This is a community that loves hockey. It unites most of the 3,800 residents who call this ancestral land home.<\/p>\n
Cam\u00a0Zdeno Turtle is not the only hockey name in town, although his might have the best origin story.<\/p>\n
Turtle\u2019s father, Dean, switched allegiances from the Toronto Maple Leafs to the Bruins in 2010.<\/p>\n
Why?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe (Maple Leafs) broke my heart,\u201d he said, laughing.<\/p>\n
So he switched to Boston, their archnemesis.<\/p>\n
Dean Turtle had loved watching Neely play and he wanted to compete on the ice like the Bruins legend. \u201cA big power forward, played hurt, grinds everywhere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The unplanned moment with Chara and his son was almost unfathomable for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still starstruck,\u201d he said, breaking into a giggle.<\/p>\n
Hockey is the thread that connects those in this community. They watch it at night. They talk about it in the morning. They reenact it on the outdoor rink by the school or the indoor rink near the airport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Players are named after stars of the past and the present. There was a Wayne Gretzky<\/a>, a Chris Chelios<\/a> and a Ondrej Pavel<\/a>\u00a0mentioned during the visit.<\/p>\n Jerseys from almost every NHL team, with a healthy dose from the hometown Jets, were on display, as well as sweaters from the various school teams and teams from the Pikangikum Hockey League, the reserve\u2019s eight-team rec league.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe NHL is No. 2 in Pikangikum,\u201d said Justin Maddalena, a teacher at the school and coach of its boys hockey team. \u201cThe PHL is No. 1.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is a community that loves hockey. It unites most of the 3,800 residents who call this ancestral…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-944183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}