Saturday, February 5, 2011

Video: AHL Coach Roy Sommer Has Puck Break Nose, Still Returns to Bench


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.