Syracuse Crunch
Enforcer Brandon Sugden while playing in the AHL for Syracuse in 2006.
Whitchurch-Stouffville
October 02, 2008 12:46 AM
Brandon Sugden comes out of retirement for shot at spot with New York Islanders
Jim Mason
Brandon Sugden has been in hundreds, maybe thousands, of fights.
None larger than the one his family is going through this year.
Brandon’s dad, former Whitchurch-Stouffville boxing trainer Travis Sugden, has been given months to live.
“You fight this cancer, Dad, and I’ll fight to make it in the NHL,” Brandon, 30, recalls saying last spring.
Brandon, a lifer in the world of minor pro and high amateur hockey loops, is doing his part.
He’s 10 days into training camp with the New York Islanders in Moncton, N.B. and hoping to replace Chris Simon as designated tough guy on the Isles’ big league roster.
Brandon played, and won a fight, in the Islanders’ pre-season tilt in London, Ont., last Thursday and Travis, 64, and the rest of the Sugden clan drove over from Keswick, where they recently moved.
Photos were taken. Smiles were shared.
It’s not the first time for the six-foot, four-inch bruiser.
Brandon, who has been to 10 NHL camps, thought he had a good shot at making the Columbus Blue Jackets four years ago.
His minor-league fisticuffs with Brian McGrattan, Rob Ray and Link Gaetz drew solid hits of their own on youtube.com
Then, the new-look NHL went soft on fighting, albeit briefly.
In November 2006, Brandon signed retirement papers with the Blue Jackets and returned home to wife Crystal, who was pregnant at the time, and also to get closer to his father.
NHL rules stipulate a player must sit out a full year of professional hockey before returning from retirement, but Brandon has since played with St. Jean of the LNHA, a semi-pro Quebec league known mostly for its fighting.
So, when the Islanders invited Sugden to camp this summer, four teams blocked his reinstatement bid, based on playing in that league. They have since relented.
It’s “not a second chance”, Brandon says, always able to laugh at himself.
“More like a 15th chance,” he said Monday, between on-ice sessions.
Brandon has a troubled past, including being suspended for life by the East Coast Hockey League in 2001 after he threw a stick into the crowd, a decision upheld by other pro leagues until an arbitrator overturned it in 2003.
He’s tried to stay in shape during his breaks from pro teams by skating with junior teams in Stouffville and Newmarket.
A fifth round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996, Brandon has yet to play a game in the NHL, but was a feared enforcer with the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League from 2003-06.
“I think I’ve got a good chance, I really do,” said Brandon, who is tough as nails but as polite as a choir boy.
“They want a legitimate NHL tough guy and I know that I can handle myself with anybody in the NHL. I’ve just got to prove that I can move around and skate up and down the wing and be a good fourth line player.”
“I’m being realistic here, I’m not going to sit out a year at 30, it’s not an option. My father is like me, he has a lot of faith, and I have a family to feed at home.”
He hopes to play in at least one of the Isles’ four remaining exhibition games and has every intention of being on the roster when the team heads home to Uniondale, N.Y., for the regular season next week.
“I really do like my chances,” he said. “Considering I haven’t been at a real practice for two years, I don’t feel out of place at all. I just want to make the best of this chance.”
— with files from durhamregion.com and Torstar News Service