THE JOURNEYMEN
By Jason Gregor
11 years ago
When you’ve played for 11 different organizations, in five different leagues over a span of 17 seasons it’s clear you have some talent. You likely also have a nice set of luggage.
Our esteemed colleague, Jason Strudwick (left in pic), carved out a pretty damn good career for himself over the past 17 seasons.To bad he forgot a comb when Ferencvaros held a press conference announcing he and his cousin, Rob Niedermayer, had signed with them.
While it looks like the cousins arrived at the presser fresh off an all-nighter of wine of goulash, I’m sure Struds will tell us he had just left the gym, while Rob had clearly just left an all-night buffet.
The one thing I’ve learned about Struds is that he is one of the best story tellers around. He has an a vivid memory, and imagination, so when you combine that with his stops in: Worcester, Kentucky, Long Island, Vancouver, Syracuse, Chicago, Rangers, Ferencvaros (Hungary), Lugano (Swiss), Edmonton and Sodertalje (Sweden) it creates some epic tales.
Tales of a Journeyman.
In honour of him leading the Kamloops Blazers to back-to-back Memorial Cup Championships in 1994 and 1995, as well as being the key mentor for Blazer teammates like Jarome Iginla and Shane Doan we’ve come up with a team called the Journeymen.
In honour of him leading the Kamloops Blazers to back-to-back Memorial Cup Championships in 1994 and 1995, as well as being the key mentor for Blazer teammates like Jarome Iginla and Shane Doan we’ve come up with a team called the Journeymen.
THE JOURNEYMEN
In 1961, "America’s most exciting new Folk-singing Group," The Journeymen made their debut. Rumour has it that one of their debut hits, 500 Miles, is amongst Strudwick’s favourite ballads. Outside of carving out a nice hockey career Strudwick has always dreamed about going on a Karaoke tour, and when he does you can expect him to open up his set with a hard-working, but slightly off-key version of Kenny Roger’s The Gambler.
With that in mind I thought it would be fitting to combine Strudwick’s playing career with his musical aspirations and name our team The Journeymen.
DO YOU WANT TO JOIN?
Strudwick really wanted us to call our team The Bubblegum Gang, but despite the above interview, that was supposed to kick start their career, they never made it big, so I vetoed that name. We want to be a winner, and we want eight of you to join our team.
One of you needs to be a goalie, and the rest just need to know how to dominate at road hockey.
That’s right…ROAD HOCKEY.
*We will have daily practices that last an hour, combined with Struds leading us in off-ice work outs while he carries a boom box blaring out his favourite Bon Jovi tunes. We will have orange slices and juice boxes to ensure we stay hydrated.
**The week leading up to the tournament we will tour around the city challenging all the lazy, computer-toting and bubblewrapped kids to a game of road hockey. Just to build our confidence.
Then we will make our glorious debut September 22nd.
The Journeymen will be competing in Road Hockey to Cure Cancer on September 22nd.
Here is what you will need to join our team.
- A good attitude.
- Ability to drink a beer or two, or just water. Your choice.
- A good pair of running shoes, cause we’ll be running over every team.
- One of you will need to know how to perform CPR in case Struds gets gassed from playing more than 17 minutes a night. We will be playing at least five games, so he might not be used to all the "floor" time.
- The desire to want to kick Cancer’s ass!!!
- Most importantly you will need to raise $1,000.00
Every player on the team will be required to raise at least a grand.
If you want to join our team email gregor@theteam1260.com. I guarantee it will be fun, and we will likely have a special guest player join our team for a shift or two.
I will take the first seven players and one goalie who are serious about raising their money and joining the team. You can donate to your own cause of course, as I will be putting in the first $500.00 for my spot on the team. I don’t believe in asking others to raise money or commit to the cause if I don’t do it myself.
If you aren’t able to play that day, but want to make a minimum donation of $25 bucks you can do so here.
Everyone who donates $25.00 will get in the draw to be the GM/coach of our team. Donate $50, you get two entries, donate $100 and you get four entries etc. As our coach you will be in charge of matching lines, deciding on line combos, who shoots in the shootout and likely giving Struds the "tap on the shoulder" if we need something to spark our team.
I can also guarantee that The Journeymen will have a few other perks from some of our sponsors, as an added bonus…
The goal is to have fun, but also raise lots of money to Cure Cancer.
I look forward to playing with you as the Journeymen get set to dominate on September 22nd.
* We won’t actually be practicing twice a week.
**No scheduled games in neighbourhoods, but that might be fun.
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