While the rest of us were still loafing about on our parents’ couches, eating leftover turkey and sleeping until noon, the Concordia men’s hockey team was on an exhibition tour to Germany, where they played five games against professional teams. Backup goaltender, R.J. James, who was given the job of starter while Pat Lepage recuperated from an injury, chronicled the trip day-by-day.
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We left in the afternoon Wednesday, January 28, 2006 and flew all night, into Zurich. We transferred to Hamburg, and then took a bus to Rostock, which is near the Baltic Sea. We stayed there for three days. Our hotel was a boat, which was pretty crazy. But we were really tired, so the first thing we did was take a nap. Then we practised that night. The team in Rostock set up a dinner for us at their clubhouse, which was good.
In the morning on the 30th, we took a tour of the city and we got to see all the restored buildings. We stopped at the Baltic Sea, which was weird, because it’s hard to be at a beach when it’s snowing. We went back to the boat to take a nap, and [Stingers head coach] Kevin [Figsby] had to come wake us up because we were all so tired that we slept through our alarms. That night, we had our first game against the Rostock Piranhas.
We got off to a rough start in the first period. Personally, it was my coming out party. I stopped 37 of 42 shots, and it ended up a 5-5 tie. It wasn’t exactly easy conditions playing when you’re that tired, but it was a good game.
The fans there were crazy. It was nice to play in front of that many people. Obviously guys who played in the QMJHL or the OHL would’ve played in front of big crowds like that, but I never had. Every time the home team scored, it was like they won the Stanley Cup, and when we scored, nobody said anything. It was silent. I have never heard an arena get that quiet. But it was a lot of fun.
After the game, we went around and high-fived the crowd, and we signed autographs for the kids. It was really cool. And then the other team had a dinner for us.
We stayed in Rostock for New Years. A bunch of us were walking down the street, and we saw this Italian restaurant, and they were closed, but the guy invited us in. We had some sort of pasta for dinner, the food was normal in general, but it was hard to read the menus. The guy said he loved crazy Canadians. We had a great time there.
New Years day, we got up early and took a bus to Braunlag. We walked around the town, had some lunch and then we were on the ice. We played the Braunlager Harz and won 5-2. It was 2-2 until the end of the third, and then we got three goals at the end. We ate dinner and then took a bus to Halle. We got in around 1 am, and stayed in a real hotel. Not a boat this time. We went on a tour of the town in the morning. We had a tour guide and then we went back to our hotel.
The team’s fan club put my name in a song they were singing to try and throw me off my game or something. I had no idea what the heck they were saying. They had a big sign that said “Canadian Hockey is like Pro Wrestling” which was sort of weird. We ended up losing the game to the Halle Saale Bulls 4-3. I think we could’ve won, but it was a pretty chippy game.
We stayed there for the night, and then took a bus the next day to Sch
