The St. John’s IceCaps were probably some of the best years of professional level hockey in Newfoundland since the early 90s when the St. John’s Maple Leafs were packing Memorial Stadium 3 rows deep in standing room.

Though the American Hockey League’s purpose had changed quite a bit since the early 90’s, it offered just as much action and just as many, if not more, players dead set on making it to the NHL.

It was in season 3 that the IceCaps advanced all the way to the Calder Cup Finals. In game five the IceCaps lost to the Texas Stars, in overtime. And my photo of that moment was used everywhere, from the Score and TSN, ESPN, NHL.com, and so on. It was a highlight moment for my photography career. There was a little pressure in that moment, being the last photographer in the world photographing professional hockey, hoping to capture the last moment of pro hockey in the 2014 season, that would then be pushed over the wire to every single media outlet in the world. Everything in hockey happens so quick, and the speed is amplified by my proximity to it. In milliseconds the moment was over and done, no do-overs. In focus, composed properly, track focus, continue to re-frame the action, bang bang goes the camera’s shutter. But I loved that pressure and thrived on it.

I was also coordinating with the IceCaps to do something that was, at the beginning, not being done by any other sports teams in North America. We were directly pushing live photos from my camera straight out to the internet for immediate use. Live photos pushed over twitter and facebook, during the game was a fantastic tool in the IceCaps social media efforts and was another asset the club could make use of.  Typically, it was 10 seconds or less from the moment happening, such as a goal or fight or injury, to the time that was required for our social media team to publish it on twitter. Something not doable without perfection straight out of camera, no cropping or tweaking on a computer. And something I took tremendous pride in accomplishing.

I did a lot of fun stuff while shooting photos for the IceCaps. A lot of exploration of the studio space, if you will. I toyed with off camera flash a lot and it was cool and fun, but also given the small size of the rink where the IceCaps played, annoying for the fans, so it wasn’t something I tinkered with often.

Remotely mounted cameras was another option I always made use of. There were a few games, especially in the playoffs, where I had 5 cameras rolling. Two on my body, always the 70-200 and then either a 24mm 2.8 or 16mm fisheye, one in one of the hockey nets itself, on the ice, shooting fisheye lens, triggered via a custom foot pedal I’d manufactured to trigger a signal that would pop the cameras shutter on my command. Then another mounted up high but focused on the net in the opposite end of the ice where I couldn’t properly photograph from my normal position down low in the corner. Again, this was triggered via the same foot pedal whenever the action would swing to the opposite end and a scoring opportunity would happen. And finally, I’d always try to mount a camera somewhere unique or atypical, hoping to capture something special.

I credit my success as a hockey photographer to having played and payed attention to hockey in a different way. I was fortunate enough to see a lot of Maple Leafs games live when I was growing up. And having seen so much live hockey tuned my brain to the flow and cadence to a hockey game. Truthfully, and this might sound foolish, but when I was shooting my best hockey photos I felt I had a sixth sense for what was happening. You could feel when a goal was about to happen out of a scrum in the corner and rather than focusing on the scrum in the corner, I’d wheel my camera to the guy quietly sitting outside the edge of the action, the guy nobody else was watching, not the players on the ice, the goalie, the coaches, nobody and sure enough, boom the puck would squirt to him and he’d bang one home. That sixth sense often meant I wasn’t wasting precious seconds to find him and focus and shoot the goal scorer, perhaps missing his gigantic celebratory grin before he was swarmed by his teammates.

People would often ask me “it must be amazing to see all the games” but truthfully, I rarely remembered anything concrete about the game once it finished. There were many games I’d leave the stadium and couldn’t instantly recall who won till I’d replay the photos from that night in mind. I watched the games in a different way from other people, constantly hedging my bets on what was about to happen so I could preemptively be preparing to shift my lens towards what was about to happen, rather than what was currently happening.

Speaking of my lens. My poor 70-200, or should I say, 70-200’s. Shooting through the photo hole, that is to say, the hole that allows camera lenses to protrude through the glass that wraps the rink, is an experience in itself. I would ruin a 70-200 each and every season. For the 5? or 6? seasons that I shot IceCaps hockey, I had 5 or 6 70-200s. Pucks consistently hitting them, sometimes glancing blows and rarely a direct hit that would shatter the protective filter on the front and scratch the front element.

As well, I’d get bopped in the face by my camera, when a player/s would hit the boards right where I was sitting, as I tracked action towards the goal and had to forget about the two players who were skating at me. Over the seasons I had 3 different black eyes, faint though they were, they were there. Tracking the puck, the potential action, other players, the refs (who would also always bump into me when they’d be in the corner), was often times a lot to handle and shit happens.

Actually, that reminds me of back during the era of the St. John’s Fog Devils the rink still had old tempered glass, not the Lexan they use now. I was shooting through the photo hole that used to exist in the Zamboni end of Mile One standing next to Stephanie O’Brien — the host of the game entertaining the fans during stoppages and intermissions — and T.J Brennen drove an opposing player into the boards, not the glass, the boards right in front of us, something that had happened countless times in the past. But this time the glass blew up and shattered. I pulled away from the glass immediately but a large chunk came down and actually sliced the front part of my camera lens and also cut my back and hand. Nothing major, at all, barely bleeding, but the piece that caught the front part of my 70200 and sliced all that hardened plastic and metal? That piece would have cut my nose off!

The best part of being a hockey photographer is probably getting your photos used in hockey cards, which happened to me first for a card for In The Game, for Kyle Chipchura. But also occurred many times afterward with Upper Deck in their partnership with The AHL.

Enough rambling, enjoy the photos.

The Winnipeg Jets Era

The Calder Cup Playoffs and The Texas Stars

This is forever one of those two week periods in my life that I’ll probably never forget. Scheduling of the IceCaps had pushed the home games, 3-4-5 to nearly the end of June and I was slated to do some traveling. I’d already decided that should the team force game 7 — which would have been in Texas — I was going to fly down to cover it.

That never happened, sadly for IceCaps fans. But what did happen was just as exciting. I was tasked by The AHL to capture all the photos that would be distributed to the media/press during and after the game. A pretty large responsibility but one that I absolutely loved. Seeing my work on sites like TSN and NHL.com after the Stars won the finals, in the last pro hockey game of 2014, was such a thrill for me, a crowning moment for my photography career.

I made a lot of friends from the Texas Stars community as they blew up my twitter thanking me for covering their team, in their celebrations, as the Stars hadn’t sent any of their home team photographers to the games — probably assuming there would have been game 6 and 7 at home again, it was a very, very tight series.

I took great pride in shooting hockey from a non-biased point of view.

Here’s a few select photos from the 2014 Calder Cup Playoffs and Finals, enjoy.

The Montreal Canadiens AHL Farm Team

When the Jets moved their farm team from Newfoundland back to Manitoba, it presented a chance for us to have Les Canadiens AHL team skate on our ice for a couple seasons before their new home in Laval was ready.

John Scott Comes To Town

Oh what a time to be a hockey fan in NL. The media circus that was John Scott’s bid to become a member of the NHL All-Stars.

Summed up best as a reddit meme that went national, John Scott, long time NHL enforcer, was voted into the NHL All Star Game during their fan vote.

Annnnd then he was traded to Montreal, who promptly demoted him to the minors, likely as a favor to the NHL, in hopes to bury this seemingly unwanted attention.

It didn’t work.

I was published in the New York Times with a picture of John Scott fighting. Yeah, that’s how much attention this received.