No Easter joy for graduating players as pandemic wrecks last shot at minor hockey glory

Bradley Myrick can do some impressive tricks with a street hockey ball, like bouncing it repeatedly on his blade, and connecting with a baseball-style swing and launching it like an orange rocket into his rickety street hockey net.

In hockey parlance, it can be said the 18-year-old has soft hands.

And they go well with his warm smile, and friendly personality.

Myrick knows everyone on his quiet lane in Portugal Cove-St. Philip's, and they know to expect him stickhandling and shooting on the street when they pass by.

But the scene is different these days.

Bradley plays the game he loves, all right, but despite sharing the street with a half-dozen other minor hockey players, he does it alone, living in what he's come to know as his bubble.

Like everyone else, he's trying to stay one step ahead of the coronavirus that has brought society to a standstill.

That means instead of striving for a third provincial minor hockey gold medal in Mount Pearl earlier this week, he was either playing hockey virtually on his Xbox, or imagining scoring a game winning goal as the twine bulged on the net in front of his house.

"It's a big gap that is missing and something that I love to do," says Myrick, a member of the Northeast Eagles minor hockey association.

500 players aging out of minor hockey

Myrick is one of nearly 500 young men and women in Newfoundland and Labrador who were denied their final shot at minor hockey glory this week.

That's because in their last year of minor hockey eligibility, a worldwide pandemic has cancelled hockey in Canada.

Let that sink in. 

Cancelled.

Unprecedented in modern times.

Easter week and hockey tournaments are about as synonymous as the Easter bunny and chocolate.

Each spring, thousands of players and hundreds of teams set off on a quest to win a HockeyNL banner.

From Mobile to Labrador City, and many points in between, hockey arenas come alive.

It's been a rite of passage for generations of hockey players and their parents.

But all 52 provincial tournaments — from atom to midget divisions — were wiped out this week. And more than 10,000 minor hockey players in the province are now benched indefinitely, with no one knowing when society will return to some type of normalcy, and Canada's game can be played again.

So young players like Myrick can only imagine what their final tournament might have been like.

"I should have been chasing down my third gold medal this week," he says as his gloved left hand glances off the two medals around his neck, setting off a clinking sound like chimes moving in the wind.

"When I look at these I think about the people I won them with and how fun it was to go to these towns and compete for a week and win a medal."

It's a sentiment you can find in many driveways these days, with skates collecting dust and arenas darkened by a pandemic.

"We all just wish we were out there having a fun time with each other," says Matthew Hart, 17, of Paradise.

"I was really sad for a while. But you can't change what's happening."

Hart has played minor hockey for 14 years, and was coached by his father, Chad, at every level, each year building to what they hoped would be a golden glow over their final tournament in Clarenville earlier this week.

"We had a good young team, and hopefully we would have been right there in the finals," says Chad Hart.

"But we're not. We're out playing hockey on the road and we're all social distancing and it's a new world we live in."

Seventeen- and 18-year-olds like Matthew Hart are still trying to digest a situation that not only took away hockey, but their final months of high school.

"I'm not allowed to see my friends. I can't go to school to get my education. I'm not allowed to play the sports that I love," said Matthew.

"You get bored of it after a while and it's hard to just think of other things to do when you're not allowed to go outside and play hockey with your buddies or have a catch."

For elite players like Tanner Humber-Dredge of St. John's, the end of hockey means a lost opportunity to display his skills before hockey scouts at the Atlantic playdowns.

Humber-Dredge was a member of the Pinnacle Growlers major midget team. The league's most valuable player. Scoring leader. Four-time provincial champion.

His team was vying for a spot in the provincial finals, with an important berth in the Atlantics up for grabs, when Hockey Canada delivered its jaw-dropping verdict last month.

"It was a terrible way to end. You didn't get to have your last game that you lost, or finish off with a big win. It was saddening for a lot of us not being able to play it again," says Humber-Dredge.

But all that success and potential has been replaced by video games, and trying his best to stay fit, and safe from the virus.

"It's been difficult not going to school every day. Not seeing my friends. I'm stuck in the house. Haven't been out. It's really difficult, especially with getting over the whole not being able to graduate, not finishing hockey. Just really confusing," he says.

Bradley Myrick knows how that feels.

"Everybody's bored. We want to go out. We want to socialize. We want to see each other. You can play all the video games in the world, but not being able to actually interact with people, that's what really sucks."

• Minor hockey postponed by coronavirus
• COVID-19 spread to N.L. 'inevitable,' precautions appropriate so far: Officer of health

So solitarily street hockey is the new reality.

Living in a bubble.

Trying to fight off the boredom and the regrets.

And imagining that hockey ball soaring into the top corner is a winner in a big game

A game that has fallen victim, to a virus.

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