Happily serving as Sun Valley's season-ending opponent for a third straight year, goalie Bobby Farrelly's East Coast Gutter Snipes came a long way to play hockey and party in the Idaho mountains last weekend.
And the Snipes enjoyed themselves, splitting the two-game series with the Suns. Sun Valley played perhaps its best game of the season Friday and won 7-5, and the Snipes prevailed 8-6 in Saturday's finale.
Sun Valley Suns center Billy "The Kid" Tryder, in his 40th year and 11th with the Suns, has come a long way as well.
He made a big impression as a goal scorer in the 1990s, having come to Ketchum from Melrose, Mass. and Hobart College as an impressionable 23-year-old in 1993. Few remember that Tryder was the top goal scorer with 17 and second-high scorer with 31 points on Sun Valley's 19-12-1 national championship team in 1998.
But the new decade has been mostly forgettable on the resort ice for housepainter Tryder, the leading Suns scorer in 1996. He played four games in 2001, vanished for four or five years, scored five goals in 23 games in 2006-07 and didn't play at all for the Suns last winter.
This year Tryder came out on a mission and ended up as the Suns leading goal scorer with 11 and second-leading overall scorer with 22 points. He tallied Sun Valley's first two goals Saturday after the home team fell into 4-0 and 6-1 holes.
And he climbed all the way up into 10th place on the Suns' all-time scoring list with 257 points, well within striking distance of eighth place at a Johnny Miller-like vintage age.
Suns captain Chris Warrington said after last weekend, "Tryder had a great comeback year after not playing last year. He was consistent and contributed both offensively and defensively every game."
Consistency was something the Suns needed and rarely achieved during their 9-11-0 winter campaign—only the third losing season in the franchise's 34 seasons. Personnel issues weighed heavily on what Suns fans saw out on the ice.
Warrington said, "I think we only had two consecutive games with the same lineup, due to some key injuries, work conflicts and departures (Paul Baranzelli to Australia). With this type of shuffling I felt we struggled to click on a consistent basis."
But the captain was encouraged by first-year players like defenseman Matt Alloway and forward Taylor Rothgeb (9 goals in 14 games). He said, "We continue to need fresh legs to inject even more energy into the lineup. Matt and Taylor gave us a jump start—Matt competing hard every night and Taylor scoring some very important goals for us."
Capturing his second Suns scoring title to go with his 2005 season championship was hustling sixth-year wing Ryan "Rico" Enrico from Hoboken (9 goals, 17 assists for 26 points). Enrico has now been either first or second in team scoring in four of his six Suns seasons.
Enrico got the Suns fired up Friday with a power play goal, from Tryder, for a 2-0 lead in what was perhaps Sun Valley's best overall team effort in a single period all winter. The Suns were ferocious in their own end and went ahead 3-0 en route to a 7-5 victory that snapped a three-game losing streak to the Gutter Snipes.
Six different Suns scored goals led by Spencer Brendel's pair, and 11 players had points. Goalie Ryan Thomson stopped 47 of 52 Gutter Snipes shots, and added 35 saves Saturday.
Warrington said, "Friday was, in my opinion, our best team game of the year. The game actually wasn't as close as the score ended up. Thomson played great, our defensemen played some defense and we had four lines contributing up front. It was great to see."
As always, the Gutter Snipes featured such ex-pros as NHL Hockey Hall of Famer Igor "The Professor" Larionov (7 assists for the weekend) and well-traveled pro Jeff Norton (4 goals Friday, 6 goals weekend).
Warrington said, "It's always fun to play against guys with NHL experience and especially a Hall of Famer. The weekend was a lot of fun for us to be a part of. And as always, the Gutter Snipes brought a solid team. For us, Saturday was a bit of a letdown. It was pretty symbolic of the entire season for us—up and down."
Check today's Web site for a weekend game summary and complete Suns season statistics.
For the third straight year, the visiting East Coast Gutter Snipes featured NHL Hockey Hall of Famer Igor “The Professor” Larionov (left) and their Rhode Island-born goalie Bobby Farrelly, better known in Red Sox Nation for his work directing and producing the movie "Fever Pitch." Photo by Willy Cook
