You Never Forget the First One

Welcome to teddy bear toss night, Larry and Dave!

Saturday night against Halifax marks the Moncton Wildcats' 14th annual teddy bear toss game. Before Pink in the Rink or Movember, this was pretty much the one big charitable night of the hockey season, give or take a food drive or two. Plus, you get the chance to throw a projectile at an official! Seems like the type of idea that was the brainchild of Jos Canale... although old Jos might've had charity brick night instead of teddy bears. Of course, this game has become a staple of junior teams from coast to coast. Back when it started in Moncton in January, 1999 however, it was still very much a novel concept. This got me thinking about the first of these game ever to be held by the local junior squad.

The match in question took place on the evening of January 29th, 1999 against the Victoriaville Tigres. Correction... against Allain Rajotte and the Victoriaville Tigres. Of course, Rajotte was more of a garbage can tosser as opposed to stuffed toys, but I digress. There always seemed to be particularly bad blood between Moncton and Victoriaville back then... in fact, until the year before, Moncton and Victoriaville had been divisional rivals (hard as that is to believe in this much more Maritime-centric era of the Q). The teams had already engaged in a spirited, fight-filled affair in Moncton earlier in the season, however the two clubs had played twice in Victoraville since then without incident.

Then came the teddy bear toss.

Basically, had this game been played nowadays, in the kinder, gentler Q, there would be suspensions a mile long. Back then however, it wasn't even the most violent game played at the Coliseum that season. The two staged fights right off the bat, one a tussle between David Walker and Edin Burazerovic two seconds in, the other a fight between Jacques Lariviere and Andre Corbeil Jr with 14 ticks off the clock, what with the pre-staged nature of both as well as the seemingly mandatory helmet and elbow pad removal would've resulted in lengthy vacations for all involved. Even less noteworthy combatants such as Dimitri Kalinin and Patrick Grandmaitre joined in the flurry of fisticuffs. In fact, not only was it Kalinin's second career fight (the first one coming against - of course - Victoriaville) but it was the Russian defencemen's powerplay goal at 1:45 of the first period that brought forth the barrage of stuffed animals from the crowd of 5601.

In the end, the Cats won 7-2 (Lariviere and Walker... not known for their hands around the net also got in on the scoring with a goal and an assist respectively), there were nine fights in total and the game was considered by most to be the most complete effort put forth all season by Moncton, who would go into what almost felt like holding pattern for the remainder of the season, leading directly to a first round sweep at the hands of perennial playoff nemesis, the Rimouski Oceanic. The intensity and compete level shown on January 29th simply never appeared again at the Coliseum that season.

But it sure made for a memorable inaugural teddy bear toss game... although in terms of actual quantity of bears, it kind of paled in comparison to this:

But hey... we had fights! And lots of goals! And Clark Udle! Yay us!