In total, more than 50 men from the Detroit area registered, ranging from established players to newcomers.
On July 29th, Partners Detroit’s newly formed ice hockey league hosted its first-ever championship at Buffalo Wild Wings Arena in Troy. It was a thrilling game that ended in a thrilling overtime shootout. Five nail-biting minutes later, as the crowd roared, the aptly named Pastrami Penguins scored to take home the oversized trophy.
Winning Pastrami Penguins Avi Kohn, Daniel Kohn, Dovid Rosenfeld, Eli Seligson, Jason Cohn, Jeff Katzen, Jonah Stern, Ron Stern, Moshe Perecman, Scott Richmond, Yosef Belen, Tzadok Eliyahu and Meir Bulua also received championship jerseys and had bragging rights as the first winning team of what is likely the largest Jewish hockey league in Michigan.
Hockey is not Partners' first venture into the sports world. They have had successful football and basketball competitions for a number of years.
Hockey was the next natural step in things, said Rabbi Noam Gross, who has worked for Partners’ Young Professionals Division for the past nine years. He had previously discussed the possibility of forming a Partners hockey league with Avrumi Lorkis, 35, an avid player who has organized the popular Matan BSeter Detroit Hockey Showdown fundraiser for the past six years. The two men just weren’t convinced they could find 60 Jewish hockey players in Michigan.
It didn't seem promising, so we never looked into it before, Gross said.
When Noah Linkner, 27, a fellow hockey enthusiast and former NHL equipment manager, moved back to Michigan from Florida last year, the trio clicked and decided to give it a try.
They spread the news through social media.
One day, Berkley Band conductor Alan Posner saw the call for hockey players on Facebook.
“I hadn't played since college, but it seemed like a great way to get back into it,” said Posner, who signed up immediately with a friend.
In all, more than 50 men from the Detroit area signed up, ranging from established players to newcomers. It took about six weeks to sort out the administrative side of things, from figuring out where to rent ice, purchasing jerseys, hiring referees and organizing the teams.
There’s nothing like a good Jewish pun and the hockey players had a blast coming up with team names. In the end, it was the Hebruisers, Tefillin Tough Guys, Edmonton Mohelers and Pastrami Penguins who took to the ice.
To level the playing field, Lorkis offered weekly lessons to improve players' skills, if they wished.
I heard from a lot of players who were just starting out in hockey that they would never have had the confidence to say, 'I'm going to play hockey in a big league,' but they felt comfortable and said, 'I'm going to play a game and this is just going to be fun,'” Lorkis said.
After 10 weeks of competition on Monday nights, they hosted the playoffs, playing the Edmonton Mohelers and the Pastrami Penguins against each other in the championship.
About 50 people, mostly family and friends of the players, sat in the stands, enjoying kosher snacks provided by Partners, as they watched the Pastrami Penguins pull out the victory.
According to Linkner, one of the highlights was seeing the progress the players made throughout the season.
One guy, Zvi Hershberg, had never really played before, Linkner said. We all sent him videos with tips and gave him tricks to help him score. On Monday, during the consolation game, with his whole family there, Zvi scored for the first time! He was so happy and waved to everyone on the ice. It was incredible to see his transition! To be honest, that was much more important to me than winning the trophy!
Just as there were no on-ice experience requirements to join the league, there was also no minimum Jewish knowledge or field experience requirement to join, as is the case with all Partners programming.
The whole point of the competition was to have a fun, low-key space to meet other Jews and make friends, and that goal was achieved from week one, Lorkis said. Friendships were formed in both competitive and noncompetitive ways, starting with that first time we met in the locker room.
There was an incredible camaraderie; the ice seemed to connect the players in a way that nothing else could.
Although it was not mandatory, some players still came to the famous Partners in Torah program on Tuesday evenings to study Torah with their teammates.
I like to joke that Avrumi and Noam brought in all the Orthodox guys and I brought in all the secular guys, Linkner laughed. But now I’m much closer to the Orthodox guys who I didn’t even know about until the league! What’s cool is that every week there are more guys from the league at the Partners Tuesday night learning program. One day I saw one of the guys at Partners and said, I didn’t know you did this! And he said, I didn’t know you did this either! He had signed up the day before after hearing about it in the locker room.
Lorkis, Gross and Linkner now laugh that they ever worried about whether they could find enough players.
It turns out that hockey is practically its own religion here in Michigan! Gross joked. So we met a lot of Jews who played a lot of hockey but weren't involved in other programs.
The competition was a success that exceeded all expectations and was received with great praise by everyone involved.
I thought we were going to use our community to get more hockey players, but it turns out we used hockey to get people more involved in the community. This has really snowballed into something much bigger than we imagined and we couldn't be more excited about it, Linkner said.
We'll definitely do it again next year, but none of us want to wait that long, Lorkis added. We're hoping to start another tournament right after Labor Day. And we're always looking for more people to join in!
For more information, please email Avrumi Lorkis at alorkis@gmail.com or Noam Gross at ngross@partnersdetroit.org.
