In The Crease, vol. 1- May 2, 2006
By: Shaun V. Fadale
Hello hockey nuts...my name is Shaun Fadale, I love hockey and here we go:
Recently hired by the Jamestown Savings Bank Ice Arena as the "Hockey Director" I will be writing these columns once a week expressing opinions from myself and players from within the hockey world. I will do updates on hockey events at JSBIA, answering questions from anyone, and talking shop (hockey shop of course!) among other things.
About me. I'm a 28 year old self-employed owner of a contracting firm in Dunkirk NY. I employ 13 people full-time (thus giving me time to run hockey events at the arena). I am married with no children. I currently play hockey in a Fredonia men's A league as a goaltender and have a 24 year history playing in net all over the USA and Canada. My youth was spent locally in the NCCYHA and Hamburg Hawk organizations. I moved on to play for SUNY Canton Tech. (college) in 1997/98 winning the NJCAA National Championship. I played for the Wheatfield Blades Junior B team in 1999, and in the Semi's EOSHL for the Falcons. My most recent hockey adventure is forming an adult travel team (open A. caliber) called the Pond Brothers. We travel all over to play in hockey tournaments because we don't know any better (HAHA). We have won 4 of the 5 tourneys we've participated in and proud to say that we played in the first ever Labatt Blue USAdult Pond Hockey Championship in Eagle River, Wisconsin. I can't wait to see more hockey in the future and I hope I can deliver that same dream to everyone reading my column.
My mission is to help hockey players and fans celebrate the game of hockey as it should be. To instill the hockey ethics I was raised with in our youths and light the fire back into the adults as if they were kids again. Especially in our area hockey has taken a "little league baseball" mentality and this needs to be changed. Hockey players are a different breed and need to live by those rules and values. We are the best of friends and most fierce competitors. So please join me every week as I grab your interests and the interests of hockey nuts from every computer screen I can reach. I want to hear your ideas and opinions as this information will feed my column each week.