By Michael Clark (direct link)
It might seem counterintuitive to say that being winless is a sign of progress for a team.
But that’s exactly the case for the Chicago Gay Hockey Association’s North Shore Red Liners.
The Red Liners started 0-7 in their first season in a league at the North Shore Ice Arena in Northbrook, but their very existence is reason for optimism for the CGHA.
The organization, which now fields two teams – the successful Johnny’s Red Liners is the other – is less than a decade old and began as a group of LGBT and allied players interested in playing the sport they loved.
They’re not like some other local LGBT athletic groups, though, which are made up of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender athletes playing with and against other members of the community. There just aren’t that many LGBT hockey players in Chicago, so from the start CGHA teams have played in mainstream leagues.
They skated along under the radar for a few years until hockey in general and gay hockey in particular took off when the Blackhawks ended their long Stanley Cup drought in 2010. A CGHA member, Andrew Sobotka, came up with the idea of inviting the Hawks to bring the Stanley Cup to the 2009 Pride Parade as part of the trophy’s victory lap around the Chicago area.
The stars were in alignment because one of the Hawks, Brent Sopel, was not only open to the idea. He loved it because of his respect for Brendan Burke, the openly gay son of Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke.
Brendan Burke came out during his college years at Miami University in Ohio, where he was a student manager for the school’s highly successful hockey team, and became a forceful advocate for the acceptance of LGBT athletes before dying in a car crash in Feburary of 2010.
Sopel’s thoughtful gesture proved to be a boon for CGHA.
“It raised a ton of awareness,” said board member Brian Hull, a native of the Detroit area who was one of a number of new players to join CGHA in the wake of the Cup’s appearance at Pride.
The influx of new talent has allowed the group to add the second team in the Northbrook league and probably has something to do with the emergence of Johnny’s Red Liners as a power in the ultra-competitive C3 Division of the Johnny’s Adult League at Johnny’s Ice House on the Near West Side.
With the less experienced players now together on the Northbrook team, there is more playing time for the veterans on the Johnny’s squad. The latter team got off to a 9-4 start and was fourth in its 10-team division in the 20-team league, thanks to standout play from Tony Tiet (16 goals, 8 assists), Anthony Alfano (12 goals, 6 assists) and Nicholas Lang (7-4, 1 shutout, 2.91 goals-against average) among others.
That team is made up of more experienced players, while the North Shore Red Liners has a different focus.
“It’s more of a developmental type of thing,” Hull said.
Neither club is exclusively LGBT. “That’s a really important thing for us,” Hull said. “It’s a safe place for all LGBT, gay, straight or transgendered folks.”
That includes straight friends of gay players who want to play alongside their buddies or the son of a pair of lesbian moms.
And the CGHA’s activities go beyond their play in the two local ice hockey leagues. Some went to Boston to play this summer and a few are heading to Las Vegas soon for the Sin City Shootout, a sort of LGBT Olympics that just added hockey. And for the past two years, there has been a floor hockey league at the Center on Halsted.
There are a few more signs that LGBT hockey is catching on in Chicago. The CGHA hosted its first Market Days Classic in 2011 and plans to host the annual event in rotation with Vancouver and Boston, bringing it back to Chicago in 2014.
And CGHA is among the many local hockey organizations gearing up for the Hockey City Classic Winter Fest, a two-week event at Soldier Field in February that will feature college and high school games.
All in all, it’s a good time for gay hockey in Chicago. Maybe the best part is simply that the CGHA teams are playing – unlike the NHL, whose lockout has dragged on through the holidays and threatens to cancel the entire 2012-13 season.