Niagara Health physicians will trade scrubs for skates, and staff will swap portable workstations, pens or pliers for pucks when they face-off in a friendly hockey game Thursday night.
The Niagara Ice Docs will battle the Defibrillators in a match that’s been decades in the making for Richard Sit, Defibrillators’ captain and founding member.
“I’ve been at Niagara Health for 26 years and I’ve been wanting a hockey team for 26 years,” says Sit, Manager of the Biomedical Engineering team. “I knew the Ice Docs existed but that was for physicians.”
Sit, who laces up his jets for seven different rec hockey teams, got his wish last November after Facilities Manager Patrick Raymond, who was also keen to form a team with his coworkers, reached out to say his former employer wanted to go skate to skate with NH in early December.
With the gauntlet laid down, Sit rounded up others within the organization known to partake in a little puck play and the Defibrillators were born.
“I asked around to the people I knew at Niagara Health who played hockey and then all of a sudden, we had a team,” Sit says. “There was so much engagement and we had so much fun that everyone asked if we could play more games.”
Soon after their inaugural dustup, the Defibrillators had an eight-game season planned with competitions against other organizations and professional associations. It was only a matter of time before they’d meet the Ice Docs – a play on the Niagara Ice Dogs Ontario Hockey League team name – at centre ice.
The team, made up of Niagara Health physicians and their colleagues practising elsewhere in the region, began suiting up long before Dr. Erik Zufelt arrived for his residency in family medicine in 2011 and eventually took over as team captain. The Ice Docs play pickup in Jordan on Wednesday afternoons, which is open to anyone in healthcare, and travel around the Golden Horseshoe for physician-only games.
“When I came to Niagara 15 years ago, the first thing I said was, ‘OK, where are we going to skate?’” recalls Dr. Zufelt, who practises with the Niagara Medical Group Family Health Team in Niagara Falls. “It turns out there were guys running (pickup) for an hour on Wednesdays almost as long as I’ve been alive and it’s a great fit.”
The Defibrillators will be looking for a lifeline Thursday night when they meet the Ice Docs at the blue line at Jack Ballantyne Memorial Arena in Welland. They’re coming off a 5-2 loss in the opener of their two-game showdown and are looking to shock the Docs on the scoreboard to even the series.
The puck drops at 9:15 p.m.
Regardless of who wins, it really is about playing the game – and connecting with other longtime hockey lovers behind the stethoscope or engineering software.
“Our team grew by word of mouth and now I see people I’d never met or worked with before in the hallways and we’re saying ‘Hi,’” Sit says. “We’ve had a lot of people who haven’t played since COVID and now, they’re getting back into it, so that brings me a lot of joy as well. The camaraderie with teammates is amazing in such a short period of time.”
That team spirit keeps Dr. Zufelt on the Ice Docs roster.
“You show up and everyone’s in for a skate and a workout, and just the love of hockey,” he says. “You cheer for each other, air out all of your grievances and difficulties, and build those working relationships.”
And it’s not all about the glory when a team nets a W, either.
The Niagara Ice Docs will play host to the Docs on Ice charity hockey tournament in 2030. Held in a different Ontario community each year, Docs on Ice brings together physician teams with a shared love of hockey and philanthropy that benefits the host region.
Dr. Zufelt has played in the tourney for the past 20 years. He expects as many as 60 teams to participate in the Niagara edition, which is already well into the planning stage.
“Anyone who’s ever played in it knows it’s just a great setup,” he says. “It’s all about fundraising for a local charity and the camaraderie.”
