This is no picnic at the beach
The hours are long, but Dave Roper is anxious to get going in his first season as Norfolk Admirals equipment manager
Dave Roper is setting up the kind of winter abode to which so many of his fellow Newfoundlanders aspire, in a condo by the beach in a southern U.S. state, a place he’ll be able to call home for six months or more.
What’s more, he’s not paying the rent.
Trouble is, it’s likely he won’t have lot of time to enjoy those dandy digs in Virginia Beach, Va.
“The way my schedule is going to be, and with the team on the road quite a bit, yes, it’s kind of a tease,” chuckled the 32-yearold from Mount Pearl, who is about to begin his first year as head equipment manager for the ECHL’s Norfolk Admirals.
“I was joking with the coach (Rob Aldoff), saying I’d probably have been better off with a spot somewhere closer to the rink, because that’s where I’ll be spending so much of my time.
“This way, living on the beach is just going to break my heart a lot.”
Yes, Roper will be working long and hard this hockey season … and he won’t get wealthy doing it.
Nobody gets rich in the ECHL, a league where the average weekly salary for players is in the hundreds of dollars. And when it comes to training staff, it’s likely that dividing their actual hours worked into the numbers on their paycheques will produce a figure that’s less than the mandated minimum hourly wage of whatever jurisdiction they’re in.
But Roper’s not complaining, and he knows what in store.
Last year, for example, when he held a similar position with the Southern Professional Hockey League’s Louisiana Ice Gators, the team once made an 18-hour bus trip from its home in Lafayette, La., to Fayetteville, N.C. On arrival, the road-weary players happily checked into their hotel rooms. Meanwhile, following the ritual of equipment managers everywhere in all sports, Roper took the bus to the Fayetteville rink, where he unloaded gear and began setting up the visitors dressing room.
“That’s the life and no, it’s not easy, but it’s what I want to do … and what I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” said Roper, whose training-staff career began with the Mount Pearl Junior Blades.
“I grew up with Ryane Clowe and the Lee brothers , Mark and Mike, and with Grant Kenny, but I knew I’d never go where they would in hockey as a player. But I love the game and this was a way to stay in it. “
And just as players do, Roper worked his way up as a trainer, moving from the junior hockey ranks to teams in Newfoundland senior leagues, including the Conception Bay North CeeBees, winners of the Herder Memorial Trophy in 2012-13.
Meanwhile, he also worked with visiting teams for pre-season American Hockey League tournaments in Newfoundland, during the 2011 Telus Cup in St. John’s and with the national women’s team when the 4Nations Cup was held here.
Roper, who also had a skatesharpening and hockey equipment business at the Glacier, became involved in Hockey NL
“I grew up with Ryane Clowe and the Lee brothers , Mark and Mike, and with Grant Kenny, but I knew I’d never go where they would in hockey as a player. But I love the game and this was a way to stay in it.” Dave Roper
high performance programs and eventually found himself at a Hockey Canada camp in Calgary, where he told anyone who would listen that he was looking for a full-time job in the game.
And here was where Roper’s never-shy attitude and the who-you-know world of hockey hooked up to score his employment goal.
Among those attending the camp — and listening to Roper — was Scott Burt, assistant coach of the Western Hockey League’s Spokane Chiefs. Some time later, Burt would later learn through the grapevine that the Ice Gators were in dire need of an equipment manager; the person who originally held the job had bolted overseas to the Kontinental Hockey League just before the start of the 201516 SPHL season.
Burt remembered Roper and his eagerness to get into the pro ranks and passed on his name to Louis Dumont, the Ice Gators coach and someone whom Burt had played against for many years when both were stars in the ECHL.
As George Constanza would say “yadda, yadda, yadda”, and a couple of days before the Ice Gators’ season began, Roper found himself in the sweltering heat of central Louisiana with a job in hockey.
It was, as you can imagine, a rush at first. But Roper got organized quickly and thrived in the job. And he loved it. He also loved Louisiana and the people and the food and the weather — “It was 27 Celsius on Christmas Day. You can’t beat that,” he declared.”
He even managed to get a tan. But alas, it suddenly came to an end. In May, the Ice Gators announced they would not play in 2016-17 because of renovations to the Cajundome, their home rink, work that would go well into the hockey season.
But having just got his foot in the pro hockey door, Roper wasn’t about to take it out and step back.
“I felt with my experience, I was ready to move up to the next level,” he said.
He applied for jobs everywhere, including Norfolk, where Aldoff was taking over as coach. In 2015-16, Aldoff had coached the SPHL’s Pensacola Ice Pilots, who had been the Ice Gators’ most frequent opponent. He knew Roper, and knew his what he could do. That and a great reference from Dumont, who had played against Aldoff in the ECHL (story sound familiar?) put Roper in Norfolk.
“It’s a definite step up,” he said. “No, I’m not making a fortune, but this job allows me to live pretty well. Let’s put it this way, it’s not paycheque to paycheque. My housing is looked after and so are different expenses, like a phone allowance and per diems on the road.”
The Admirals play at the Scope, which up to a couple years ago had been home to an AHL team with the same nickname.
“It’s a beautiful facility, firstclass with all the bells and whistles, everything is state of the art. And since we’re affiliated with an NHL team, (Norfolk is the Edmonton Oilers’ ECHL farm club), you can see the difference (from the SPHL). There’s nothing on my wish list that I have presented to my GM that’s already here or has been ordered.”
The hours will likely be the same. He’ll still find himself catching some winks on the trainer’s table and getting by on a few hours in his sleeper bed on the team bus during threein-threes on the road.
“We play in a division with Atlanta, Orlando, Fort Myers, Charleston, Greenville, mostly places down south,” said Roper. “That’s the thing. We do really go to some really nice cities, but given my schedule, I don’t know how much of them I’ll be able to see.”
In fact, all the southern climates he’ll be experiencing can also be problematic in his job.
“There’s so much humidity in the air down here and a lot of the rinks weren’t really designed for hockey, so it’s often a job in itself trying to keep everything dried properly.” And smelling properly? “Sure, that can be a problem, too, especially after a tough game on a hot night with a short turnaround” he laughed. “It can take some work, but we get by.”
In other words, he sweats a bit in dealing with player perspiration.
“Oh yeah. One thing I’ve learned is that you never leave the rink wearing the same clothes you wore in the rink,” he said.
But he always leaves happy.