Who are your fellow leaguemates and where the hell did they come from? Every hero needs a proper origin story. To be fair, so does every villain. We’ll leave it to you to decide which is which.
Jeff Green
Sena, one of the true legends of D5, told me one day that she had a buddy who was moving to NYC and interested in playing. Whether she met him in some random hockey league or some random Burning Man-esque situation, who the fuck knows (my money would be on the latter) but she also said that he could play in goal or out. Which was lucky for him because this was back when we capped everything at eight teams but also had enough ladies for two girls on the court at a time, meaning we also had to cap guy registrations every year at either 72 or 80 (for reference, we currently have 112 registered for the spring and there’s another week left). Jeff being Jeff, he registered at the last minute so I asked if he would be willing to play in net. And he was, but he would have to use the league gear that we had in a rinkside storage unit before the vagrants and addicts of the area started using it to store drugs, then stole some equipment to presumably buy more drugs.
He also told me that he played “B” in Canada which we quickly learned is a higher level of hockey than any standard American league as he got drafted as the 6th of 8 goalies off the board, then reeled off an insane 7-0 record with a 1.65 GAA en route to a 1st place regular season finish for green and a trip to the finals, where they would lose a tight decision after it rained midway through the semis and we literally wiped down the entire rink with paper towels. This was also the last time that blue didn’t make the D5 semifinals, a full year before anyone knew what the hell covid 19 was and the season where Jack and Annie met. Speaking of which…
Annie
Annie subbed in a D5 game one day in Spring 2019 when Jenn’s team was badly short so Hogg brought in some random What The Puck subs. Planning out the summer season, I made the incredibly consequential decision to track down her email and hit her up about it.
Having originally planned on drafting her because she looked quite promising in that one half-game subbing, I would also get so high during the next draft that I took 3 girls in the first 6 rounds which is a lot, even back when each team needed 5, so I had to take a few guys and totally forgot to draft her. No wonder blue finished last this season. She would fall to round 11 where she would be selected by a Cheetahs squad that also featured rookie Braun and rookie AK who just so happened to party with some guy with space sheets on his bed named Jack. The rest, as they say, is history. Annie ranks 15th all time in points, 17th in goals, 8th in assists, 2nd among ladies, with four ladies scoring titles, four player of the year nominations, one player of the year win, a JD Butler Memorial Award and four cups (two as captain/co-captain). Truly one of the best business resumes this league has ever seen. And yet, the grinding of tape never ends even in a truly painful captain season last year.
Brett Marks
In the summer of 2021 we found out that Barstool was going to put on their first ever hockey tournament. This was also when Jenn still worked there so naturally we got right in. With available divisions of A, B, C and D, my associate Jeff felt that we could win C. Boy, was he wrong as in the semi-finals we faced a team that featured two guys who turned out to be on Team USA. Brett was not one of those guys but he was friendly with those guys and after they whooped our asses they joined us at the shot ski.
Somehow, this moment even made Pink Whitney’s Three Year Anniversary Video which is kind of ridiculous. Even they could sense what a stud prospect Brett would end up being for D5. He is now a two time champion, joining a select club of players who have scored a championship winning goal.
A very impressive D5 career, borne out of a very impressive shot ski situation. And, in case you’re wondering, Jenn picked up one of those USA guys that very night afternoon. Bet that.
Mel
Caitlin used to go to this gym called Brick back before it was discovered that said gym was a borderline ponzi scheme with the owner failing to pay rent for many, many years. But for a while she would mention some girl who goes to that gym and sometime wears Delaware hockey apparel. I told her that Delaware sucks at hockey but we should still try to get her into a game. We got Mel to show up to a BTSH game where Hicks and I spent most of the day drinking boxed wine and dancing to the live performances of Mat Kastella just outside the courts in the park. Mel got in on some of those dances, some of that wine and got to sub another game or two that day. I then brought her to a party at Hicks’ house where she watched me play beer pong for like two hours, but refused to play a single game herself. No, really:
From there she decided that she did indeed love hockey again and registered for the following D5 season which started just a few weeks later. And four years later, she’s still here. I still don’t know if we’re friends though.
Adam Satok
Back in 2019 there was this guy named Davis on the BTSH free agent list. One day very early in the season, I emailed him and he told me he was finishing up college in Canada but would be moving to NYC full-time on June 19. I looked at the calendar and told him he was officially in for our game on June 23. Let me tell you – this guy was electric. Sometimes I would look on instagram at 4 AM and see that he was at some insane rave, sometimes not even in the NYC area, then he’d show up to our game the next day with a laptop and tell us that his ibanking job was forcing him to log-in so he had to work on his shifts off. Sometime we’d be playing a game and a group of girls would walk by the rink and start screaming for Davis on their way to brunch, where I assumed he would join them after our games ended. Total savage. Also once sent one of the more absurd requests we’ve ever gotten at the D5 email which clearly amused me far more than it amused Jenn.
He may not have known the difference between the red line and the goal line, but man was he entertaining. He also introduced me to one of the great hockey twitter accounts on the planet. Seriously, this follow gets my highest possible recommendation.
Anyways at this point you might be thinking to yourself “this dude was supposed to write about Satok and then just completely got sidetracked” and you would certainly be correct so let’s bring that beautiful hairy man into the picture. One day Davis tells me that he knows someone who would be interested in subbing for LBS when possible and maybe playing D5. I was like ok this is a friend of yours? His response: “actually no, but I’ve been partying with a guy who told a friend of his that he’s been partying with a guy who plays ball hockey 3x a week and this dude was like ‘I have to meet this guy!'” After taking a few seconds to decode this, I figured it out and told him to make the intro. Satok subbed a few BTSH games that season, then despite my emails registered late for D5 and had to get waitlisted, barely losing out on that final spot of Summer/Fall 2021 to Anthony Otis, with whom I once took this photo which I don’t remember at all and for some reason makes it look like we’re dating.
The next season Satok registered on time for D5 and was drafted to the Goaldiggers squad that went on to win the championship over a Probie/Wes-led Hooligans team. He would go on to become one of the leagues top 20 scorers of all time and even won a scoring title in Summer 2023, although it should be said that he was aided by some weird Simon tactics, pulling his goalie down 3 and 4 goals to allow Satok to score two goals in the final minute of his final game of the season, an 11-6 win over the Blancs. Tough situation for Jason Campbell who had taken over the scoring lead earlier that night but anything can happen on a D5 Friday night. Satok remains in the league to this day and is projected to be a 2nd/3rd rounder in next week’s draft. And it all began with a March 2019 email to a totally unrelated dude. Life is so strange sometimes, with twists and turns we can never fully predict, and as the show Dark taught us, we are but wanderers in the darkness; travelers on an unpredictable path, shaped as much by the detours as by the destinations. But if you’re reading this, odds are your path somehow led you to this league. And, for the most part, we are eternally grateful for that.
