Team Canada defeated the World Team 6-5 in a charity hockey game held in early January at “The Rink”, located on the 7th floor of Bangkok’s Central Grand Rama IX shopping centre.
Team Canada was composed of Canadian expats based in Thailand, plus three visiting Canadian MPs (Patrick Brown – Barrie, Andrew Saxton – North Vancouver, & Gordon Brown – Leeds Grenville), plus ex-Trustee Justin Heran from Simcoe County. The World team was a collection of American, Czech, English, Finnish, German, Kiwi, Swedish and Swiss players based in Thailand.
The 2 teams line up together after the game. (Photo/Julie Lestage)
Team Canada was in tough for this game because the World squad featured a top line of Swede Henrik Olofsson, Swiss defenseman Remo Nyffenegger, American Scott “Whitty” Whitcomb, Vladimir “the Czech Tank” Prochazka and Thai stars Tewin “Thor” Chartsuwan and Tim Suphankomut; some of the best players currently playing in Thailand.
Philip Calvert, Canada’s ambassador to Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, dropped the puck for the ceremonial face-off between Team Canada captain Rob Taylor and World Team captain Vladimir Prochazka. Taylor had fellow Canucks Adrian Myers, Jason Salituri, Zak Garofolo, Michael White and Craig Noon with him on the Canadian team’s top line.
Christian Lefebvre, Lt. Colonel Stephen Lemieux and Salituri represented the Canadian Embassy and former TCCC president John Casella was also a member of the Canadian team.
The Canadian team was out in front 6-2 at the start of the third period, but the World Team stormed back to within one goal to make it a close 6-5 final score. Garofolo’s marker when he caught the World Team’s defense knapping while cherry-picking at their blueline ended up being the winning goal.
Thai referees Sakchai “Jeab” Chinanuvatana and Arnupap “Op” Charoenrak did a good job of maintaining order in the game and keeping the players in line.
Canadian ambassador Philip Calvert (center) prepares to drop the puck at the opening face-off. (Photo/Julie Lestage)
Organizer Scott Murray said, “We had the Canadian ambassador to drop the puck, three serving Canadian MPs playing, a Canadian (Phil Hageman) singing a rousing version of ‘Oh Canada’ and we won—what more can you ask for?”
The game raised THB 81,870 for the Thai Red Cross. This was the fourth charity hockey game to help the Thai Red Cross; the first was in January 2005 to benefit tsunami victims, and the others were in early January 2012 and 2013.
Injured Flying Farang goalkeeper Lance Parker was the MC for the event and did a great job helping to promote it.
The format for the game was different than normal as there were three 25-minute periods and each team had four lines of six skaters with 5 from each side appearing on the ice at any one time.
