24 April 2012 will go down as the start of something new, something big: a new hockey movement in Nakusp, BC. No longer are players forced to hang up their ice skates at the end of March and call it a year. No longer will players have to drive two towns over just to find a roller rink (although Burton will always be there for us). Thanks to the efforts of Zac Wethal, we now have the Arena League of roller hockey.

It all came together over the past month; the proper fusion of Commercial regulars, Falcon midgets, and Burton veterans necessary to procure the Nakusp & District Sports Complex each Tuesday night at 6:30 pm. Anticipation for tonight was huge, and it showed as 22 hockey-hungry madmen were on hand for the inaugural arena session.

Apologies in advance for the crappy player profile bios, or lack thereof. These will hopefully be improved upon over the next few weeks. We’ll be happy to take in any profile pics or fun blurbs for the bios that you have. Just email Kyle in the Contact section at the bottom of the page and we’ll get them in ASAP. That’s also the place to complain about how the damn statistician screwed you over on that goal you scored, etc. (It took me a couple of games to get used to scoring by number; I’m used to guys skating up to the table and saying ‘me from X and Y’, or more usually, ‘Did you get my assist on that?’ while everyone else glares at them for chintzing an extra point.)

With the line-up set, it was now time to find out exactly what arena roller hockey would look like. For the Commercials and most of the Falcons, the challenge would be getting used to playing on wheels and starting a new game every time someone reached five. For the Burtonians, the challenge would be getting use to 5-on-5 positional play in a regulation-sized rink and playing in full gear (helmets are a definite necessity here on the exposed concrete). Would it look like a typical Commercial game, a larger-sized version of Burton, or a little bit of both? There was only one way to find out, and it was time to drop the puck. Sticks in the middle gave us these two teams, who would switch into their respectively-coloured snazzy Kuskanax Lodge-branded sweaters:

Blue Team:

2. Lance Beingessner
3. Kyle Grenier
4. Jesse Cann
5. Mitch Zorn
6. Kellan Nishida
8. Jordan Trenholm
9. Lee Orr
10. Nathyn McInnes
11. Ryan Bateman
19. Mitchell Detta
29. Carter Stenseth (goal)

White Team:

1. Ryan Struck (goal)
1. Levi Cordingley
2. Andrew Likness
3. James Hewlitt
4. Tyson Cann
6. Dylan Hascarl
7. Ryan MacDonald
9. Zac Wethal
10. Kris James
11. K.J. O’Connor
15. Zach Friedenberger

Warm-up was filled with spill after spill as players adjusted to the glazed concrete. While this wouldn’t be too much of a factor in the game, it was still funny as hell to watch. When Game 1 started, the Blue trio of Kyle, Bates, and Lee came out blazing with two quick goals in the first minute of the game. K.J. would strike back for White, however, and they’d come back to take the game 5-3. It was Carter’s turn to be victimised in Game 2, as Kris and K.J. helped lead their team to victory, 5-3. Carter did manage to repeatedly pull out highlight reels saves on poor Zac, who’d have to wait all the way until Game 4 for his first goal of the night. Game 3 was another 5-3 victory for White, with Andrew and Zac coming to the forefront. Nate did manage to get some quality chances on Struck at the other end, however, and was consistently getting better as the night wore on.

Game 4 saw Bates and Zorn hooking up repeatedly and Jesse also getting one past Struck for Blue, who eked one out 5-4 despite the best efforts of Andrew, Zac, and Dylan. Jamie Hewlitt would also pick up a couple of assists in this game. Struck, by the way, was fantastic in the second half of this session. There was no sense in leaving now with the series tied 2-2, so the gang decided to play one more game to decide a series winner. Blue got up quickly to a 4-1 lead on the back of goals from Grenier and Bates, aided by drives from the blue line from Jordan. The fifth goal just would not come, however, and White threatened to come back and make one last charge to win as the benches got shorter and shorter. Ultimately, not even Zac rubbing out Zorn and dragging him into the opposing bench would stop the Blue wave as Mitch Detta put one home to win the series. Kellan, K.J., Dylan, and Kris were faceoff machines all night long; Grenier and Zorn, not so much.

All in all, an absolutely awesome night of hockey and a great way to start the new Arena League. Glad to see everyone had so much fun. Best of all, it’ll happen again next Tuesday at 6:30.

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Kyle Grenier and Ryan Bateman got off to an early start on the scoresheet and never looked back as they each finished with 7G-7A. For the White team, K.J. was the most present force on the scoresheet, leading his side with 6G and taking third star with 9A. Andrew and Jesse were very close behind, and Zac, Zorn, Kris, and Dylan held a lot of influence over the games as well. In goal, the gang was probably surprised to hear that Carter and Struck only posted .774 and .759 considering how well they played; that’s a function of the large rink negating many of the close-in shots one would see at Burton or Ambleside, and that’s reflected in the slightly lower saves-per-game averages. At either of those two rinks, these would be .800-.820 sessions. There may be a need to adjust how we give out star points for goalies at the Arena; we’ll see how it goes the next few weeks.

Game Scores:
Blue def. White 3-5 5-3 3-5 5-4 5-2

Faceoff Stats (unofficial):
Kris James 4/4 (100.00%)
Andrew Likness 2/2 (100.00%)
Lance Beingessner 1/1 (100.00%)
Jordan Trenholm 1/1 (100.00%)
K.J. O’Connor 6/8 (75.00%)
Zac Wethal 3/4 (75.00%)
Kellan Nishida 11/17 (64.71%)
Dylan Hascarl 8/13 (61.54%)
Nathyn McInnes 3/5 (60.00%)
Levi Cordingley 2/4 (50.00%)
Jesse Cann 1/1 (50.00%)
Kyle Grenier 2/12 (16.67%)
Mitch Zorn 0/6 (0.00%)

Elo Ratings

Kyle Grenier 2286 (+15)
K.J. O’Connor 2039 (+58)
Ryan Bateman 1988 (+121)
Lee Orr 1976 (-127)
Jesse Cann 1907 (+86)
Mitchell Detta 1898 (-41)
Andrew Likness 1883 (+126)
Mitch Zorn 1805 (+115)
James Hewlitt 1778 (+32)
Dylan Hascarl 1746 (+86)

Provisional Elo Ratings
Zac Wethal 1872 (n/a)
Kris James 1849 (n/a)
Kellan Nishida 1774 (n/a)
Levi Cordingley 1774 (n/a)
Ryan Macdonald 1737 (n/a)
Jordan Trenholm 1713 (-49)
Lance Beingessner 1692 (n/a)
Tyson Cann 1692 (n/a)
Nathyn McInnes 1692 (n/a)
Zach Friedenberger 1679 (-100)

Season Stats: Normally, this is where we look at how the overall season standings have change, but since this is the first session of the Arena League, this session IS the season far. As far as overall stats, VRH has a 28-game headstart on the Arena, so it’s kind of unfair to compare things at this point. We can say that among the goalies in both leagues this year, Carter is fourth at .774 and Struck is sixth at .759, and Struck ranks fifth in saves at 66, one more than Carter.

SDF/GDF: Andrew leads the SDF for a 13th straight rankings and 26th overall, but that lead may be gone next week, for Kyle and Ryan debut in a joint ninth place despite only being halfway to the session minimum.... In all, twenty new Arena League players debuted on the ranking this week... Bron leads the GDF for a second week, pulling out his lead on Dom by a little bit more. Ryan and Carter debut sixth and seventh, respectively.

All-Time Records, Awards and Honours
All-Time Session Scoring Milestones & Streaks
All-Time Session Goaltending Milestones & Streaks

On the All-Time Front: Kyle passes Lorne for sixth in all-time scoring and becomes the sizth player with 1,500 career points... Mitch Detta is eleven points behind Ryan Disterheft for 17th... Kyle is 17 goals behind Lorne for fourth in all-time goals while K.J. trails brother Seamus for sixth by 15... K.J. passes Laird for 11th in games played... Kyle ties Oliver for second in all-time three-star points with 800... Ryan Bateman moves into fifth in all-time APG at 1.39... Counting the last BUSH season, James hasn’t missed a roller hockey session in a year... This is Lee’s 13th season of roller hockey... Did you know that the last time Struck appeared on this website was 9 June 2000? Literally one-half of today’s roster was in kindergarten at the time.

A Quick Guide to Navigating the Burton Hockey Website

Some of you may be visiting BurtonHockey.com for the first time and may be wondering about some of the features on the site. Here’s a quick guide:
-This site covers three different leagues (BUSH, the original roller league started in 2000 when the then-new Burton outdoor rink was built; it’s where most of the roller hockey in the valley is played. VRH started in Vancouver in 2005 when a group of people from the Arrow Lakes who moved to the Lower Mainland wanted to keep playing Burton hockey out on the coast. The Arena league marks league number three on the site). If you click on Stats, you can sort the stats by each of the three leagues, by combined totals, or by Interleague stats for games between players from both leagues (BUSH and VRH play a series against each other every year; BUSH are the current champions).
-The leaderboard stats on the front page are combined totals from all leagues this season. Right now they’re pretty well all VRH since VRH started playing in February and has a 30-game jump.
-Three-star points are based simply on scoring at the end of the day (1st=15; 2nd=10; 3rd=5). Goalies have their own separate star point system based on percentage plus saves (PPS).

Player Rankings: There are rankings for skaters and goalies based upon the last ten sessions played. Think of them similar to TSN power rankings. To qualify fully, players must have played at least two full sessions during that time, so you’ll start seeing the Arena guys near the top of the rankings by the third or fourth week.
-Skaters are rated on the Scoring Deviation Factor (SDF), in which the leading scorer in each session is given 100 SDF points, regardless of points-per-game. Every other scorer's point total in that session is equated relative to the leader's 100 points (e.g. if Player A scores 20 points in a session, Player B gets 18 and Player C gets 5, this equates to 100 SDF for Player A, 90 for Player B and 25 for Player C). In addition, the new SDF also reflects the quality of opposition the players face in a certain session. Quality points are awarded on top of the SDF points based upon the quality of opposition the player outscored in that session. For outscoring the player ranked #1 on the SDF coming into the session, the player gets 10 points (8 for #2, 8 for #3, etc.). On average, the leading scorer tends to gain 20 quality points or so, meaning his final total for the sessions will be around 120. Larger sessions provide more quality points.
Goalies are rated on the Goaltending Dominance Factor (GDF), which is much easier to calculate: it’s simply save percentage over the last ten sessions for goalies with more than 100 shots against that have played at least two sessions.

Elo ratings are pretty simple: each skater starts with a base value of 1800. When someone outscores somebody else, they take points away from that player. If they are outscored by somebody else, they lose points to that player. All-time leaders are in the 2100-2350 range; those at the bottom are in the 1500 range. Being above 1800 means you’re probably a decent scorer. Ratings are provisional for a player’s first two sessions before they take full effect with the third. We use this multiplayer Elo calculator to calculate our Elo ratings.

-The Links page has links to the Awards, Records, and Honours text pages, where you can find leaderboards and awards for every season of Burton Hockey, plus all-time records. As well, we keep track of scoring and goaltending streaks on those pages. You can get lost for hours in them!