Hughes takes hockey “down under”

PENSACOLA, FLA – According to a distance calculator on the internet, the distance from Springvale, Victoria on the continent of Australia to the seaside city of Pensacola, Florida is 9,438.1 miles (or 15,189.1 kilometers for those outside the United States). In terms of the game of hockey, the divide between the two locations is infinitesimal. That gap has been closed quite a bit this season by a young man who has a whole lot more going on than just hockey. His name is Joey Hughes and he’s becoming a hotter commodity along the Florida Panhandle than shrimp cooking on the barbie. The story about how Hughes became interested in hockey is one that is straight

out of the movies, literally. As a youngster in Springvale, he and some of his friends were watching a flick that spurred the boys into giving it a try. “It started when me and my friends started rollerblading after school. Then the movie “The Mighty Ducks” came out. It sounds pretty corny but we just grabbed some sticks and decided to give it a go,” Hughes said. “We played a bit of street hockey and I loved it. My friends weren’t too passionate about it and ended up going into skateboarding. I wanted to keep playing so my mum ended up finding me an inline roller hockey league.” Joey’s older brother Vincent began playing ice hockey so naturally Mum and Joey tagged along to watch. When his brother scored a goal, Joey turned to his mum and told her “this is the game for me”. It didn’t take long for the younger Hughes brother to apply his street and roller hockey skills to the ice. “Having a background in street hockey was huge for me. It helped me to develop my stick handling and shooting. Once I got onto the ice, it took a couple of weeks to pick it up,” he said. “It only took me two weeks to get my badges. We got badges down there – A being able to skate and B being able to move the puck with your head up. Within two weeks, I had my badges and I was playing on a team and enjoying it.” As both Vincent and Joey progressed with their skills, their parents took a look at what ice hockey in Australia had to offer. It wasn’t exactly a very pretty picture. “At the time when I was growing up, there was pretty much no opportunity there. I had a couple of Canadian coaches come up to my mum and pretty much told my mum and dad that they better get me and my brother out of here because we were going to go nowhere with the sport,” Joey said. “Australia isn’t know for its hockey. It’s known for its football, cricket, rugby. Those sports didn’t really interest us.” So, Beatrice and Charles Hughes made the decision to pack up Vincent and Joey, who was 13 at the time, and ship them off to North America (British Columbia to be exact) where they could pursue their dreams of becoming pro hockey players. Being out on your own is daunting for kids from the U.S. and Canada, let alone the Hughes boys whose parents were half a world away. It wasn’t easy for their parents either. “It was very tough, probably one of the toughest things we’ve gone through. There were some really quick phone calls as soon as we got there, a lot of time spent on the phone talking with mum. Dad, not so much. Dad was more of a tough guy, telling us to toughen up and we could make due. Our mum kind of had a soft heart and she spent hours on the phone with us,” Hughes said. “Once we got on the ice, it kind of all just went away, that homesickness. Being on the ice was the biggest thing for us. That’s where we found our home.” Eventually Joey, who wanted an education to go with his hockey skills, found his way to the College of St. Scholastica in Minnesota while Vincent headed to Europe to turn pro. It was there at St. Scholastica that Hughes found an enlightenment that made him realize just how little he knew about himself. “It was an experience that I can’t describe in a couple of sentences. It was life changing,” he said. “I showed up there as a kid thinking that I was mature and everything but after leaving there, I feel that I’ve matured beyond where I was. I had the best professors, best teachers, best coaches that could just guide me and develop me and mature me into the person (that I am). My perception was to play hockey but now I feel that I‘ve found something that I‘m really passionate about and the degree that I got into was very rewarding for me. It was great to get into.” Hughes found that the course offerings at St. Scholastica, including religion, earth science and others opened his eyes and expanded his horizons farther than he could have ever imagined. He also said that he learned things about his homeland that he might not have seen if he had stayed at home. “Environmental issues are one of the biggest things. Once we got our new prime minister in, he has paved the way to go environmental. He’s looking for all types of environmentally-friendly energy such as wind and solar,” he said. “I took a couple of Native American classes and learned some history that was taught to me like the truth behind America with Native Americans. That was a huge eye-opener. A lot of the stuff that I’m seeing happen in America is slowly happening in Australia such as realizing what actually happened with generations that came through, assimilation and all that type of stuff. It was huge for me to learn how it happened in America and now I’m starting to read in the paper that the same things that happened here America’s moved on and past it and now its coming to Australia.” Hughes cited the example of how Australia’s government is apologizing for its treatment of native Aboriginal tribes, much like America has come to terms with treatment of Indian tribes and other minority groups, as one case of the new insight he got from St. Scholastica. On his way to a marketing degree, Hughes took a class with professor Dave Anstett. Anstett’s class taught Hughes a great deal about the process of applying for and developing a patent. That class, along with the mentoring of professor Sabah Alwan, led Hughes to hatch an idea for a household product that could revolutionize the kitchen: a disposable frying pan. “I give a lot of credit to Sabah Alwan and Dave Anstett. They kind of led me on the way. Not only did they tell me how to do it (develop a patent) but they taught me in a way that empowered me to teach myself. That’s a tool that I can take with me. It’s not like I have to sit back and wait for somebody to tell me how to do it. You can go out there and learn it yourself.” So where did the idea for the disposable frying pan, which Hughes calls the “Fry and Toss” come from? It came from where most ideas sprout: personal experience. “On campus, I lived with three other roommates in an apartment. Every morning, guys were making breakfast and there were a lot of fights about cleaning the frying pan. After someone cooked up their eggs, they’d throw it right under the water and the pan warped right away,” he said. “A couple of weeks later, the $80 frying pan is worth nothing and when we’d take it back to get (a new one under the) warranty, they pretty much wouldn’t accept it because of faulty use of the product. I wanted to think of something unique and come up with something that could counter that problem.” With the guidance of Alwan and Anstett, Hughes developed the idea and applied for and received a provisional patent for his disposable frying pan. When he is not on the ice, Hughes is working with engineers to create a prototype of the pan. There are plenty of issues that need to be worked on, not the least of which is making the “Fry and Toss” environmentally and human friendly. “I’ve got to look into the environmental factors of it. Our education (at St. Scholastica) is to be responsible, be respectful, be environmentally friendly and think about Mother Nature,” he said. “Another problem is that as soon as a pan warps, Teflon starts coming off. Teflon is cancerous. That’s another problem that other people are facing. They get the utensils on the frying pan and mark up the Teflon. There’s definitely a big problem there that I wouldn’t mind finding a solution to. I think I’m going in the right direction but it’s just something fun for me to do while I’m playing hockey.” The hockey thing has led him to Pensacola where coach Todd Gordon has nothing but praise for the young Australian. Gordon said that from the outset, he realized that there was much more to Hughes than just stats on a piece of paper. “His agent got a hold of me mid-summer. He didn’t have great numbers in college but I did a little research and where he played in Trail in juniors he was a pretty hard-nosed kid,” Gordon said. “When I talked to him on the phone, he was real excited about playing hockey without a cage (facemask) and just wanted to work. He pretty much was a dark horse coming into camp but of all the guys who went through, he stood out on the first day just from the way he worked and his attitude. He’s been a great addition.” That attitude has been tested early and often. Two particular incidents, one on the ice and a second off, and how Hughes got through both showed Gordon just how committed Joey Hughes was to playing professional hockey. “It’s unfortunate that there were immigration issues (just before the season). He had to fly all the way back to Australia on his own dime, which showed how committed he was,” Gordon said. “Then in his second game back, he hurts his hamstring and he was out a month. We missed him in the lineup. He gives us a lot of energy and it’s good to have him back.” Hughes rewarded Gordon and the Pensacola fans for their faith in him on January 2nd. In a game that night against Columbus at home, Hughes bagged his very first pro “Gordie Howe hat trick” – a goal, assist and a fight in the same game. To date, he has four goals and six assists with a plus-4 rating in 18 games for the Ice Flyers. With the 2010 Olympic Winter Games just days away, Hughes was asked if he thought that in the future Australia might be far enough along to ice an Olympic squad that could compete on the biggest international stage there is. He said that in order for that to happen, a lot of work needs to be done and he is more than willing to help. “It’s slowly getting better right now. We’ve got an established pro league now. What helps is having imports (players) coming across and kind of developing and teaching the younger generation. It’s getting there,” he said. “Right now we’re in the building mode with our infrastructure. We need to get down to our grass roots and get going with that. I’ve actually started up a company, Next Level Hockey Australia, to work with the kids, work with their basic knowledge and give them an opportunity to learn the game (at home) like I didn’t.” As for himself, Hughes says he lives for the present. He doesn’t like to think too far ahead because he’s accomplished so much already. “ When I was 13, my principals, my coaches in Australia all said that I wouldn’t even make it out of the country to play hockey,” he said. “So for me to be here right now, I think I’ve done pretty well. I’m just going to keep playing, keep doing what I do and enjoy the moment. I don’t really want to live in the future. I don’t want to live in the past. I want to live right now. In the future, I’ll go where the opportunity is.” And wherever that may be, Joey Hughes will be ready for it. Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com