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Note from the author


The first stick salute must go to the people of Rhode Island. These, first and foremost, are your stories.

I will grant my interest in covering the game in the traditional way that I used to has receded. That is why I enjoy what I do now at Pucks and Recreation, where the core focus is on unique, compelling human-interest stories that happen to tie in with the hockey world. In that vein, my love for my home state motivated me to finish this project roughly four years after the idea popped into my head.

There was a time when I was one of the many resident Ocean State puckheads relishing the presence of the Providence Bruins. I retained my allegiance throughout my upbringing, even after moving out of state while still in grade school. As such, much of the material here comes from my own recollections.

For many of those memories, I am indebted in no small part to my parents. After failing to beat the crowds to the ticket window in the team’s inaugural season, they got more proactive and successfully made an outing to the Providence Civic Center a semiannual occurrence for the balance of our time in the 401 area code.

When we could not attend, I listened to Dave Goucher and John “Coach” Colletto call the action on the portable nightstand radio my folks gave me one summer. And in some ways, moving out of the market had a veiled side blessing in that I started reading the Rhode Island media more often, since the Internet became the best way to stay on top of my beloved team. That served to fuel my interest in becoming a journalist long before I realized I had such ambitions.

The rest of the statistics and other bits of common knowledge in these write-ups were refreshed through various combinations of Providence Journal clippings, the P-Bruins’ website, the AHL’s website and its partner at Canoe, hockeyfights.com, dropyourgloves.com, Hockey Reference and the Internet Hockey Database.

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