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New York Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Remembering a Little League World Series team that once included future NHL greats
It's the third inning of a 1982 Little League World Series semifinal in Williamsport, Pa. Five-time defending champion Taiwan — representing the Far East in those days — is on the ropes. Its 2-0 lead against Canada is in danger. Taiwan has two outs with star pitcher Huang Yao-Chung on the mound. Canada has runners on second and third, and the next batter is a tall, gangly preteen. Advertisement Young Pierre Turgeon is at the plate. Facing a count of one ball and two strikes, Turgeon drives the ball into left field, resulting in a two-RBI double. Canada had only tied the game, but they celebrated like they'd won. Turgeon smiles as he watches teammates' exuberance from second base. Canada's next hitter, shortstop Martin Lafrenière, gets a hit into right field. Turgeon crosses home plate and celebrates with his teammates as Canada takes a 3-2 lead over Taiwan in front of a frenzied Williamsport crowd. One of the first teammates to greet Turgeon after giving Canada the lead: pitcher Stéphane Matteau. 'Against Taiwan, it was over 20,000 people,' Turgeon said of the attendance at Howard J. Lamade Stadium. 'It's crazy. You're 11 years old, you're looking around, you're thinking, 'Wow, that's nuts.'' Forty-three years ago, Turgeon and Matteau were pieces of a ragtag, small-town Quebec team that made it to the Little League World Series final four and put a baseball dynasty on the brink of elimination. (Taiwan won a hard-fought game 10-7.) Turgeon, the biggest player for Canada and arguably the most talented, ultimately became Turgeon the Hockey Hall of Famer. Matteau permanently traded his bat for a stick and won a Stanley Cup with the New York Rangers 12 years after his Little League World Series appearance. Rangers fans and hockey historians will remember Matteau's iconic series-winning goal in double overtime that lifted New York past the New Jersey Devils in the 1994 Eastern Conference final. But in 1982, two grade-school standouts from Rouyn, Quebec, and their teammates were the talk of a town for the summer. 'Our little team from Rouyn accomplished a miracle, an extraordinary feat,' Matteau said. 'And to do it with school friends, our childhood friends, our hockey friends that we played with in the winter … it was a magical summer.' Rouyn is a town in western Quebec that straddles the provincial border with Ontario, as part of Quebec's Abitibi-Témiscamingue region. It's known today as Rouyn-Noranda, as the two townships merged in 1986. Matteau and Turgeon — and other youngsters in Rouyn — enjoyed two seasons each year: hockey in the winter, baseball in the summer. They had grown accustomed to seeing snow on the ground until the end of April and would play hockey for most of the calendar year until the snow melted. They'd prepare for baseball season with the Rouyn Rotary club in their school gyms before playing ball in nearby parks. Advertisement If they weren't watching the Montreal Canadiens play hockey on television, they were watching the Montreal Expos baseball team. The Expos made the playoffs for the first time in franchise history in 1981, with players like Gary Carter, Tim Raines and Andre Dawson becoming household names across the province. 'Those Expos teams were like All-Star teams back in those days,' Matteau said. Rouyn hoped to emerge as Canadian Little League champions in 1981 while boasting four pitchers who'd go on to have NHL careers: Matteau, Turgeon and the duo of future defenseman Éric Desjardins and goaltender André Racicot, who both won a Stanley Cup with the Canadiens in 1993. They fell short that year. The following year, however, would be their time, and Matteau was counted on as one of their aces. Former #NHL #Hockey player Stephane Matteau pitched in the 1982 Little League World Series. #Baseball — Home Run Hockey (@HomeRunHockey) October 7, 2017 'Stéphane was very intense,' said Richard Jolicoeur, a former baseball teammate who grew up on the same street as Matteau. 'He was our Maurice Richard, but when he went out to pitch, he wanted to be the best pitcher.' All the while, Turgeon was doing double duty, going back and forth between Montreal for hockey camp and playing baseball with his team that summer. If Matteau was the team's Maurice Richard, Turgeon was its Wayne Gretzky, playing pitcher, shortstop and center field. He wanted to be where the ball was. 'Pierre was a monster,' Matteau remembered. 'He was a warrior. He was 12 years old, but he had the maturity of a 15-, 16-, 17-year-old.' 'We knew he was good, but he was so big and strong compared to the rest of us,' Jolicoeur added, as Turgeon, now standing 6-foot-1, was listed as a 6-footer during Little League play. 'He really had a physical advantage. But he was also a good guy who wanted the team to win. He was super nice to all of us.' A post shared by NHL History (@nhlhistory) The climb to the Little League World Series was arduous — and that was just the travel. It meant long bus rides for the squad and staying with families who weren't their own. Rouyn Rotary first won a district tournament in Timmins, Ontario, over 2 1/2 hours west of their hometown. (The result of being so close to Ontario towns led to them being part of the Ontario baseball system and not Quebec's.) After that, they traveled to Stoney Creek, Ontario, near Hamilton, for the provincial championship. Advertisement Jolicoeur, who spoke French, remembered staying with an English-speaking family all by himself during the provincial championship. 'One morning, I got asked a question, but I didn't understand much,' Jolicoeur said. 'They asked me if I ate, and I always said, 'Yes.' The only English word I knew was yes. They brought me to the ball park, and then I told the manager that I didn't eat, and he found me a muffin.' After winning the provincial title, one final step was needed before reaching the Little League World Series: Rouyn needed to win the Canadian Region Tournament in Boucherville, Quebec. They finished round-robin play with the second-best record behind Maritime champion Glace Bay, an eastern Nova Scotian town. Rouyn lost one of their pre-knockout stage games to Glace Bay but hoped to get their revenge as both teams reached the tournament final. In the sixth inning (Little League games are six innings long), Rouyn's chances looked doomed until Turgeon saved them with a home run while facing a full count. His shot tied the score at 3-3, forcing extra innings. With Turgeon and Marc Dubois on base in the top of the eighth, Jolicoeur hit an opposite-field, two-run double that gave Rouyn a go-ahead 5-3 lead. 'That was my big achievement of that summer,' Jolicoeur said. The Rouyn team did not have long to savor their victory. An 11-hour bus ride to Williamsport awaited the group of 11- and 12-year-olds, many of whom had never left the country. Between signing autographs before and after games and recording promos for ESPN, the Rouyn boys experienced culture shock being around international teams from countries they had barely heard of. All the while, they were representing an entire nation of their own. Canada has been represented in the Little League World Series each year since 1952, when a Montreal-based team became the first foreign team to compete in the tournament. Advertisement Canada won its first game of the 1982 tournament, a 3-0 victory over Spain, to advance to the semifinal round. But the Canadians would face a Taiwan squad featuring players who dedicated themselves year-round to playing. Many of the Canadian youngsters trained for only a quarter of the year. 'Our sport was hockey; we were all hockey players,' Jolicoeur said. 'There was one guy on the team who didn't play hockey: our catcher, Denis Aubut. But the other guys, we were hockey players, and baseball was our second sport. It was our way of having fun in the summer.' '(Taiwan) practiced like a major-league team,' Matteau added. Canada's coaches were mostly volunteers, including manager Gilles Mireault, who wrote for the local newspaper. But the players gravitated around Mireault and fellow coach Yvon St-Amant. 'We were prepared to do well, and we got pushed to do well,' Turgeon said. 'We took the challenge well as a team and as young kids.' Taiwan, which had won its last 30 tournament games, was on the verge of being upset as Canada led 4-2 entering the top of the fourth inning. A breakthrough fifth, however, aided Taiwan, as the team scored seven runs. 'No one thought that we even had a chance to go near (them),' Turgeon said. 'And somehow we battled back.' The Canadians mounted a comeback attempt of their own in the fifth, scoring three runs and cutting the deficit. Unfortunately for Canada, the comeback fell short. The team ultimately finished fourth in the tournament, losing the third-place game 7-4 against a team from Wyoming, Mich. Taiwan's goal of winning a sixth straight Little League World Series was halted in the championship game, as it lost 6-0 to a team from Kirkland, Wash. The championship was played in front of a then-record 40,000 fans and in 2010 was documented in 'Little Big Men,' a part of ESPN's '30 for 30' series. Advertisement Jolicoeur remembers feeling 'disappointed' losing that semifinal, but he took pride in competing against a perennial world-champion team. 'We made them sweat a little bit,' he said. When Matteau returned to Williamsport 35 years after his team's dream run, it was his chance to reconnect with faces he hadn't seen since childhood. He had experienced the glory of an NHL career, so he was used to meeting random fans in public. At one point, Matteau introduced himself to a man who looked back with a puzzled gaze. The man was surprised that Matteau didn't remember him. He then said his name: Maxime Leblanc. It was Matteau's former teammate from that 1982 squad. 'After 1982, I never ran into him once,' Matteau said. 'I saw him 35 years later. Once he told me his name, I recognized his face as a young man.' Turgeon and Matteau reunited with their teammates in 2017 ahead of that year's Little League World Series. A decade earlier, Turgeon was inducted into the Little League Hall of Excellence, the highest honor for Little League alumni. He's the first Canadian and first NHLer to accomplish the feat. But Turgeon and Matteau didn't attend to boast about their NHL exploits. They wanted to catch up with their buddies — some of whom, like Leblanc, they hadn't seen in decades. At a local hotel, members of the team came together over a bonfire. That's when the stories were revisited. The teammates chatted for hours, ordered food and shared memories. 'Nobody wanted to sleep,' Matteau said. 'We were sitting in a circle. We knew our teammates followed my and Pierre's careers in the NHL, but Pierre and I were so interested in hearing everyone else's stories. Where did they end up? How many kids did they have? Their family life, their professional life. 'It got to two or three in the morning, and we were still sitting in the hotel lobby. It was really magical.' Some of the players' most treasured memories came after the tournament ended. The Rouyn team was given a hero's welcome when they landed at the local airport from Montreal. It was just the beginning of the city's celebration. Players signed an official book at City Hall before being paraded through the streets days later, as if they were Stanley Cup champions. They even got free haircuts from a local shop in town. Advertisement Weeks later, the team took one more bus ride to Montreal, this time as special guests for an Expos game at Olympic Stadium. The Rouyn players met the Expos before the game, shaking hands and taking photos with their baseball heroes — including Carter, Dawson, Raines, Tim Wallach and Bill Gullickson. August 1982, and everything that came afterward, was a coming-of-age moment for many of those players, like Jolicoeur. It produced memories that have stayed with them. 'For the majority of us, there was 'before 1982' and 'after 1982,'' Jolicoeur said. 'That's when I came into the world. … I became somebody after that. It breathed confidence into me. It told me anything was possible.' (Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; photos: Graig Abel and B Bennett/ Getty Images; courtesy of Stéphane Matteau) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
FROM THE ARCHIVES: Revisiting The Always Passionate Dale Hunter And His Quest For A Cup
This piece was originally published in The Hockey News magazine, vol. 51, issue 37, on Jun 19, 1998 BY MICHAEL ULMER There is grey hair where it was once jet black, no speed where there once was a little. Time has tinged every outward feature in 38-year-old Dale Hunter and left him untouched inside. Five years removed from his infamous late hit on then-New York Islander Pierre Turgeon, Hunter is in the Stanley Cup final for the first time in 18 seasons. The Washington Capitals' captain has moved from villain to sympathetic character. Hunter's nastiness, which spilled out so graphically in the Turgeon hit, has kept him in the game far longer than much more talented players. His game, once a potent cocktail of intimidation and skill, could be riveting and repellent, skillful and chilling. His shopworn features and six-word sentences are what the game was once about. 'Dale Hunter,' said teammate Bill Ranford, 'is a true-blue Canadian hockey player.' In person, Hunter is unerringly gentle natured. The gap between the on-ice persona and the off-ice demeanor is startling. 'People in the media are looking for flash. He doesn't say much, he's not interesting to the electronic media in particular,' said Washington coach Ron Wilson. 'It's like watching a Sutter brother get interviewed. But what Dale does off the ice, his work ethic, he hasn't changed a bit.' 'I don't think the passion changes as you get older,' Hunter said. 'I think as you get older, you enjoy every minute more.' Only three times has Hunter advanced as far as a division final (twice with the Quebec Nordiques, once in Washington) and each time his team was swept. Once an upper echelon star, Hunter has no false pride about his standing. 'I'm a role player,' he said without a trace of embarrassment."You do what you have to to keep playing.' 'He's still relentless and 1 think he has shown in the past, he'll do anything to win,' Wilson said, 'good or bad.' The bad happened in the 1993 playoffs when Hunter blind-sided Turgeon seconds after the Islanders' star scored a series-clinching goal. The late hit left Turgeon with an injured shoulder. Hunter was hit with a 21-game suspension the following season and there are those who will argue Turgeon, coming off a career 132-point season, has never been the same player. Hunter said the chance to hold the Stanley Cup, not a lasting repositioning of his image, made advancing to the final so memorable. 'That was in the past,' he said. 'You know to win a Stanley Cup is every kid's dream. You don't dream of losing a Stanley Cup when you're out in the yard. You dream of winning it.' Hunter worked the fringes of the first Caps' appearance in the final in the club's 24-year history, holding down an effective fourth line with Chris Simon and Craig Berube. He played between six and 11 minutes a game, most spent bashing Buffalo Sabres' defenders about in their own end. He had no goals and three assists in 17 games. Playing as hard as he can has been Hunter's hallmark since he broke in with Quebec in 1981. An incendiary competitor, he topped 200 penalty minutes for his first six years in the league and four times hit the 20-goal mark in that span. After seven seasons in Quebec, Hunter was shipped by the Nordiques to Washington. It would have been a disastrous deal, but for the first-round draft choice shipped to Quebec that the Nordiques used to draft Joe Sakic in 1987. Hunter is playing out another one-year contract, as he has the past couple of seasons, and clearly his days in the league are dwindling to a precious few. If Hunter's ability to reach trouble has slowed, his taste for it has not. 'I believe the harder the game, the tougher the situation, the better he's going to play,' Berube said. 'It's like when we work out. We'11 go ride the bike and he'll say we'll do 30 minutes, nice and easy. We get 10 minutes into it, he doesn't like it. he pushes it so hard that when you're done riding, you're cooked. That's Dale.'
Time of India
28-04-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
New York Islanders' April 28 remarkable victories shape playoff history
New York Islanders (via Getty Images) The New York Islanders recorded two classic wins on the day 'April 28'—defeating the Washington Capitals in 1993 and forcing a Game 7 clinching game against the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2002. These gritty victories spoke volumes about their passion and will to win in the playoffs and entered NHL history . New York Islanders edge Washington Capitals in sizzling 1993 game On April 28, 1993, the New York Islanders recorded a series-clinching win over the Washington Capitals, beating them in Game 6, 5-3, to take the Patrick Division Semifinals. While the win was exhilarating, it was overshadowed by one of the most notorious moments in NHL playoff history. Only minutes after he had just scored an insurance goal that all but locked up the game for the New York Islanders, Pierre Turgeon was blindsided by Washington Capitals captain Dale Hunter. The behind-the-back hit injured Pierre Turgeon and enraged the league. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman moved swiftly and severely, suspending Dale Hunter for 21 games — then the longest suspension ever handed out for an on-ice incident. Even following the brutal assault, the New York Islanders remained on course, capturing their hard-won series. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like The Cost Of Amusement Park Equipment From Mexico Might Surprise You Amusement Park Equipment | search ads Click Here Undo The Islanders' toughness, depth, and leadership carried them through a gruelling series, proving they are one of the Eastern Conference's top playoff teams. New York Islanders force Toronto Maple Leafs to Game 7 in 2002 thriller NHL 2002 PLAYOFFS GAME #7 NEW YORK ISLANDERS AT TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS Nigh on a decade since that fateful evening, April 28, 2002, the New York Islanders were fighting to remain in the playoffs— and answered with an electrifying game in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Trailing on the verge of elimination, the Islanders came back in a tough-ice 5-3 victory. Kip Miller was the firecracker, pacing the offense with three goals, including the game-winner. His effort ignited the crowd and his teammates as well, giving new life to the New York Islanders' playoff bid. The Islanders' victory pushed a close Game 7 and renewed fervor from the team's loyal fan base, who waited for years to experience a deep playoff run. The game also revealed the Islanders' combination of old-timers and young guns and never-say-die spirit, which defined them during the early 2000s. Also read: Lou Lamoriello: The untold story behind his shocking Islanders exit April 28: An unforgettable day indeed for New York Islanders These two old-school wins on April 28 show the New York Islanders' grit and ability to prevail in the face of adversity. Either prevailing over sheer adversity in 1993 or orchestrating a melodramatic comeback in 2002, the Islanders proved to the world of hockey why this team is one of the best and most legendary teams in the NHL. These wins have and continue to inspire fans, reminding the hockey world of the glorious playoff heritage of the team.
