Reffing in ball hockey is always reeeeeealy greasy, too. Not suggesting anything like favoritism or anything, just that most refs aren't being paid enough to care, and let a lot of infractable offences go, so guys know they can get away with way more than they would if the games were being called as if the ref gave a crap.
Reffing in ball hockey is the worst, LOL. It's exactly like you said, and you would be correct in suggesting favouritism. In my experience the ref would usually be friends with half the guys on one of the two teams playing... And just having one ref is pretty ridiculous, alas it is just ball hockey so that makes sense I guess.
Cool was this recently or in his early days? if I remember correctly he was a star playing ball hockey and then broke into the NHL, I could be off completely on this as I read the article several years ago, I know the two big pro ball hockey teams are in Mtl and Toronto, the Red light and The Express? Anyways an interesting fact for sure!
Couple summers back, so pretty recently I guess. We're both from Montreal or its whereabouts and he still played during summers for fun so we crossed paths. And yes, his ball hockey career took off when he was in Junior I think. Red lite was a team created by fusion with Burrows' original team (Living Legends iirc), they had to make a bigger team cuz they were playing 5-5 instead of 3-3 or 4-4.
Best guy I ever saw play ball hockey was Martin Havlat, who played in one of the local Ottawa leagues in the summer when he was a Sen. Our team played in a game after his (he was in the highest league, we weren't), and I watched the last half of that game before we went on.
You can appreciate how good guys like him are when they play in the NHL against other pros, but against a bunch of guys whose hockey careers peaked in Midget? Even going half speed, you could tell he coold have scored 15 goals if he'd wanted. It was like watching peak Jagr play a road hockey game against 9th graders.
Love the analogy
yeah it's definitely a sight watching just one guy be so much better than everybody. Like he's human too, right?
I was heavy into stupidly competitive ball hockey for years. I never wore shin pads. I referred to the roadmap on my shins as victory bruises. I also discovered that you got slashed more if you wore shin pads, so it was a calculated risk on my part. I once had a guy snap his stick in half on my shin. I felt like a ninja.
I used the ultimate ball hockey stick though. Old school aluminum shaft with a wood blade, preferably with fibreglass on the bottom. That bad boy is a good 20 years old and it's indestructible. I still use it to play street hockey with my kids. I made a fair number of people regret slashing me first when I got them back with that monster. haha.
The worst was when you'd get clipped with the toe of a one-piece stick though. All those little carbon fibre shards imbedded into your skin. It's no fun tweezing out those things.
Lots of guys play for their Stanley Cup there... I've seen lots of full on brawls, people taking people in choke holds, it's ridiculous... Way too much testosterone, much worse than my on ice experiences. Much much worse.
Shin pads are a must lol. I never got any shards imbedded into my skin eww, but I already got slashed on my big toe twice, and lost the nail on that toe twice as a result. That was a *****, especially since I couldn't play ice for a week or two because of that. I had and still have a pretty rad ball hockey stick too haha, a two-piece Warrior. Can probably post it on here if I figure out how.
