Vees lineup includes Yankee Doodle dandies
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KINGSTON — Their backgrounds are as varied as their shinny travels, the latest of which has the entire six-pack of pucksters skating north of the 49th in the Limestone City.
Americanos.
Yanks dot the roster of the Kingston Voyageurs, and in record numbers, too. There are so many the team ought to consider theme nights throughout the 2015-16 Ontari Junior Hockey League season: Apple Pie Thursdays or, appropriately, In God We Trust Sundays. Born in the USA should blast from Invista Centre speakers each time an American lights a goal-lamp. The Star-Spangled Banner could occasionally precede O Canada just to keep everyone’s patriotism in balance. Try an order of ‘Bald Eagle’ fries with a Fonzie soda.
There are six Americans, seven if you include Connor Bebb, the Mississauga-born forward who pulled up stakes and plum moved south to Texas at age seven. He holds a Canadian passport, but the rest — Ian Harris, Nick Shantz, Jack Zielinski, Tom Abrams, Danny Bosio and Mason Corliss — were born and bred in the good ole U.S. of A.
“It’s not like we hang out with each other in a group,” noted Vees right-winger Abrams from Orland Park, Ill., on the outskirts of Chicago. “A guy from the States is just another teammate to me, but it’s nice to have company.”
Abrams, the son of a cardiologist mother and a golf-teaching father, was at home on his couch this summer contemplating his hockey future, wondering if, at age 20, he still had one. The previous campaign had started with an unsuccessful bid to crack the Brockville Braves lineup. He signed with the Winchester Hawks junior B team and played half the season before commencing to chase pucks in the sunny south for the Palm Beach Hawks of the United States Premier Hockey League.
“I was thinking of heading back to Florida this season,” recalled the angular forward, who’s listed at six-foot-six. “Right out of the blue, (Vees general manager) Peter Goulet phones and tells me he has a spot for me in Kingston.
“There’s no way I could pass up this opportunity.”
Corliss, who turned 20 earlier this month, hails from Katy, Texas, a 20-minute drive from Houston and, if I ‘misremember’ correctly, once the home of Roger Clemens. Mason’s pop owns a company involved in the oil business.
Last year the right-winger played in Richmond, Va., after spending the previous winter — if you want to call it that — chasing pucks in the Lone Star State as a member of the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees of the North American Hockey League.
Goulet found Corliss via a Virginia contact and extended a smiliar invitation to venture north, which Corliss accepted and eventually pulled into Kingston in typical Texan style — in a Hummer.
He’s been reunited with his erstwhile teammate on the Richmond Generals, Vees blueliner Zielinski.
The latter took the long way from his native Virginia, arriving here from northern Alberta where the defenceman had a cup of coffee with the Whitecourt Wolverines. He not only requested a trade, he asked to go to Kingston.
“I knew about the team, knew it had a winning program and lots of (U.S. college) exposure,” said Zielinski.
“So far it’s been an incredible experience, I just have to get used to the metric system and the money.”
Shantz, a 200-pound rearguard from Plain City, Ohio, has “no regrets” about moving to Kingston and figures Goulet — theme song: I’ve Been Everywhere — spotted him “at some showcase tournament.”
Six-foot-one forward Harris, another 20-year-old, hails from Fort Wayne, Ind. His hockey dossier includes stops at Culver Military Academy, Dells, Wis. and Long Island, N.Y.
His former coach with his hometown Fort Wayne Federals, ex-Kingston Frontenac Colin Chaulk, now coaches the Brampton Beast of the East Coast Hockey League. The Beast’s assistant coach? The ubiquitous Goulet.
“Coming here was the greatest decision I ever made,” said Harris. “The Canadian experience, this team, this organization — the whole thing’s been unreal.”
With plenty of countrymen to go around — a third of the Vees’ roster give or take a body, Harris remarked, “It’s almost like being back home.”
