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Hockey Teams Reunite In Tampa More Than One Year After Tournament In Belarus

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The USA Hockey Adult Men’s National Championships was the backdrop for a reunion between two teams that came together as one on the international stage last year prior to the virus-induced shutdown.

The setting for renewing acquaintance was the AdventHealth Center Ice complex in Wesley Chapel, Fla., about 20 miles north of downtown Tampa.

It was an opportunity for John Koufis, Aaron Ackley and their teammates to hit the ice and enjoy a late-April weekend of hockey in the Sunshine State.

Koufis, no stranger to lacing up the skates abroad, added Belarus to his travelogue last year and did so most unexpectedly: on a team comprised of long-time adult league rivals, the Chicago Sharks and Buffalo Icemen.

Koufis, who won a silver medal while representing Greece in the Division III World Championships in Luxembourg in 2010, founded the Sharks in 1991 and has been playing in adult leagues since shortly after graduating DePaul. The Sharks became part of USA Hockey’s national tournament program in 1994.

Ackley founded the Icemen in 1995 and, in 1998, the team participated in its first nationals. The two programs have clashed many times since and grew to respect each other while butting heads and competing for championships.

So when USA Hockey board of directors co-chair and former president Ron DeGregorio, after consultation with Ashley Bevan, the governing body’s senior director of adult hockey, wanted to place a 40-plus team in a tournament in Belarus for the first time, he reached out to Koufis and Ackley.

That was in November 2019. Before Koufis and Ackley knew it, they were putting together a team comprised of Sharks and Icemen to compete in a holiday tournament more than 5,000 miles away from home.

“Being that we and Buffalo were two long-time participants that have supported the USA Hockey program, I told Ron, ‘Sure, let me get back to you,’” recalled Koufis. “I was able to get seven or eight guys and Aaron got seven or eight guys and we put a team together. Then we represented the U.S.”

Just like that, adult league rivals bonded as one team and traveled to Minsk on New Year’s Day 2020.

“We have been knocking heads with Buffalo since the late-1990s,” said the 55-year-old Koufis. “The greatest thing about it was guys from both teams have been (playing adult league hockey) for 30 years through the various age levels and we hit it off like oil and vinegar.”

Indeed, friendships were made while far away from home playing a game they love.

“It was really nice to play with them,” said the 55-year-old Ackley, an upstate New York native who played two years of junior varsity at Elmira College. “We got some good friendships out of it and it was definitely a great experience.”

The combined Chicago/Buffalo contingent, plus a couple of other players invited to join the team, including former NHLer Jim Slater, spent seven days and played three games in Belarus.

Playing with adult leaguers was a blast for Slater, a Michigan native and Michigan State standout who played 584 games in the NHL with the Atlanta Thrashers/Winnipeg Jets franchise. He had worn the Team USA jersey many times before and when he was contacted by DeGregorio, he was only too happy to make his first trip to Minsk.

“Those guys are wonderful guys and made me feel part of the group right away,” said Slater, who works in the Washington Capitals’ player development department, of his new teammates. “We were playing in front of 10,000 people and it was the first time a lot of those guys felt like pros. It was really cool to experience that with them and also putting on the USA jersey.”

The first game was against the host nation — Team USA also played against a team cobbled together by the International Ice Hockey Federation and a team from China — and the atmosphere made for an experience that was second to none. That included the fact Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko played for the home team.

“That’s the first time I have been on the ice with a president of a country,” said Slater. “Hockey takes you to many places and provides many different experiences.”

The fact that Team USA, as Ackley put it, took a “pretty good shellacking” was a mere footnote when compared to an experience that was tough to top.

“Whether it was the cheerleaders, singers or entertainers at the game, it was a top-notch event,” he said. “The Belarusians chanted all game long and the spectator experience was almost choreographed. You couldn’t even hear the guys on the ice. It was really cool.”

While they stayed in touch via Zoom during the pandemic, it was really cool for many of the Sharks and Icemen, now opposing each other once again, to catch up in person for the first time since Belarus. As fate would have it, guess which teams opened the tournament?

“It was really good to see those guys again, even if we didn’t do too well,” said Ackley, noting the Icemen’s 5-2 loss to the Sharks. “We were on Zoom a lot with the Chicago boys, so we kept in touch. But it was great to be on the ice again with them.”

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