When Lex Tiahnybik looks around the ice at the Northtown Center in Amherst this week, he’ll swell with pride.
Tiahnybik is in town for the inaugural Jeff Sauer International Deaf Hockey Series, a tournament to which his connections run deep. His personal ties help him see how far hockey has come in the deaf community as it continues to grow.
The four-day series is hosted by the American Hearing Impaired Hockey Association (AHIHA) and the Stan Mikita Hockey School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. The tournament is taking place at Northtown Center, which was the host of the 2017 World Deaf Ice Hockey Championships.
The games start Thursday, with the men’s championship game scheduled for Sunday. Tickets are $5 per game or $15 for the entire tournament, and it is free for kids 12 and under.
The event is named after Jeff Sauer, the former head coach of the USA men’s deaf team. Sauer, who died in 2017, had an expansive coaching resume across more than 40 years. He is a member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, and he served as president of AHIHA.
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The men’s tourney will feature teams representing the United States, Canada, Czech Republic and Finland. The women’s tourney will showcase the USA and Canada.
A camp to connect
Every player on the USA side has a connection to AHIHA and to the weeklong Stan Mikita Hockey School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing camp. This summer, the camp will hit 51 years.
Mikita, an NHL Hall of Famer who died in 2018, became connected to the deaf community through his friend, Irv Tiahnybik, and Irv’s son Lex, who became hard of hearing as a child. When Irv saw the challenges facing Lex in the hockey community as he got older, he reached out to Mikita, and the camp started in 1973.
Lex knows it will impact kids like him for years and years to come.
“It’s amazing, and I’m really proud,” Lex said. “Before my dad passed away … he said, ‘Make sure you keep that hockey school going.’ I said, ‘Yes, I will.’ I promised him.”
Now, the camp is a feeder for the USA teams.
“All these players have grown up playing together, and then come back and compete for their country,” said Kevin Delaney, USA men’s team leader.
Delaney sees the connection help players on the ice, too. But it goes far past that.
Lex and friends from past teams, dating to the 1970s, are in Buffalo to see the next generation. They’re in awe of all the ways it has grown.
Michele Gintoli and Jessica Goldberg, now captains of the USA women’s team, can remember when they were the only girls at the Chicago-based camp. Even so, they found community there.
“I was the only kid that I’ve ever known within my community that was hard of hearing, and to find other players that are hard of hearing and also play hockey and play the game that I love was just unbelievable,” Goldberg said. “It just kind of opened up my eyes a little bit more. And I definitely came out of my shyness a little bit more.”
One of Gintoli’s favorite things is seeing former participants have their kids come to the camp.
“That’s how much it means to these people that they’re going to bring their kids here, and they’re going to make sure their kids are involved,” Gintoli said. “And then hopefully their kids will be involved, too. And I spread the word as much as I can – I’m like, ‘You have to come to check this out.’ Like this is such a great organization.”
‘The only thing we can’t do is hear’
At a practice for the USA men’s team on Tuesday, the team was taking a break for head coach Joe Gotfryd to go through a few plays. As he talks, there are interpreters by his side, signing everything he says as they prepare for the tournament.
Players are required to have a certain amount of hearing loss to qualify to play, and a few participants will be randomly selected for testing during the week. No matter what level of hearing a player may have, once a game starts, no players are allowed to have hearing aids of any kind, even during timeouts.
Sam Holzrichter, a forward for the USA men’s team, is in his fourth showing with the team. Now 26, he found out about AHIHA and the summer camp around middle school, and he’s been participating ever since. As he skates around practice, he knows where to make adjustments.
“So, deaf players tend to have better vision than hearing players,” Holzrichter said. “We have to look around more, especially when we go into the corners – like we have to check all corner, like our shoulders, make sure no one’s creeping up on us or anything. Because unfortunately, we can’t rely on our teammates to yell, ‘Hey, got a guy behind you’ – whatever. So we have to do that ourselves.”
Instead, players will rely more on using the glass as a mirror to check which opponents are near them.
There are other slight differences. Around the arena, strobe lights will flash when there normally would be a whistle to catch players’ attention. But at the end of the day, it’s still just hockey.
“I just want people to know that the only thing we can’t do is hear,” Gintoli said.
Growing the women’s game
The USA women’s team will play the Canadian women’s team multiple times this week, as the women’s games continue to grow. The team is managed by Mark Goldberg, Jessica’s dad, and helmed by head coach Rock Einersen.
On top of practices and games, players will spend some time on community outreach. On Friday, the team will visit St. Mary’s School for the Deaf in Buffalo for a hockey demonstration. The team knows how important it is to connect with others in the community, and that hockey can be a great conduit to lifelong friendships.
Paige Downey is one of three 15-year-olds on the team, and it’s her first time representing the USA. She’s already getting to know the close-knit team, which stays in touch year-round, no matter how spread out players are geographically.
“It means a lot, it’s cool,” Downey said. “Where I’m from, I only know like a couple people that are even like hard of hearing. So this is a very new, different thing. So it’s cool to see people that relate to me, and we kind of all have inside jokes and like all that stuff.”
Kailey Niccum won a college Division III championship this past year with University of Wisconsin–River Falls. She finds the camaraderie of the women’s deaf team to be especially meaningful.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Niccum said. “It’s crazy coming here and seeing that everyone else shares the same experiences as you, and you don’t really have a lot of people that understand what it is to be deaf. So, coming here, and like seeing everyone else have the same struggles and same accomplishment as you, it’s just incredible.”
Schedule
All games at Northtown Center
- Thursday: Team Canada (Women) vs. Team USA, 1 p.m.
- Thursday: Team USA (Men) vs. Team Czechia, 3:15 p.m.
- Thursday: Team Canada (M) vs. Team Finland, 6 p.m.
- Friday: Team USA (M) vs. Team Finland, 1 p.m.
- Friday: Team USA (W) vs. Team Canada, 3:15 p.m.
- Friday: Team Czechia (M) vs. Team Canada, 6 p.m.
- Saturday: Team Canada (M) vs. Team USA, 1 p.m.
- Saturday: Team Finland (M) vs. Team Czechia, 3:15 p.m.
- Saturday: Team USA (W) vs. Team Canada, 6 p.m.
- Sunday: Men’s Bronze Medal Game, 9 a.m.
- Sunday: Men’s Gold Medal Game, 11:30 a.m.