Kippin91 - A New Blog

There is an excellent new blog that has just started last week http://kippin91.tumblr.com.

For anyone who has followed my own blog over the last 15 months, that name should sound familiar. And indeed it is. The blog is written by one Shaun Kippin, a personal friend of mine and an English Hockey player, who is currently scoring goals for fun at the Deeside Dragons.

Shaun and I go way back, and I initially got to know him while he played for my local team, also Mike Babcock’s former team, the Whitley Warriors.

Being a Durham lad, Shaun was denied the chance of turning out for the now-defunct Durham Wasps, when the once mighty big blue machine were re-located to Newcastle, but unperturbed, he made his way up through the various junior teams at Whitley. By the time he turned 16, Skippy, as he is affectionately known, was a regular starter for the Warriors. However this coincided with the team going through possibly their worst run of form, and frustrated by the fact his efforts were going to waste moved North of the border to Dumfries in Scotland to play for the Solway Sharks. Let me tell you, when you have a full time job that requires you to work 9-5 throughout the week, and then travelling a 4 hour round-trip just to attend home games is a huge effort, not to mention then travelling to the other end of the country for road games. Thankfully he returned to Whitley Bay in 2008 and came into a team that had just been crowned English Champions a few months earlier and played a significant part in improving them that following season. He went on to captain the Warriors and lead the team in scoring before work commitments saw him leave the Bay for a second time, this time for Cheshire.

With a whole host of teams offering Shaun the chance to turn out for them, it was the Queensferry-based team from North Wales that matched his ambitions. Formerly known as the Flintshire Freeze, the Deeside Dragons won promotion from the ENL North 2 with Shaun playing a prominent part, and once again this season is proving to be equally successful.

The first thing that you notice is just how hard he works for the team, covering every inch of ice and if his team needs him to bleed he does. More than that though how many people can say they would play for a team 2 hours away from their home and commute to home games for 2 years? I think that says a lot about the type of man Shaun is, and shows the level of passion and love he has for hockey.

Aside from hockey, mine and Shaun’s paths crossed once again when we ended up working together, indeed I got to call Skippy boss for a while as he was my manager, and it was during this time that I got to know Shaun the fan. Most people by now will realise how much I love hockey (this blog surely tells you that), in fact I would go as far as to say I am a hockey nerd, and believe me I am in the minority living on the wrong side of the pond. So when I got the chance to talk NHL with Shaun I was surprised by just how much knowledge he has on the sport.

I guess over the years I have assumed there are two types of people who enjoy sport, there are those who play it, and that is their whole life but they don’t necessarily follow Hockey, and there are also those who are not good enough to play hockey so they talk or write about it trying to fill a void created by not playing, which I guess is the category where I fall into. With Shaun he is in both, he lives and breathes the NHL, just like I do, and conversing with one-another meant we gained a mutual respect towards the others knowledge. At work there was, often verbal sparring contests, which is to be expected with me being a Pens fan and Shaun a soft spot for the Flyers, but the banter was always great fun.

When I first decided to start this blog last year Shaun was one of the most supportive of the idea. Like him it is my dream to one day be a professional hockey writer in the NHL, so with that in mind, I am delighted that Shaun has decided to start his own blog. I have enjoyed his first post on Fighting in Hockey, and look forward to his future work. I know with his insight into playing the game, it adds a special angle to his writing, and for any followers of mine from North America I urge you to read his blog. This is what a regular English Hockey Player’s life is like, how the game is a minor sport in this country and the love and passion shown by us Brits to want to play it and follow it from across the pond.