Junior game: North Bend man pursues amateur hockey career

Published 3:40 pm Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Alek Lazarski, a 2013 graduate of Mount Si High School, shares his story of playing junior ice hockey, considered an amateur sport by the NCAA. He was recently traded from the Seattle Totems to the El Paso Rhinos, who have a promising post-season outlook starting this week.

He is the son of Tom Lazarski and Nancy Lane of North Bend.

By Alek Lazarski

From Seattle, to Chicago, to the east coast in Boston, young boys ages 16 to 21 turn into men while pursuing their dreams; playing Junior A ice hockey.

It’s a sport known for its toughness and brutality, flashy goals, bone-crushing hits and gloves dropping to the ice for fights, but its story is lost.

The journey to get to juniors is a bumpy road full of practice and games. Still, many wonder: What is “Junior A hockey?”

In Washington, with as many junior teams as any other state, and once having its own National Hockey League team, many people don’t understand junior hockey. Juniors is a step below college hockey as I like to put it, and has an extremely wide variety of ways for people to get there.

I grew up in the Tri-Cities and North Bend, and first fell in love with the sport watching the Americans and Thunderbirds of the Western Hockey League.

My parents had taught me how to skate when I was 3 and by the time I was 9, I was suiting up in gear, playing organized minor hockey for the Sno-King Junior Thunderbirds.

Playing travel or AAA minor hockey I began to grow as a hockey player, a goalie specifically. But hockey is still developing in our area.

After perhaps one of my biggest developmental years playing at home, I competed in USA Hockey’s national camp where Division 1 colleges and high-level junior team coaches were scouting.

Following that summer I had a choice that would change my life for the next seven years: At age 13, I had to decide whether to leave home and chase a dream or stay and play in Seattle.

For the next three years of my life I played for the Chicago Fury AAA hockey club, a team that ranked in the top-10 minor hockey teams in the nation. I only played with the best.

I continued to develop each year, playing teams from all over the country mainly from Detroit or other Chicago clubs. Every summer brought something new for me, whether I was at the USA Strelow goalie camp, or trying out for a junior team like the Wenatchee Wild.

Eventually it came time to part ways with Chicago, and I began my junior career in Cincinnati, for the Queen City Steam. Mentored by a former pro goaltender on his way to Division III college, I had a successful rookie season.

Following that year, I was selected to play in the North American Tier III Hockey League’s Top Prospect Showcase. I came in second in save percentage (shots stopped divided by total shots) and goals against average (goals let in divided by games played).

After that season I came to my true junior home: Helena, Mont. In Helena, I played for the Bighorns coached by Scott Cunningham, Mike Butters, and Josh Reis my first year.

Cunningham’s mantra was that the hardest thing to do is show up to practice every day, and it was. Four days a week for around two hours, we skated faster, passed harder, shot heavier and worked more than we thought we could.

He brought the competitiveness and work ethic out of us in practice to make us better during games.

The Bighorns are perennial champions in the American West/Northern Pacific Hockey Leagues. Every time we stepped onto the ice, in our rink or anyone else’s, we were there to win. In many games, we blew out our opponents by multiple goals or double digits. Everyone around the league hated us and wanted to see anyone beat us.

In my two years there under Cunninham and Reis, I lost a total of four games, including nationals. The greatest experiences of my playing career came on this team. There are truly no words to perfectly describe the feeling of winning a league title, let alone two in a row.

Hockey is more than a sport though, it is an extension of family and I will never forget all of the life lessons, brothers and ways it has shaped me today.

The Helena Bighorns in their 2012-2013 American West Hockey League championship win.

In goal during a Bighorns game.

Alek Lazarski, playing goal for the local juniors team, the Seattle Totems, earlier this season.