing to the young skaters in the rink, adds, "What we need is a new rink. There are kids here, I refereed their grandparents here." He still comes down regularly to run the Zamboni, the ice smoothing-machine. "The one I run, it's a '59 model, everything's manual on it, manual steering, manual gear shift, manual accelerator," he says proudly, adding that there is only one other like it still being used in the United States.

As I depart, tonight's Ice Bears' opponents, the Macon Trax, disembark from the bus and make their way to the locker rooms. Ed Robins greets several of the players by name. On the ice, the kids are still playing. Youth teams have been taking the ice since early this morning and will continue until past five in the afternoon.

Youth hockey might be about to finally break into the mainstream in Knoxville. KAHA president Cox says that membership in his organization reached a high of about 240 four or five years ago but has remained steady at 180-200 ever since. "The demand has been there," he says. "We just haven't had the facilities. And like any volunteer organization, we're limited in what we can do."

Thanks to the opening of Farragut's Icearium, that may be about to change. Cox says, "There's been a limited availability of ice in Knoxville; there's no natural ice, and there's been no ice in the off-season. The Icearium gives us another option."

In fact, this coming weekend, the Icearium and KAHA are sponsoring the USA Hockey Southeast District Girls tournament. Teams will come from all over the Southeast. Last weekend, the Icearium (in conjunction with the KAHA) held a Southern Youth Hockey League Squirt tournament.

The University of Tennessee Ice Vols also play at the Icearium, and recently qualified for their league's playoffs in front of 500 or so screaming fans. David Feather, former team captain and currently the longest-active player on the Ice Vols, says "It's been a huge boost for us. The Icearium gives us a facility to call our own."

Facing Off

Prospects for hockey's future in Knoxville may look good, but right now, it's still probably mostly former players who are the sport's most faithful supporters. Gary Loe, a slim 50-ish fellow who looks to be about 30, has been around the game most of his life and has filled just about every occupation related to it one can: player, coach, referee, team public relations, broadcaster, fan. At the Civic Coliseum during a youth league game, he produces a box holding a lifetime's worth of hockey memorabilia. Here is a clipping from the Dayton Daily News about Moe Benoit, a former player who gave the young Gary one of his hockey sticks; here, shots of Loe in the broadcast booth; here, a Knoxville Cherokees sweatshirt and souvenir hockey pucks. Loe's dedication to the game is summed up when he says, "One of the criteria, when I would move some place for a job, was 'Where's the closest hockey team?'"

Not only are most guys in the Dirty Dog League longtime hockey players—some of them former professionals—many of them are also Northern transplants to Tennessee. A few, like Icearium hockey director Donnie Brown, hail from these parts, but more typical are Mike Navetta from Michigan and Ed Mackle from Toronto. In a small Coliseum locker room one Sunday night, as they change for their upcoming game, Mackle eagerly begins noting locals on a print-out of team rosters. As Mackle calls out names of players he believes are local, Navetta assents or disagrees. Out of 64 players, they can only identify nine as being from the South.

They also explain the origins of their league. Says Navetta "We had a group of guys who'd been playing for around 25 years—since the late '70s. Eventually, we let a younger group merge with us. That damaged our camaraderie," he jokes, then continues, "The average age is 38 or 39, but the oldest guy—he'll be out there tonight—is in his 60s. That gives you some idea of how we feel about the game. It's a religion. It's a fanaticism..." Navetta is interrupted by the sudden influx of players on intermission from the game currently in progress. The room fills with an easy familiarity, players from both teams calling out challenges and mock criticisms to one another. Someone lights a cigarette. A voice rises above the clamor, "Oh yeah, that'll improve your performance." The laughter in response is general. Mackle and Navetta are drawn into other conversations.

Knoxville has seen a number of professional and amateur hockey teams and associations come and go since the sport's formal introduction in the area in 1961. It may be too early to tell if fan enthusiasm for the Ice Bears and new facilities like the Icearium portend a renaissance for the sport locally. But for many Knoxvillians who have loved hockey over the years, the Dirty Dog League motto may capture that affection: "Dedicated to providing safe, high-quality hockey for us old farts that just can't give up the dream."