A staple at minor league and high-level junior hockey games across North American each winter will make its return to Tucson Arena on Saturday.
The Tucson Roadrunners’ Teddy Bear Toss is back after a one-year hiatus.
How it works: Fans in attendance for the second game of the Roadrunners’ next homestand against the Stockton Heat are asked to bring one or more stuffed animals with them to the arena. As soon as the Roadrunners score their first goal of the night, fans will let ‘em fly onto the ice. All stuffed animals collected will be passed on to Aviva Family Services for distribution to Southern Arizona children this holiday season.
No matter the size of the crowd — or size of the building — it’s quite a moment. The game will pause for a few minutes as the arena ice crew sweeps up the thousands of stuffed animals.
“Five thousand,” Roadrunners president Bob Hoffman said when asked for the club’s goal the night of Dec. 11. “That’s what we want to get.”
The AHL’s Teddy Bear Toss mark (and supposed world record) was set Dec. 1, 2019 by fans of the Hershey Bears. More than 10,000 fans pelted the ice of Hershey, Pennsylvania’s Giant Center with 45,650 stuffed animals. Don’t believe that number? Video of that night on YouTube speaks for itself.
Turning Tucson (hat) tricks
Speaking of throwing things onto the ice, that’s certainly a practice generally discouraged.
But there are a few unique occasions where it’s allowed.
The Teddy Bear Toss is one. So is and chuck-a-puck — a between-periods contest where fans aim soft foam pucks at on-ice targets from their seats with hopes of winning prizes.
And the hockey ritual of fans throwing their caps onto the ice when a home-team skater notches a hat trick isn’t officially encouraged, but it’s not necessarily banned, either.
Tucsonan JT Houlihan, a season ticket holder for both the Roadrunners and the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, has just the hat for each such occasion here in Southern Arizona.
Houlihan has purchased at least eight oversized puck-shaped hats made of foam over the years. He’s given a few away; the rest, he’s tossed onto the ice when a Roadrunners player hits three goals.
But Houlihan’s stockpile is running low. After Mike Carcone buried four last April, and Hudson Fasching and Matias Maccelli hit three apiece on Oct. 30 and Nov. 12, he was down to just two left.
It could have been just one, but Houlihan said he opted for the Coyotes game on Oct. 23 and missed Ben McCartney’s hat trick that night in Tucson.
All hats that hit the ice are collected and traditionally delivered to players in the locker room for a postgame photo op. After Maccelli scored three goals on Nov. 12, he was asked what he planned to do with his own new collection of headwear.
“Maybe sell them on eBay?” Maccelli, 21, deadpanned.
No sticks? No problem for ’Runners last weekend
A baseball player taking the field without a glove. A basketball player jogging up court minus a shoe.
How about a hockey player spending nearly a minute of ice time trying to kill a penalty without a stick?
None are easy.
Yet on one penalty kill situation during the Roadrunners’ Nov. 26 win over Abbotsford, two Tucson players lost their sticks.
Midway through a two-minute Abbostford advantage, Tucson forward Hudson Elyniuk dove toward the blueline in effort to poke the puck out of the Tucson zone. But his stick slipped out of his hands and up ice. For the next 40 seconds or so, he did his best to dance around the slot without that key piece of deflective armor.
“It’s definitely kind of a scramble,” Elyniuk said. “You just try to kind of hold the middle and take away as many passing lanes as possible. You try and get your body in front of the puck. I mean, that’s all you can really do.”
With about 35 seconds left on the penalty, and Tucson up 3-1, the Roadrunners’ coaching staff called Elyniuk to the bench to grab a new one even with play still rolling. Yet nearly the second he had a stick in his hands again, goaltender Ivan Prosvetov saw his fatter goalie paddle knocked away on a right-side save. Prosvetov would make another big save without the a few seconds later to help Tucson kill the penalty. He’d finally get behind the net to pick his up once the puck was cleared the length of the ice.
Prosvetov, who as a goalie slides down to ice level often enough to make his seemingly-patented split-pad, sprawling save, has lost his stick on a few occasions amid a scramble in the crease. His mindset when it happens: don’t change anything. Play like nothing is wrong.
“Sometimes, back in the day, if a goalie would lose his stick players will give him theirs,” Prosvetov said, adding that may not be the best course of action anymore. “As a goalie, you can actually play without the stick.
“You’re doing the same thing, and with new pads and new technologies, you’re not really using the stick as much anymore,” he said.
