The phrase “he’s a hockey player,” is one that is used
a lot to describe the toughness of players in the game and how they might come
back from injuries to play when athletes in other sports might not. During Friday night’s Manchester Monarchs,
Worchester Sharks AHL game, Sharks coach Roy Sommer showed that the saying
applies to the guys behind the bench as well.
During play in the first period of the game a clearing
attempted deflect out of play and smashed Sommer in the nose. In the immediate aftermath Sommer went down
behind the bench and would eventually head off with the trainer to get checked
out. No one would have thought less of
Sommer not returning with what turned out to be a broken nose, but he was
having none of that.
Sommer would return to the bench having only missed
2:28 of game action. When he came back
he had Q-Tips sticking out of his nose, a piece of tape on the bridge of the
busted nose and it did not matter because… “He’s a hockey coach.”
The team would not make the efforts and toughness of
the coach to return go to waste as they would get a shootout victory in the
game. You can bet when your coach does
something like that the players on the team with think twice before they
complain about any sort of minor injuries.
