COMMENTARY: Intermediate league produced some great hockey

I was looking back in some scrapbooks this past week at the old Island Intermediate B Hockey League that was very popular in our area back in the 1970s and 80s. It was a great league back then with as many as six teams to start the 1979/80 season including Tignish, O’Leary, CFB Summerside, Summerside, Bedeque and the first-year Crapaud Ramparts.

The Island Junior Hockey League was a great feeder system for senior hockey in those days with former junior notables like Greg “Giggy” MacDonald, Gene Kelly, Kenny Fraser, Mickey Callaghan, Mike “Pinky” Gallant, Neil MacFadyen, and Randy Harris, just to name a very few.

The Tignish Aces and the Summerside Combines had a bitter rivalry going at that time having met in the two previous league finals with the Combines winning the 1978/79 championship in a memorable seven-game final. In a regular season game the following season, the Combines beat a sluggish Aces team in Summerside 7-6 after breaking out to a 6-1 lead. Many of the Aces were at a Christmas party the prior evening and had trouble getting their skating legs going until late in the game when they made a valiant comeback but fell just short.

An obviously irritated Aces coach, Billy Keough, was quoted as saying after the game “that’s the closest those bleeps will ever get to us.” That was just a regular season game and would get better in the playoffs. They would meet in the league semi-final the following spring with the two teams splitting the first games with the second one being a chippy affair in Summerside.

Keough suggested after the game that the Combines should keep their heads up going to Game 3 in Tignish because she’s going to be a rough game. It could even be a dirty one concluded Keough. Intimidation was a part of it and it was very intimidating to play in the Centennial Arena in those days.

The Combines went on to beat the Aces in six games before losing in five games in the league finals to the first year Crapaud Ramparts who had swept the Bedeque Shur-Gains in their semi-final.

It was the beginning of a league that would be dominated by the Ramparts in the 80s and they will be a subject for a future article.

CURLING

It does not get any better in the sport of curling than what we have seen in Ottawa this past week. Curling is Canada’s other favorite winter pastime and without doubt has the best curling teams in the world. This week’s Tim Horton’s Roar to the Rings Olympic Qualifier has seen some great curling and probably as good as we will see this curling season.

It is semi-final Saturday today with only three teams left in both the men’s and women’s. As this is written, it looks like Chelsey Carey, Jennifer Jones and Rachel Homan will battle it out on the women’s side while Kevin Koe has clinched a final birth winning his first seven games. Unless the wheels fall off for Brad Gushue, he will be the opposition for Koe, which will make for a great final. The women’s final is Sunday afternoon while the men’s final is Sunday night. The winners will represent Canada in this year’s Winter Olympics in South Korea.

BASEBALL

It has been a rather quiet off season thus far as far as Major League Baseball goes but look for plenty of free agent signings and trades in the coming week as teams gather for their annual winter meetings in Florida.

The big question is where National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton will land. Trades have supposedly been worked out with both San Francisco and St Louis but the latest out of the Stanton camp is that he prefers a trade from Miami to the Cubs, Astros, Dodgers or Yankees. He has 10 years and $295 million remaining on his contract, which should cause teams to run. This is the rich sport of baseball and there will be a landing spot for Stanton and plenty of others in the week ahead.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!

- Joe MacIntyre is a Summerside resident. His column appears every Saturday. Comments and suggestions can be sent to [email protected].