Allan Cole Roberts

So the Olympics are over and everyone under the sun has weighed in on the good, the bad and the ugly. Everyone around Vancouver at least. And on the tip of everyones tongue is the hockey results for the mens team.

For my money, I would bet on Canada every time to win gold. Of course I’m biased, so this isn’t very interesting.

That being said, there is one player who wasn’t in the tournament who would have swayed that bet: David Booth. Had he been in the tournament, Team USA would have won the gold.

I sort of came to that conclusion for a few reasons, but I’m going to pump the breaks here for a minute and go back ten years or so.

Back in the day, I played a hell of a lot of hockey. From the time I was turned 14 until I was 20, junior hockey ran my life. It was rad.

When I turned 18, I ended up playing in Detroit for a team called the Compuware Ambassadors. It was a strange turn of events how I ended up there because that league is an American one first of all and I had been playing in the BC Hockey League for a number of years already. The BCHL was a better league all around, but without going into the details, the team in Detroit came a’calling.

So it was August and off I flew to Detroit for a tryout. I had never been that far east before and it was a fairly bizarre situation. Basically the coach had known about me but more or less said “You still need to work your bag off and make the team during the camp.” Great.

The situation was I was to be picked up in Windsor and the first game was the same night in Detroit. The camp was fairly straightforward: 3 Game, all 45 minutes with no ice-cleans or periods. Best players make the team. Boom. I was sort of nervous.

So I was picked up at the airport by two American players who were the cockiest, most arrogant people who I had ever met. I liked them for that very reason and they later became great friends of mine. They drove like complete psychos in the car and I was scared shitless that I was going to die on the Ambassador Bridge before I even got to play a game. We’re talking 200 KM/hour here folks.

But, we got to the rink and I was in hostile territory right away. The coaches were even assholes to the only Canadian. It wasn’t a fun situation, especially because it was pretty clear the players had it in their minds already that the team was already set and it didn’t include a Canadian.

The stage was set though: We would first go for a group run together (a casual 10 KM) then game on.

The run was brutal. I had never been in a humid environment before and I was heaving big-time. On top of that, my elbow had been cut wide open a week before and I had 15 stitches in there and it was swelling like mad. But, just giver was my mindset so I ran my ass off.

So, now it’s showtime. The first game of the tryout. 24 hours before, I was chilling out in Kelowna on a beach and now it was time to tryout for a team.

But, this wasn’t so easy. The first strides around the rink were brutal. I felt like I was skating in quicksand and this was bad, bad, bad news when you’re trying out for a team. Especially a high-flying bunch of Americans.

So I watched the first few shifts roll by and was thinking ‘Jesus Christ these guys can wheel’. They were insanely fast. I knew I could skate with them under normal circumstance, but I had just ran 10K in brutal heat, flew in that morning, and had eaten a chicken sandwich over the past 24 hours. Not good.

The first shift was a total debacle for me. I fell on my ass, was out-skated and totally winded. It was horrible. Mid-shift I thought “OK just make a hit, get noticed” so tried to murder a guy in the corner only to totally miss and smash the shit out of my elbow. The stitches exploded and as soon as I got back to the bench I knew my elbow was fucked. I looked down and sure enough blood was leaking down to my glove.

So here’s my situation: I looked like hot garbage in my first shift, I was totally bagged, my elbow was effed and I’m trying to make a team with high-flying Americans who were already jet-set on how their team would look.

That in mind, shift number two had one mission: Grab the first guy I can and pound the piss out of him.

Now this mind set is pretty much a no-no in most peoples minds. But in hockey, especially in the BCHL, fighting is A-OK. There’s a code in fighting that is understood within hockey players and players just get it. And in a tryout situation, you have to do whatever you can to get noticed, and when nothing else is going your way, a good ol’fashioned tilt is usually a winning strategy.

So, elbow bleeding, I went hunting that second shift. I could care less about where the puck was and I didn’t know anyone, so I just went after the first guy I could grab.

The first guy was roughly my size, so I chopped his ankle turned him around and ripped his helmet off. I backed off of the guy to square off and try to fight him, but before that could happen both teams had skated in so fast to break it up, I don’t think the guy I grabbed even knew what was going on.

That guy was David Booth, and what happened next blew me away.

He called off the whole team who had pinned me in the corner and wanted to go at it. He lumberjack chopped me so hard it was insane and the gloves flew off. It was pretty awesome.

From there, the team sort of ‘took me in’. They loved the fight, and Dave and I both made the team on the ice at that point. Second shift for me after a garbage first one and I was in for just fighting. The coach had a paper ready to go on the bench to sign on and I was in. Thank god.

Now the point of this whole post.

Did you see recently – like a few days ago – the Flyers and Panthers game? It was a snoozer, except for one key play.

It was a fight between David Booth and recent Olympic Gold Medal winner Mike Richards, Under normal circumstance, Richards would have tore his head off.

But this was different. They were fighting for a different reason.

If you weren’t aware, in the first part of the season, Richards almost decapitate Booth with a huge open ice hit. Booth got a concussion and a lot of people didn’t think he’d play again that season.

But he did. And this game against Philly was his first game back.

And what did he do? He grabbed a pair of balls and stepped up to the guy who almost finished his career. And it was the first fight of his NHL career.

So, aside from David Booth being a hell of a hockey player, he’s a gritty guy with a boatload of heart. He showed in that game against Philly he is a character guy who steps up and he was the same way when he was 14 back in Detroit.

Had he been healthy and played in the Olympics, the USA would have won that game. And if the NHL allows players to go to the next games, it hurts me to say it, but I think the US will win. And Booth will be a key component.

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