The Skinners Pond native recently signed with a professional team in Sanok for the 2014-15 season.
“I’ve had a great run; I’ve had a great time, great teams,” Knox said of his hockey career thus far. “Won some championships; lost some that we probably should’ve won as well.”
He started his minor hockey career in Tignish, and then played with the elite-level teams in West Prince. His career then took him to the Cornwall Thunder major midget team before playing junior A in Summerside and Pictou County, N.S. Following junior, Knox went on to a successful career with the UPEI Panthers.
“I have no complaints with the game at all,” Knox said.
Last summer, a former UPEI teammate, Matt Boyle, asked if he’d be interested in playing in Norway.
“I kind of wanted to go experience the game in Europe, so I thought it was a great opportunity for me,” he said of his decision to play in Miskolc, a city about 180 kilometres northeast of Budapest.
Teams were allowed five imports, and the rest of the players were Hungarians. Most players could speak at least broken English, so communication was not much of a factor, Knox noted.
He was pleased with his year, finishing third on the team for points and second for goals despite missing nine games for suspensions.
Whoa, suspensions?
“There wasn’t a lot of physical contact in the league over there,” acknowledged Knox. “I was suspended twice for quote, unquote, hitting too hard, so I kind of had to adjust to that and stop hitting, realistically.”
Knox will head to Poland by the end of July for a month-long training camp. League play will start in September, and conclude in March 2015.
He has some familiarity with the Polish team as he played them in a pre-season game last year. He knows a couple of players on the team, and one of them contacted him to see if he’d be interested in joining.
It’s not the money that’s attracting him, he stressed.
“It’s more of a lifestyle thing than anything: get to see the world, for now,” he added. “I have no vision of stopping any time soon.”