Nifty Rick Middleton (151:19)
I call it the bizarro world of sled hockey. Back in those days, USA Hockey wasn't even involved with it. They, they threw some money at it, but it was, it was being run by wheelchair sports. But I got a call in in like January, February of 01 from a friend of mine, Paul Edwards, who was on the US disabled ski team. Unbeknownst to me, he was also a slat hockey player. And he goes, hey, I heard that the US national team's looking for a coach. And I didn't know it at the time. But in the World Championships in 2000, the coach quit because it was in shambles. They didn't win a game, and. And on and on and on. So he said, they're looking for a coach because the Paralympics are in Salt Lake City into next year. Would you be interested? And then in the same breath, he goes, you do know what sled hockey is, right? And I panicked. I thought I. I didn't have a clue. But I. If I said no, he'd say, well, never mind. So I said, oh, yeah, yeah, I know. I know what's going on here. Yeah. Never didn't have a freaking. I just heard hockey, Paralympics, I mean, right. So I was intrigued. So I talked to the manager the next day, and he said the same thing. Like, they never won a game. They went to Nagano in 98, their first time, and they didn't. They didn't meddle. They didn't win a game in the same world championships. The coach quits, they were in a mess, and now they're the host team. The only reason they were invited was because they were the host team. They would never have been invited if it was anywhere else. And we were the sixth seed out of six teams. We're behind an exit one time turned out to be Estonian. So long story short, I get the job. And training camp is in August of 01 in Buffalo. And 30 guys. They had to leave it open because it's a disabled sport in those days. Anybody that played slant hockey could come and try out for the national thing. They didn't want to get sued, right? So out of 30 guys that we had to pick, 15, they only. Those days, they. They only played for six forwards, four defense and two goalies. Just. And you had three guys in the stands. So we picked the team. But there was another coach out of Chicago that had this team in Chicago that wore the Blackhawks jersey, and they were. They got money from the Blackhawks and they were the best funded. And they. You're the best team in the country. And as it turned out, about half the guys we picked for the national team were from Chicago. But there was other good players from around the country also. And we were supposed to play in a tournament in Canada against Japan, US and Canada. September 12 and 9, 11 happened. So we never played another team. We never went to the tournament. We didn't. We didn't have any games in six months before we went into Salt Lake City. All we did was one time, one weekend a month for four days. We'd go to a city where some of the guys live. We go Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Minnesota for like six or seven months. And the next thing you know, we're going into Salt Lake City and we have no clue whether we're good, we're shitty, you know, we're going to get our ass kicked in front of our own fans. I, I didn't know how good the other teams were. Canada was number one seed, Norway was two because Canada beat him in the world. But I, I knew we had some talent. You know, I, and, and I had to teach the guys the system in six months, six weekends, because they'd never been taught a freaking system. So I taught him the old Don Cherry system so that. Because a lot of the guys couldn't skate, carry the puck all that well. Some could, but, you know, once you make the red line, I said dump it in the other corner. That way the other winger doesn't have to slow down and go in and just bang the defenseman. Because like women's hockey, most of the goals come from, you know, 10ft around the net. You got to get the buck down low. You're never going to score. So I, we worked on that system for six months. Long story short, we go in first games against Japan the four seasons. There's nothing, nothing going into the third period. And I, I, if we don't, if we don't win this one, we might as well just go home. We're not going to medal, right? Turns out we won three. Nothing. But our next game was Saturday night in front of 6,000 fans at the East Center Salt Lake against Canada, the number one seed. And boy, the guys were, they never played in front of 6,000 people before. Yeah, and we spanked them five 1. Canada didn't win another game and didn't win a medal. So now we're two and, oh, third game is against Norway. And if we beat Norway, we're in the gold medal game. And we ended up beating them two one in our, in our hardest game. And then you beat the Sweden 6 nothing and Estonia 6 one. We all scored the opposition 22 to 3. Now. Holy. I don't know if you, you know much about sled hockey, but it's not, it's not a recreational sport. It's dirty as hell. It's full check. You know, they come off bleeding because they have razor blades on the end of their sticks.
