Icing the soul

RALEIGH, N.C.—As the National Hockey League starts its 2015-2016 season on Oct. 7 with games in Toronto, Calgary, Chicago, and Los Angeles, thousands of Canadian and American boys dream of someday lacing up their skates for NHL play. Retired Stanley Cup winner Glen Wesley has a message for them: “Hockey is a dark, dark sport. And I’ve lived it, from a kid up into the pro level.”

Wesley spent 20 seasons in the NHL and helped start a hockey camp in Raleigh in 2009. The first camper drafted by an NHL team was Wesley’s son Josh, who left home at 15 to enter the junior hockey system. Josh moved to a host family in Michigan and faced ridicule from teammates for his Christian worldview—until he proved his toughness.

Josh, now 19, said the experience of leaving home to pursue hockey “either makes you or breaks you.” Lots of children break, and that’s where groups like Hockey Ministries International (HMI) come in. HMI founder Don Liesemer says that amid that pressurized environment is “a beautiful thing. … We’re filling our locker rooms and our chapel services with kids that are hungry.”

The hunger begins early. Not long after sunrise on Sundays, parking lots at arenas in hockey hotbeds are jammed with cars. The youth game is played on weekends, and some parents try to shuttle their child to a church between games—but hockey often is the priority, and youth level fees, equipment, and travel cost some families $8,000 or more annually.

“We want to reach the hockey community. That’s our calling,” Liesemer said. This past summer HMI put on more than 50 events for 2,000 children, offering instruction, mentoring, and good meals. In Raleigh this summer, I watched campers going through three hours of drills under Glen and Josh Wesley’s supervision. In the evening, spiritual bonds form. “You know, it hurt last night see a young, little 13-year-old in tears asking why bad things happen to good people,” Glen Wesley recalled. “And you know, only God knows that answer. But you know in saying that, he had a lot of courage to be able to speak up.”

A similar process occurs at the adult level. Of the 30 NHL teams, 23 have chapel programs. Many chaplains emphasize relationship building. “I think the part that really affected me was just the one-on-ones,” Vancouver defenseman Dan Hamhuis said. “Going for coffee together and just digging deeper into my life of what was going on.”

Hard hits

Top hockey players hit hard, but for a long time some skeptics said Christian faith would weaken them. Three decades ago Toronto owner Harold Ballard publicly blamed Laurie Boschman’s newfound Christian faith for his on-ice struggles, eventually trading him. Yet in Pittsburgh, Don Liesemer of Hockey Ministries International says, “Paul Baxter became a Christian at one of our chapel services and went on to be the penalty minute leader in the NHL that next year.”

Baxter still has the dubious distinction of being No. 2 all-time for penalty minutes in one season—but he was a stereotype breaker. Still, doubts linger. A decade ago former NHL player Mike Rupp, now an analyst, faced off against a sports psychiatrist brought in to unify his team’s competitive drive. The psychiatrist viewed Rupp’s faith as a weakness, something to put aside when he came to his job.

But Glen Wesley, now the Carolina Hurricanes’ director of defensemen development, says protecting your family and team is a biblical value: “No matter if it’s dropping your gloves and fighting and sticking up for a teammate, or if it’s going out there and blocking a shot that’s coming at you at 100 mph, that takes courage.” —A.B.