GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Kevin Fitzgerald remembers the pitch vividly.
Come play three-on-three hockey in an upstart league, all costs will be covered traveling across the United States and Canada, and you’ll get paid to do it.
“It sounded too good to be true,” Fitzgerald said. “I thought there was no way this was legit.”
Three weeks into 3ICE, the 25-year-old forward has close to $18,000 in his bank account, proving the pitch was, indeed, legit.
“I’m a guy right out of college, so after the first week that was the largest deposit I’ve ever had go into my bank account,” Fitzgerald said.
A nine-stop summer touring circuit, 3ICE is many things, but most importantly it’s a potentially life-changing financial event for the 42 players spread across six teams. At each stop, the members of the winning team earn $7,000 in prize money, with tiered payouts based on finish for the other five teams. At the end of the season, members of the championship team will each take home $127,000.
By comparison, the typical AHL salary ranges from $60,000 to $70,000 annually. In the ECHL, teams have a weekly salary cap of $13,900 spread between 20 players.
“It’s a life-changing amount of money for the guys in this league,” former Colorado Avalanche forward T.J. Hensick said, who is playing in 3ICE this summer. “It’s more than most guys will ever make in any league outside of the NHL.”
The players in 3ICE are a mix of older minor-league players, some with NHL experience, players currently playing in Europe, and a couple of younger recent college graduates who are hoping to turn 3ICE into another professional hockey opportunity.
Sean Dhooge is 5-foot-3 and because it’s not the 1920s, he never had a chance of tying Roy “Shrimp” Worters as the shortest player in NHL history. Brian Gionta, 5-foot-7, and Theo Fleury, 5-foot-6, were short by NHL standards, but they would tower over Dhooge. Finding a job in five-on-five professional hockey seems highly unlikely for Dhooge, but he was built for three-on-three and the 3ICE format.
In Week 3 in Grand Rapids, Dhooge was the catalyst as his team won the week, taking home $7,000 and maybe, just maybe, laying the groundwork for another professional hockey organization to take notice and take a chance despite his size.
“Possibly, you never really know,” Dhooge said. “This fell at the right time and right place, so I don’t really know what’s next (after this summer).”
3ICE’s desire, and challenge, was to take the NHL’s three-on-three overtime format without the sudden-death stakes or the top players in the world and make it exciting.
So they changed the rules, most importantly instituting a no take-backs rule or backcourt violation similar to basketball. That rule, which was suggested by former NHL official Dave Jackson, eliminated the common three-on-three approach of recycling and reloading seen in the NHL.
“That’s something the NHL should look at it,” Dhooge said. “You are under pressure by the spacing, you can’t just reload, so teams have to go for it all the time.”
There also isn’t room for the malaise seen in three-on-three at the NHL All-Star Game. NHL players competing for a share of $1 million at the All-Star Game will make millions either way; some players in 3ICE have never made or will never make $1 million in their professional hockey careers.
Multiple players at the Week 3 event in Grand Rapids remarked that the intensity has picked up and will continue to pick up getting closer to the finale in Las Vegas. Only four teams reach the championship weekend and have a chance for the $127,000.
“Guys are going to, and some already have, start blocking shots and doing everything,” Hensick said. “It’s only going to get more intense.”
3ICE is also exhausting. Each week the teams that reach the final for that stop will have played three 16-minute games. With just six skaters per team, a player is playing an average of 24…
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