Men's Hockey: Tigers win in new unis

The Tigers were taking part in the second annual ECAC Hockey “Pink at the Rink” event, a league-wide effort to raise funds to fight cancer that stretches across two weekends of ECAC play.

This year, it was the men’s teams’ turn to wear the special-order pink-and-black jerseys on its home ice. The jerseys are now being auctioned on ebay.com, with bidding beginning at $150. Fans can also bid on head coach Guy Gadowsky’s pink tie, for which bidding starts at $50. The auctions for those items end March 1.

“It’s been great,” ECAC Hockey commissioner Steve Hagwell said. “[Pink at the Rink is] a great cause. We’re trying to expand it and raise as much money as we can.”

Last year’s pioneering efforts — the women’s teams wore the special jerseys, though the Colgate men’s team wore pink warm ups — raised more than $40,000 for Coaches vs. Cancer, a program run through the American Cancer Society (ACS).

Pink at the Rink began last year when the head coach of the Colgate women’s hockey team, Scott Wiley, contacted Hagwell on the same day Hagwell had been talking with an ACS representative about a possible collaboration.

“The stars aligned,” Hagwell said of the event’s origins.

Pink at the Rink works with Coaches vs. Cancer, which has been running since 1994 and whose mission is “[empowering] basketball coaches, their teams, and local communities to make a difference in the fight against cancer,” according to the program’s website.

Cancer accounts for one in every four deaths in the United States, according to the website, and is the second most frequent cause of death. More than 1,500 people nationwide die from cancer each day.

“I’ve received a couple of calls from survivors saying how nice it was that we participated,” Gadowsky said. “I think it’s a fantastic idea and a very important cause, and we’re very happy to take part in it.”

Pink at the Rink is ECAC Hockey’s first league-wide event, though Coaches vs. Cancer Director of Sponsorships and Acquisitions Anthony Marino said he hopes it won’t be the last.

“Of course, the funds that we’re able to raise help everything that goes toward our mission of the fight against cancer, but aside from that, the real benefit is that you are reaching an audience that you might not normally reach,” Marino said. “People might just be going to a hockey game because it’s the weekend or they are looking for something fun to do, and then as they go there they might ask, ‘Why are the teams wearing these jerseys?’ or, ‘Why are they using those sticks?’ And it really helps sometimes when you catch people when they aren’t expecting it to educate them and let them know about what we do.”

And if Pink at the Rink is as successful in its second year as it was in 2008, sports fans can expect an expansion, which would be built on a similar platform but executed in different venues and on different levels.

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“We hope that [Pink at the Rink] might prove to be a model that we can use with some other leagues and teams throughout the country, and not just at the college level but even looking at the professional ranks and the high schools and the club teams,” Marino said.