Brent Burns<\/a> was over there that time. A couple of teammates of mine were over there.\u201d<\/p>\nIt felt like a novelty at first. Weekend games. Beach days. Summer hockey without consequence. But the relationship stuck. Years later, Goulet called again, this time with a more serious pitch. He was coaching Melbourne Ice and asked Booth to come for a three-month season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know anything about a league in Australia,\u201d Booth said. \u201cI had no idea it even existed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The decision became a family one. Booth and his wife, Ashley, had three young children. Australia sounded like an adventure.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked my daughter and my son, \u2018Would you guys want to go to Australia?\u2019\u201d Booth said. \u201cThey go, \u2018Wow, that\u2019d be cool.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
What followed was unlike anything Booth had experienced in hockey.<\/p>\n
Two practices a week, mostly at night, sometimes starting as late as 9:15 PM. Some rinks without glass. Public skating dominating ice availability.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou couldn\u2019t go into the rink until an hour and a half before the game,\u201d Booth said. \u201cThey\u2019d have public skating all day. You\u2019d have like 200 people on the ice every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The business model fascinated him. Ice time was precious. Public skating paid the bills. Hockey adapted around it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the guys have jobs, too,\u201d Booth said. \u201cThey go to a 9-to-5 (job), so they can’t really cut work for practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the ice, 40-year-old Booth dominated. Sixty-four points in 14 games. Yes, you read that right: 64 points (34 goals, 30 assists) in fourteen regular-season games. The numbers look cartoonish. He insists they did not come easily.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was genuinely nervous,\u201d he said. \u201cI was like, I’m sure there’s a lot of pressure on me coming over there. And I don’t care what league you play — it’s hard to put up points. There were some good teams. It’s not like you just go down (the ice) and shoot and score.\u201d<\/p>\n
He played enormous minutes, skating on three lines. Constant involvement. But the environment suited him. And so did the lifestyle.<\/p>\n
Melbourne\u2019s medical support surprised him most.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had one of the best physios I\u2019ve ever had in my entire career,\u201d Booth said, praising Luke Fuller of \u2018A Sports Clinic.\u2019 \u201cThese guys were brilliant. NHL teams would be thrilled to have them. Fuller is based out of Australia, but he worked with guys like (tennis stars) Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, went to Wimbledon to help them every year. I was just blown away that a guy like him was helping out our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
The season ended with a championship. The coach cried. To Booth, it all mattered deeply.<\/p>\n
\u201cNext to Jacques Martin in Florida, my Australian coach, Kerry Goulet, was the best coach I ever had,\u201d Booth said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lack of pressure matters now more than it ever did in the NHL. \u201cThe pressure is just…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":517719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-517718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115898713744279663","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}