newsminer.com

FAIRBANKS — Andrew McCabe didn’t hear a pop or a snap, but he did feel something shift in his ankle as he fell to the ice.

It was last Nov. 3 in Wasilla, and the starting forward for the Fairbanks Ice Dogs junior hockey team received an odd hit from behind by an Alaska Avalanche defenseman in the second period.

It was a bump that would have been inconsequential had McCabe’s left skate not dug into the ice as his body weight transferred to his left ankle during his fall.

As he got up, he felt what he now knows was his bones scraping together. He left the rink with hope that it wasn’t so bad. He’d sprained his ankle before, after all, and the pain wasn’t so different.

But this was much different, a broken ankle. About six-to-eight-weeks-off-the-ice different, his doctor told him after the game.

And that was before it was found that he needed surgery. Those six weeks became three months.

McCabe made one thing clear: It wasn’t a cheap hit.

“Just unfortunate,” he said, “but that’s the way that hockey goes sometimes.”

The Ice Dogs would lose the game 3-2 in overtime, but they had already lost much more — a second-year leader so selfless he once needed 34 stitches after blocking a puck with his face.

“He’s got more stitches in the face than anybody in the past three years,” then-assistant coach Josh Hauge said. “I think each year he’s up above 50. He gives his blood, sweat and tears, literally.”

And the impact resounded in the team’s chemistry. There was an upbeat air McCabe provided that was gone in the 20 games he missed.

“I thought we had a solid stable of leadership last year, but when he was gone, something in the lockerroom just wasn’t right,” Hauge said. “When he came back, he’s such a good player and such a good leader that it’s a whole different level.”

That lockerroom presence was one of the many reasons Hauge, now the head coach, selected McCabe as the team’s captain for the 2008-09 season.

Hauge chose McCabe on his own, but he said a players vote wouldn’t have been any different.

“I asked the guys around, and it wasn’t even a thing,” Hauge said. “Everybody just knew that he was the captain.”

• • •

The first thing you’ll notice about McCabe is his cool head.

He meets you with an extended hand, looking you squarely in the eyes.

He speaks clearly, without the “ums” and “likes” that pepper the speech of most men his age. He doesn’t come of as fiery, cocky or intense like many young athletes today.

Thuough he admits there’s time when he needs to be loud and rash, McCabe mostly keeps his relaxed tone during games, too.

“(Former head coach Rob Proffitt) always says not to get too high or too low.,” he said. “­­­You got to keep your emotions in check.

“Otherwise, basically, you’re gonna do something stupid on the ice or say something or who knows what. You’re not going to be concentrating on what you’re supposed to do.”

Hauge said McCabe’s unruffled nature was a main reason the forward was chosen to lead the team.

“He never loses his temper, very even-keeled kid, very mature for his age,” Hauge said. “… He’ll hold the people accountable in our locker room, and that’s what I’m looking for out of our leader.”

That trademark serenity probably helped McCabe wait through his three months last winter. With a speaker system his mom set up and his Shih Tzu puppy as company, he watched the Ice Dogs via Internet broadcasts on the B2 Network.

“I would just be sitting there, critiquing everybody’s moves,” he said. “It’s definitely different, watching from that angle rather than being on the bench.”

In fact, he saw a lot more in a single Ice Dogs game than he ever did in uniform, but that didn’t mean he was enjoying himself, as he described his time on the couch as “rough.”

Once his hard splint was removed six weeks into his recovery, he started biking to prepare for his return. He was still nowhere near ready.

He said he felt out of shape when he returned to practice in the second week of January. By the time he reappeared on the ice, joining the team on a three-week road trip to Texas and Kansas beginning Jan. 18, he had about 80 to 90 percent of his normal strength.

McCabe was happy he was back in time to join his teammates just in time to travel. The team-first atmosphere of life on the road helped him get back into the swing of things much more quickly, he said.

He slowly got back into his rhythm, getting back on the game roster Feb. 1 against the Topeka (Kan.) Roadrunners and notching his first points since November with an assist against the Roadrunners at home.

Though he played 21 fewer games in the ’07-08 season, McCabe more than doubled his point total with 41 off of 15 goals and 26 assists. Twenty of those points came after his injury from nine goals and 11 assists.

And then there was the best part of McCabe’s return: a thrilling series at Topeka for a berth in the Robertson Cup Championship. McCabe’s only two goals of the playoffs had boosted the Ice Dogs to win game Game 4 and force a fifth game.

The Ice Dogs lost Game 5 in heartbreaking and dramatic fashion. The power went out twice in the Kansas Expocentre and the momentum shifted with each blackout. The News-Miner reported many of the players were somber and shaken after the 5-4 overtime loss, but McCabe recalls the series with fondness.

“It was kind of surreal. It was crazy,” he said. “Game 5 to go to the national championship — I mean that’s what you play hockey for. “I wouldn’t trade that for anything. In training camp a couple of weeks ago, we were going around telling our favorite hockey memories in training camp, and of the 10 returners I (think) all of them said that (series) was their favorite.”

Even though he plays up front, McCabe said he wants the blueliners to be the team’s strength, saying that last season proved defense was the key to advancing in the playoffs.

But most of the defensemen are first-year Ice Dogs, which is why it’s important for experienced players in other areas to help them get up to speed as quickly as possible.

“We have a lot of talented rookies this year,” McCabe said. “Hopefully, the mix of that young talent with the old, wily veterans will be a good mix. It should be a fun, entertaining style of hockey we play this year.”

• • •

McCabe started playing at 5, introduced to the rink by his father, like most boys his age in Eau Claire, Wis.

He started getting serious about the sport when his Bantam coach told him before he entered high school that he could play it beyond preps.

“I kept that in mind,” he said.

With that goal ahead, he didn’t particularly mind summer conditioning with his high school assistant coach Kurt Mattison.

He now credits that conditioning as one of his advantages today, even though he’s more than three years removed from his last training session with Mattison.

After four years under Eau Claire Memorial High School head coach Mike Scwengler, who “taught me a lot about hockey and a lot about life,” McCabe said he was well prepared for junior hockey.

In his first season with the Ice Dogs, he played a limited role, amassing 18 points off nine assists and nine goals in 59 games. He added five points off three assists and two goals in the playoffs.

He wasn’t struggling to adjust in the rink, but getting used to Alaska wasn’t so easy.

“The first couple of months were definitely rough. I was a little bit homesick and what not, but the last few years it’s definitely grown on me,” he said.

But through the Ice Dogs and his job at Play-It-Again Sports, he found a niche in Fairbanks.

It grew on him so much that he has a certain sense of joy recalling things such as the time he changed a flat tire in well-below-zero temperatures.

His voice lightens when he tells you about his rookie year and a friend called for help because he had a flat tire. He chuckles a bit when he describes how three hockey players took 10-minute shifts trying to jack up the car. He gets that “here’s the punchline” tone when he tells you that they broke both jacks in their possession and needed the help of a passing truck to get the job done.

“That’s something I’ll always remember as quite an Alaskan experience,” he said.

Beyond this season, McCabe wants “what every kid wants,” an NCAA Division I scholarship so he can get an education to back up his hockey career.

Because he certainly knows what an errant bump can take away in just a second.

• • •

The Ice Dogs will leave Fairbanks on Thursday and play exhibition games in Minnesota this weekend before opening the North American Hockey League season against the Springfield (Ill.) J4. Blues on Sept. 17 at the NAHL Showcase in Blaine, Minn.

The preliminary roster includes:

• Forwards McCabe, Austin Block, Eric Kraft, Joe Krause, Jon Waggoner, Cody Holzworth, Isaiah Bennis, Mark Pustin, Jon Feaval, Matt Millis, BJ McClellan, Troy Conlon, James Saintey, Steve Zierke, Jared Larson and Paul Kirtland.

• Defensemen Drew Darwitz, Jon Schreiner, Randy Cure, Brian Parson, Micheal Benedict, Brad Treml Kyle Lonetto and Dan Barnes.

• Goaltenders TJ Fuller, Joe Phillipi and Matt Anderson.