Todd Sheridan’s playing days at Brockport may be over, but that hasn’t slowed him down when it comes to his charitable foundation, Saves For A Cure. In fact, he is expanding the effort.
A cancer survivor himself, he got a second chance to play college hockey as the goaltender for Brockport. He rewarded the team with some of the best hockey years ever seen at the school. He didn’t forget about his illness, especially those of the children he saw going through treatment.
“These kids are some of the toughest people I have ever met,” Sheridan, who is now the goalie coach at Brockport, said.
Thus, he started Saves For A Cure, not just to help battle cancer, but to help ease the experience as much as possible for children fighting the disease. He got people and companies to pledge money for each save Brockport goalies made. For the past two years, a game at Brockport was designated to raise funds. Special uniforms were made up, and they were auctioned off afterwards.
Now, Sheridan has gotten other teams to commit to the effort. This year, there will be three SUNYAC schools who will host a Saves For A Cure game, wearing special uniforms to be auctioned off. Naturally, Brockport is one of them, which will be on January 29 vs. Neumann. Morrisville has also signed on for their February 5 game against Plattsburgh.
First up is Oswego this weekend on January 8, as they host Curry. It’s no surprise Oswego jumped on board as their assistant coach, Mark Digby, used to play with Sheridan at Brockport. Digby then became the assistant coach for the Golden Eagles before moving to Oswego.
“With the help of the Oswego Athletic Department and coaching staff, assistant coach Mark Digby made this early expansion of Saves For A Cure happen,” Sheridan said.
Bids are already being accepted for the auction(/), and so far every gold jersey has at least one bid. Bidding ends at 6:00 p.m. on January 9, with the winners announced the next morning.
Game of the Week
Obviously, off the ice, the Oswego Saves For A Cure game against Curry is the Game of the Week. Even on the ice, the game is intriguing. Curry has a bunch of new transfers this semester, and even though they did not fare well against Plattsburgh, the more they gel, the better they should get. I still see Oswego winning this game, but it could be interesting.
On the ice, I like two contests. The first is this Friday and once again provides us another look at Adrian against a team outside the MCHA and outside of the West Region. The Bulldogs travel to Buffalo State. The Bengals have lost three in a row and haven’t won in their last four, but two of those losses were close contests against Utica.
Buffalo State is still a much improved team over last year, and Kevin Carr is still the real deal as the freshman goaltender. However, being a young team, they will have their ups and downs as the season goes along. I expect Buffalo State to break out of their slump and beat Adrian, but it won’t be easy.
The other game is Saturday, and consists of the old bitter rivalry between Elmira and Plattsburgh. This series has way too much history to go into now. However, with all sorts of rumors concerning league realignment and Utica already applying to the SUNYAC, this game takes on a certain ironic twist to it.
After all, it was an incident many years ago down in Elmira that was the final straw for the SUNYAC to once and for all completely breakaway from the ECAC West. Could we see down the road these teams once again together in a new New York State super league? Or will the wedge between these conferences get dug in deeper up in Plattsburgh Saturday night?
The Cardinals have been playing extremely well lately, but so has Elmira. This is a tossup. Since I know my esteemed colleague, Scott Biggar, will most likely pick Elmira, I’ll have to play the bias role also, and stick with the SUNYAC team to take this showdown.
Slew of Nonconference Games
Since the last time we checked back in early December, I went 13-3 in the games I picked, for a season total of 43-16-4 (.714)
There are a whole bunch, a whole bunch, of nonconference games this week. Sixteen in total, and that’s just through Tuesday. So, let’s run through the rest of the games quickly.
First the weekend contests. Geneseo will sweep Franklin Pierce. Neumann will sweep Potsdam.
Manhattanville will sweep their SUNYAC opponents, first beating Cortland and then taking Morrisville.
Brockport and Western New England will split their two games. Cortland will lose to Utica while Fredonia will drop their game to Hobart.
On Tuesday, Castleton will beat Potsdam, Hobart will beat Buffalo State, and Elmira will beat Fredonia. However, if I had to take an upset special, it would be Fredonia beating Elmira.
