Four decades of hockey

CARDIFF, UK –   Hockey is a hard career, it is tough on your body and it is tough on your mind. The typical hockey career is somewhere in the region of 10-14 years at the top level. On Tuesday 23^rd February 2010 almost 1000 hockey fans gathered in the Cardiff Bay Arena to celebrate the testimonial game of one of the longest serving players in UK hockey.
Jason Stone has played an incredible 1197 games in his career so far, what is more amazing is that over 96% of those games have been played for his home town club, the Cardiff Devils. Having made his first appearance for the club in December 1988, 37 year old Jason’s hockey career spans an impressive 4 decades!
Some more amazing statistics about Jason Stone:-

·          He has scored 121 professional goals
·          He has contributed 264 assists
·          He has spent 556 minutes in the penalty box
·          He has won 25 major honours including 5 League Championships; 5 Playoff Championships; 3 Autumn Cups; 3 Welsh Invitational Cups; 5 Charity Shield Wins; 1 Challenge Cup; I B&H Cup and 2 Southern Cups.
·          He has represented Great Britain at Senior level
Jason’s testimonial game was a scrimmage between the current Cardiff Devils squad and the Stoneman Select. Several prominent Devils from times gone by arranged to come from North America back to Cardiff especially for the game, among them John Lawless; Dion Darling; Russ Romaniuk and Kirk DeWaele. They were joined by twenty ex-Devils who are either playing in the UK or retired from professional hockey and included names familiar to UK hockey such as Steve Moria; Doug MacIver; Shannon Hope and Nicky Chinn.
Testimonials are predominantly a British institution, where a club allows a player who has served a long term (usually ten years) and is approaching retirement to organise a game to celebrate their career. The benefit to the player themselves, along with getting the recognition they deserve and playing again with ex-teammates is that they usually get to keep the proceeds from the event to assist them in their retirement. Jason has been officially eligible for a testimonial for the past 11 years and has participated in many of his former team-mates testimonial games over the years but did not want to celebrate his testimonial year before he was near the end of his professional career.
Having played for an incredible 21 hockey seasons there is no doubt that Jason has had an exceptional hockey career so far and I’m sure many Devils fans will hope that this season isn’t his last in the sport.
Contact the writer:    victoria.silverwood@prohockeynews.com
Photography by Jessica Roberts jess.roberts11@googlemail.com