“This is the best team I’ve ever had,” Rob Nicholson, a longtime roller hockey coach, said during a conversation last week at the Star office.
Nicholson was referring to the East End Blaze, an entry in the Professional Inline Hockey Association’s Northeast Division that is to make its one-and-only appearance at its home Sportime Arena rink in Amagansett Saturday afternoon in a four-game set beginning at 5:20 p.m. The Blaze’s other 24-minute games are to be played at 6, 7:20, and 8.
Nicholson began putting together the 10-man elite squad last spring, though the pandemic effectively put the 16-game league season off for a while. Saturday’s games originally were to have been played here in February.
“This is the highest level of roller hockey,” said the coach, whose two sons, Robby, 21, and Brett, 18, play on the team, as do Tyler Jarvis, Sportime’s manager, Austin Vecchio, another East Hamptoner, as well as Dominic Deluca of Moriches, Will Showack of Newfield, N.J., Ryan Gauggel of Holbrook, Sean Odonald of Patchogue, Tye Kozlow of Middle Island, and Dan Petrero of East Patchogue. “Brett helped me put the team together. All these players were hand-picked.”
Finding a goalie proved to be a sticking point. “One of our goalies” — Chloe Goncalves, who has a national championship to her credit when she played at the Rapid Fire Arena in Center Moriches — “got hurt, one moved, and one is playing now at St. Joe’s,” said Nicholson, who settled on Petrero, a 35-year-old, as the East End Blaze’s net-tender.
Meanwhile, Goncalves, who was injured in a motor vehicle accident, not in a roller hockey game, “has been helping us a lot, with photography, with promoting the team. . . . She’s a wonderful kid.”
Roller Hockey was, the coach said, a faster game than ice hockey. “There’s no offsides, since it’s 4-on-4 on the floor rather than 5-on-5, there are more passing lanes, and the plastic puck is faster than the rubber one. . . . It’s a game of speed and control. We’re notorious for playing the puck back to reset. A good team can control the puck for five minutes. But you have to play to win. If you don’t, you’ll pay. . . . It’s fast and physical, not for the weak-hearted.”
Nicholson didn’t have his top team in the first two venues, though “two weeks ago, in Inman, New Jersey, we went 3-1, and should have won our fourth game. Two of those wins were over the Marple [Pa.] Gladiators, who had been undefeated. They were a little bit mad. As I say, this the best team I’ve ever had, and I’ve been coaching roller hockey since 1997.”
PIHA is a nationwide organization, and the Northeast Division’s playoffs are to begin at the end of April, Nicholson said. Its semifinal-round games are to be played at Skate Safe America in Old Bethpage. The division finals are to be played at the Marple Sports Arena outside Philadelphia at the end of May.
Asked if the Blaze was capable of playing for a national championship, Nicholson said, “We could make it that far. When we’ve got all our guys, we’re up there.”