It was a long road to Amherst, New York, for Greenville native Frazier Hines. Hines, a Mascenic senior, plays goalie for the New England Edge, a Nashua-based hockey team competing in the Granite State Hockey League.
Hines and the Edge cruised through the regular season this year, taking down the Manchester Flames in the state finals. This was enough to earn the Edge a trip to the USA Hockey National Championships, which took place in New York last weekend.
But this is a journey that begins a long time ago. Hines grew up playing the regular youth sports, Little League and so on, but he never felt so at home as he did on a pair of skates. As a little squirt skating around at Nashua’s Conway Arena, Hines found himself gravitating towards the goal, not always a popular position, with little flair and big responsibility — not to mention the 100-mile-per-hour-pucks flying towards the net. But, Hines took to it.
“The coach would ask ‘Who wants to play goalie?’ and Frazier would raise his hand,” said his mother, Lynn. “And the coach would say ‘Not you again!’”
Given the relative positional scarcity at goaltender, Hines became somewhat of a hot commodity, allowing him to shop himself around and find the team that was right for him as he built his skills.
“You don’t want to find a team where you won’t face any shots,” Hines explained, “or one where you’ll be bombarded with shots.”
With that in mind, Hines bounced around a little bit. He was a Panther and a Cyclone and a Star, moving up the ranks to better and better competition. As he climbed the ladder, the demands became greater.
“The coach holds you to a higher standard,” Hines said, “and you have to meet or exceed those expectations.”
Apparently, Hines was doing just that. The New England Edge coach, Greg Frederick, hand-picked Hines as one of his tandem goalies, a position of dire need.
“It’s a tough position because if you make a mistake, it’s in the net,” Frederick said.
Hines and his fellow netminder, Joseph Sheridan, did enough to land the Edge in the U18 National Championships.
With Sheridan in net, Hines watched as the Edge took the first game, over Maryland’s Howard Huskies.
Hines was the next man up, filling the pipes against the Boise Hawks of Idaho. It was a 4-4 game, with Hines pounded by shots, as it went to overtime.
“Coach asked me how many shots I thought I had faced,” Hines said, “and I thought it was about 15 or so. And he said “You faced 45 shots!”
The game went to a shootout, where Hines fared well, but his teammates had trouble scoring and the Edge dropped their first game of the year – not grounds for elimination, however, in the pool play format.
Hines and Sheridan split time against the Phoenix Jr. Coyotes of Arizona, with Hines allowing only one goal as the Edge won 5-4.
“A lot of us expected to get blown out of the water and not win a single game,” Hines recalled. “But then we started winning and we realized we actually have a shot at going somewhere with this!”
That was when the tournament really turned into a real-life “Mighty Ducks” situation. A bunch of big, bad brutes from Alaska, the Jr. Avalanche, stepped onto the ice to try and push Hines and New England over the edge.
“They were intimidating,” said Lynn — “those were some big boys!”
Yet, with newfound confidence after a couple of big wins, the Edge pulled out a 9-1 victory.
“[Alaska] wasn’t as good as I thought a team from somewhere that has winter nearly year-round would be,” Hines said.
Hines would play net against Northern Kentucky, with the Edge still on the brink of elimination. He’d allow two goals, but his teammates netted three, and they were off to the finals.
Due to the team’s goalie rotation, Hines could only watch as his counterpart settled into the crease. But, Sheridan played a terrific game, holding the Delaware Ducks to only one goal in regulation.
The game went to one overtime, and then another, before the Ducks slipped one past Sheridan and won the game, leaving Hines and the Edge in disbelief.
“It was upsetting,” Hines said. “We were so close to grabbing that national championship.”
Nonetheless, the Edge had played for a national title at one of the highest levels of youth hockey, something that may have even surprised their coach.
“For that group to … go as far as they did is a pretty impressive feat,” Frederick said. “Hopefully it’s something they’ll never forget.”
Unfortunately for Hines, that magical run may just be his last great hockey memory. Hines never played high school hockey, as Mascenic does not have a team and NHIAA rules forbid student-athletes from playing for other schools (“if he was from Massachusetts,” Frederick said, “he could have played for another school in the area that had a team.”)
Hines will attend Franklin Pierce next year, which does have a hockey team, but without having played on a high school team, he is unlikely to get a shot at the recruit-only DII Ravens team, regardless of his skill. Hines said he’d have a better shot if he played junior hockey, but that he’d rather begin his secondary education.
“Unfortunately, college coaches think that junior hockey is the be-all, end-all for finding college kids,” Frederick said, “and they probably miss a lot of kids right in their own backyard because of that.”
Instead, Hines will pursue a degree in education, based on another calling he found on the ice — training young, up-and-coming goaltenders. He liked that so much, he said, that teaching seemed like a logical career path.
Still, he’s not giving up on his hockey dreams. He’ll do his best to help out with FPU hockey and hope to get a shot someday, but even if he doesn’t, he just can’t let that sport go.
“I want to keep playing hockey,” Hines said, “even if it’s just filling in for a men’s league or something. I want to keep playing.”