By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
What is a hockey game? It’s a test of wills – and skills – on ice.
But sometimes, that game can be so much more.
For longtime goalie Guido Artioli, who turns 75 this year, the games of the Forest Park Hockey League have been a lifetime connection to the sport he loves.
They’ve also been the foundation for more that four decades of international friendships for Artioli and his teammates. For the past 47 years, the league has played in March tournaments with an over-35 hockey league from Dorval, a suburb of Montreal, Canada.
A league like no other
It was a quiet, unassuming Artioli – and his younger teammate Robert Desilets – who came to Prime’s offices in early March to talk about the Forest Park League – a decades-old competitive outlet for men who played hockey in their youth, and still love putting on skates and battling it out on the ice.
The League, Artioli explained, was an outgrowth of games that guys who had played hockey in high school and college used to put together on some of the outdoor rinks in 16 Acres in the 1960s. It was his friend, Paul Thibault, who first approached him in 1971 about starting an indoor league for hockey players over the age of 30.
“There were about five of us who actually formed the league,” Artioli remembered. Their first home was the Olympia Ice Rink in West Springfield.
“We started off with 10 teams. Teams come and go. For the last 10 years we’ve been nine teams.” he said.
In 1973 when Cyr Ice Arena opened in Springfield’s Forest Park, the league moved to the city, adopting the moniker the Forest Park Senior Hockey League.
“We’ve been there uninterrupted since the rink opened,” Desilets said. According to Artioli, the league dropped the “senior” from their name several years ago because it made them “sound a little old.”
Currently 22 team members and two goalies have the ice on Wednesday nights at Cyr Arena from 6 to 11 p.m., with more hockey talk continuing in the locker room and parking lot after the last skates come off. Former college – and some semi-pro players, sometimes including guys from the Eastern Hockey League – have started coming to the league right around age 30 now, with the current oldest team members just shy of 60. The league doesn’t record standings and up to five years ago, didn’t even run the scoreboard but “every player on the ice knows the score,” Artioli said.
“Our league is still competitive, for a guy 58 [years old] to still be playing, that’s pretty good,” Desilets added. That’s because the Wednesday night games draw talent – over the years local hockey notables such as former Springfield Indian and American Hockey League scoring great Jimmy Anderson, and former National Hockey League player and Falcons Head Coach Marty McSorley, have skated with the Forest Park league.
“We have a red line – we’re the only league that has it – so we have a two-line pass,” Desilets explained. “It’s the way hockey has been played forever, but for our league it’s to slow the game down so you can play until you’re 55 against the younger guys.”
Another difference between the Forest Park and other adult hockey leagues is its governing structure. The league has a president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer who meet monthly, and each of the nine teams has a team representative that attends the meetings and brings any information or issues back to his team.
“The charter of the league was for fun and fitness, not necessarily for winning playoffs and championships,” Desilets said. “I’ve played in those other leagues and there’s no league like ours.”
Over the years, Artioli said the Forest Park teams have seen guys play up into their early 80s, though the talent that’s joined the teams in recent years has brought the age of players down considerably.
“We grandfather everybody, nobody gets turned out,” he said. “We don’t tell anybody they have to go, but they realize the talent [that’s the competition].”
Though Artioli still suited up regularly to take his place before the net on Wednesday nights up until a few years ago, he and Desilets said the Forest Park Hockey League is a better fit for athletic middle age players right now.
“You used to be able to play until 60, now 50 is the new 60,” Artioli said, adding that there’s now an over-45 Thursday night league at Smead Arena in Blunt Park where older players often continue to skate.
A longtime home for a onetime ‘terrible’ player
An ace goalie that’s known for the number of hits he could take, Artioli said his sport of choice wasn’t exactly a perfect fit right out of the boards.
“I played [Junior Varsity] for Trade [high school] and I was terrible,” he admitted. “I couldn’t skate for crap [at the time]. The goalie quit, and I put my hand up.
“I haven’t gotten much better [as a skater], but I’ve sure enjoyed myself,” he added.
And he’s played the net position with every team he’s been with ever since.
Artioli said in the late 1950s he “even skipped school as a kid” to go and watch Eddie Shore’s Springfield Indians practice at the Coliseum in West Springfield. He said Shore used to work most of the players at one end of the ice, but Shore and a player named Kent Douglas didn’t get along, and Douglas would work the other net. Artioli said he used to go out onto the ice and stand in as goalie for Douglas and other players – until a member of the Indians staff told him he didn’t have good enough equipment to prevent him from being badly hurt.
Artioli said he took that love of hockey with him when he joined the service, briefly organizing a team of Marines to play in the local leagues when he was stationed in Minnesota. When he came back to Springfield, he picked up where he left off, playing hockey whenever he could until a motorcycle accident in 1978 nearly disabled him. The crash took part of one heel, leaving him unable to walk properly or climb the ladders required by his job as a lineman, let alone skate. A cutting-edge operation by a visiting surgeon eventually gave him back some of his heel.
“It took three years before I could skate [again], five years before I could climb a pole,” Artioli said. During the years he was raising a family, he said he used whatever equipment he could afford to play his position on the ice , including, for a time, a catcher’s breastplate instead of a goalie’s chest protector.
“With three kids, I couldn’t spend too much,” he said.
To this day, Desilets said he’s still in awe of the kind of goalie Artioli has been, even into his late 60s.
“There were nights he’d have to stop 40 to 50 shots. He would lose the game, but he’d make 15 saves that nobody thought would happen. You’d have guys on both sides cheering.” Desilets said. “To be able to be there and see Guido and what he does, that’s the heart of this league.”
Like many players his age, Artioli said he’s slowed down his hockey playing of late, and now often works out at in the winter on Sunday mornings at Cyr, where players of all ages get together for a pick-up game with no checking.
“We play for fun, have some refreshments, and go home,” he said.
But he still keeps his hand in with the Forest Park League, and now helps out administratively with another over-40 league on Monday nights at Smead Arena in Blunt Park, making sure the dues are collected and the rink is paid.
An international connection
Artioli said the same year the over-30 hockey league was born, his friend Thibault somehow made a connection with a similar league in Montreal, and the two leagues agreed to host each other for a tournament.
The first match up took place at the Coliseum in West Springfield that March.
“It was a little rough around the edges at the beginning. The competition was fierce, not what we wanted,” Artioli said. “We’re here to have fun and make friends.”
The boards of the two leagues met, agreed on what type of on-ice play was going to take place, and the two teams have now been visiting each other’s hometowns for weekend tournaments in March for 47 years. Desilets said there’s no checking and no slap shots in the tournament games, just healthy competition.
“After we play on Saturday, both teams dine together, “ Artioli said. “We have a grand old time, people have made lifelong friends.”
He said when his daughter married some years back; he invited friends from the Canadian team to the wedding. He and his wife also traveled north for the wedding of a friend from the Canadian team.
Desilets said what’s most important about these tournaments is that they’ve remained inclusive over the years, with the competing teams broken down by skill levels.
“We have an A team, a B team and a C team,” Desilets said. The trip north, and the festivities here, are also open to league non-players such as coaches and equipment managers, and former players who “just want to take the trip.”
One for the books
When you think of the game of hockey, it’s hard to think about it being a gentlemanly game. But when you look at the history of the Forest Park League, the description somehow, seems to fit.
“Through all the years you have the league with no standings, no scoreboard, a cultural exchange the we call it with our friends from Dorval. And the big part is not only the length that this is going on, but the friendships that have been going on … the guys come for fun and as the level of hockey has morphed a little bit and skewed down to a little more talent, those same fundamentals are still very much in place of why the league got started in 1971, and why that exchange is still as strong as ever,” said Desilets.
