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Teddy Cuddles: The Biography

Chapter 1: Early Life.
On April 1st, 2000, in Brooklyn New York, and at 4:20 in the morning, Lisa and Steven Cuddles gave birth to their first and only son, Theodore. Growing up in Brooklyn was tough. Theodore who went by Teddy was singled out most of the time because he was a white italian boy in a mostly all black community. Because of this, Teddy was a lonely kid for most of his life. He played basketball from ages four to twelve like most of the other kids in his community. He was a decent ball player, but nothing spectacular. On December 12th, 2007, when Teddy was only 7 years old, his father was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. Steven Cuddles had just two weeks to live before he would die. In Steven’s Late teens and early twenties, he played ice hockey and was drafted, but never made it pro. He retired at age 24 to finish his education and start a family. Although Steven had not played hockey in years, he still loved to skate. He had not had the time to go in years because he worked so hard to provide for his family. In the two weeks before he died, Steven took Teddy skating almost every day, and Teddy fell in love as soon as he stepped on the ice. He was a natural. After his first week on the ice he had his heart set on playing ice hockey like his father. On Christmas that year, the day before Steven would die, Teddy received everything he needed to play hockey from his dad. Skates, a stick, an old JOFA helmet, padding, mouthguard, and all the other equipment a hockey player would need. Steven and Teddy spent the whole day passing the puck back and forth at the local hockey rink, enjoying their last day together. The next day was the day that Steven would die on. In the hospital, before Steven passed, he told Teddy, “Make me proud son, finish what I started and go pro. I’ll be smiling down on you from heaven. I love you.” Those were Steven’s last words before he passed. Teddy and his mother Lisa were heartbroken. It was so hard to lose such an amazing man and an amazing father. But it was just Lisa and her son now, and Teddy was determined to make his father proud. Teddy took some time out of school and sports after his father’s passing to mourn and recuperate. He and his mother were extremely sad, and with the rest of their family living far away in Indiana, they did not have people to share empathy with besides each other. Because of this, the two began to see a counselor regularly to get out their emotions and to keep their minds healthy. Teddy gained some sympathy from the kids at school who mostly stayed away from him because of the racial boundaries. Many of the kids did not have a father either. Some of their dads died in gang shootings or their dads left them when they were young. They understood what Teddy was feeling. In the end, Teddy was extremely hurt by his father’s passing, but the silver lining was that he became determined to become a pro hockey player, and he made some friends.

Chapter 2: Teddy Starts Hockey
The next year, after Teddy and Lisa recovered from losing Steven, Teddy began playing hockey. Teddy was several years behind most of the kids he played with because it was his first year while most of the others had been playing for three. Teddy did not let this discourage him in the slightest. He would not let his father down. Every day after school, Teddy would go down to the ice rink and practice on his own. He created his own drills for himself, developed his stickhandling, shot, and skating. He would not leave the rink until he truly felt like he got better as a player. However, Teddy’s dream took a big toll on his mother. Lisa had to work more and more to keep the family financially stable because Teddy’s father was the family’s main source of income. Lisa was working three part time jobs and driving Teddy to early morning games and practices made things very hard for her. She was an extremely strong and proud woman, and she did not resort to using drugs as a way to ease the stress. This taught Teddy an important lesson. He learned that no matter how tough things get, you can always make it through if you battle and always go toe to toe with your problems. With Teddy’s already strong work ethic, his drive to finish what his dad started, and the lesson he learned from his mother, Teddy became one of the best players on his team quickly. Teddy did not always play right wing. In fact, he started playing hockey as a defenseman. He was solid on the blue line, but sometimes got caught up ice because he played a more offensive style of game for a defenseman. Because of his offensive style of play, his coach decided to try him at right wing, since he is a righty. In his first game on right wing he scored twice and had an assist. He was a natural on the wing and his coach kept him there for the rest of the season. When Teddy was in fifth grade, his team made an amazing run to win their division after coming in the last place they could to make the playoffs. Since they won divisionals, that meant they would move onto states to see who was the best team in New York. The team battled their way to the state finals, to face the number one ranked team in the state, a team based in Buffalo. On paper, Teddy’s team was greatly outmatched. Teddy’s team was considered one of the worst teams to make it to states and Buffalo was considered the best. When game day rolled around, the stadium was packed. Most of the teams who already lost ended up staying to watch the finals. The state tournament was based in Rochester, and the finals were played in the Rochester Americans’ arena and the stadium was about seventy five percent filled, which is insane considering the game was a fifth grade youth hockey game. Now, it was time to start the game. Buffalo came out flying in the first period. They were playing just as well as they were expected to, if not better. They made playing against Brooklyn look effortless. Buffalo scored three goals in the first period, dashing the hopes of the Brooklyn team. In the locker room during the first intermission, Teddy’s team was down in the dumps. They had their heads down and were ready to give up. But not Teddy. Teddy stood up in the locker room and told his team that the game was not over yet. He told them that they have been underdogs the whole year and there is no reason to give up now. The team was alive. A chant started: “Why not us? Why not us?” They walked out of the locker room buzzing and pumped up. When the puck dropped for the second period, Brooklyn came out so fast, and completely surprised the team from Buffalo. Brooklyn was flying all around the ice. The roles were reversed. Brooklyn was dominating Buffalo now. Teddy scored twice in the second period and the period ended with a score of 3-2. In the second intermission, nobody said anything. Only three words were said when getting ready to hit the ice, “Let’s do this”. Brooklyn was in the zone. However, so was Buffalo. The teams were dead even throughout the first eighteen minutes of the third period. However, with 2 minutes left in the game, Teddy picked up the puck in the defensive zone, and sent his center off on a breakaway. He scored! The game was all tied up at three each side, and it stayed that way until the end of regulation. Off to overtime now. The puck dropped and the arena went quiet. Everyone in the stands was just waiting and waiting for that golden goal to be scored, the goal to send one team to regionals, and one team back home. Both teams were playing their hearts out, they went back and forth and back and forth. Nobody could break through and end the game. The game was dead even, until Teddy came off the bench. The play started with a face off in Brooklyn’s defensive zone. Teddy’s center won it back to the defenseman positioned behind the center and Teddy flew the zone. The defenseman looked up and saw that he could send Teddy in on a breakaway. He lofted the puck over the other team and Teddy was in! Teddy collected the puck and skated for goal. He faked a shot, then went to the backhand, and slid the puck just beyond the goalie’s outstretched pad. He scored, game over. Brooklyn was off to Regionals against all odds. Unfortunately, Teddy’s team’s luck and success had to run out at some time, and they fell to a highly ranked team from Pennsylvania in the second round of regionals. Although the team did not go all the way, Teddy did learn something: he is clutch. He loves being in high pressure situations. He is not scared of big time situations, in fact he strives in these situations. Teddy continued playing hockey every year, getting better and better, learning new skills, skating better, and getting stronger. Teddy went on to middle school and played hockey for his school all three years, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. This really helped Teddy develop as a player. Playing for his middle school team and playing on a club team was double the hockey, and for Teddy that meant double the progression. Everything was going great.

Chapter 3: An Unfortunate Turn of Events
It was mid February and a light snowfall happened one night ago. Due to this, the roads were icy and very hard to drive on. One day, Teddy and his mom were driving to any old morning game. They were on the highway and suddenly, the car in front of them started skidding and Teddy’s mom had to slam on the breaks. The tires lost traction and the car spun off to the side of the rod and slammed into the barrier. Both Teddy and his mother were injured. Teddy was taken off to the hospital with a bad concussion and a broken rib. This took Teddy out of hockey for many months. Teddy was so upset that he could not play hockey, or do anything. He could not go to school because of his bad concussion. Teddy became a bit depressed. He could not do anything he loved. This was also a huge setback in Teddy’s development. Not being able to step onto the ice for month will be a huge setback for any player’s career, young and old, and Teddy was no exception. The injuries ended up keeping him out of playing hockey for five and a half months, missing a large amount of his season. The area of his game that was seriously affected by this injury was his ability to pass. Teddy used to be an elite passes, but ever since the major concussion, his eyes were never as good. He could not see the game, the ice, and the players around him like he used to. This make passing his biggest weakness in his game. No matter how hard he worked at his passing, he knew that it would never be able to make it up to par with the rest of his game. His scoring, skating, defense, and size were still excellent however, especially for his age. He could hang with kids much older than him in that department. After his injury, he slowly made his way back to hockey. When he first came back, his coach did not play him that much. Before the car crash, Teddy was the team’s first line stud. But since his coach wanted to ease him back into the game, Teddy played fourth line minutes. Teddy still had a long way to go to get back up to the speed of the game, and to get back into great shape like he was before getting seriously hurt. Teddy found himself getting tired much more easily than he used to as a result of being out of sports for five and a half months. Going back to school was tough for Teddy. For one, the hundreds of kids in school asking him what happened were extremely agitating and annoying to Teddy. If he had a nickle for every time he said the words “car crash”, “concussion”, and “broken rib”, you would think he had a professional contract. Eventually he stopped explaining what happened to people and just told them to bug off and ask somebody else what happened. Getting back into the groove of into school was the hardest part. Coming back from not being able to go to school because of his concussion was like coming back from summer vacation: you forget everything. Teddy could not remember a damn thing he was taught all year. Teddy went from being one of the top students academically in his grade, to one of the most stupid. While all of the other students got to continue their education and build on what they have learned, Teddy had to sit at home for months and forget everything he learned. The amount of make up work that he received was absolutely immense. The work piled high on the kitchen counter. Teddy had zero social life because of all the make up work. All he did after school was sit at the kitchen table and write, write, write on the endless sea of papers. As one could imagine, this was agonizing work. The work was so difficult for Teddy because he did not remember much of anything from the school year, so trying to do school work on things he forgot was not easy. He also had to teach himself month's worth of lessons for every class because the teachers of course could not rewind the whole class and the whole year for one student. No matter how much work Teddy did, the pile of school papers never seemed to get smaller. It took him the entirety of the school year to finish all of the mind numbing worksheets. The rest of Teddy’s middle school years were relatively uneventful. He continued to be a great student for the following years and he kept playing hockey, being the star on his mediocre middle school team. High School, however, was when things really started picking up for young Teddy.
Chapter 4: High School to Current Day
Teddy’s high school years is where everything began to get really interesting. Teddy continued to be one of the smartest students in his class. School was a breeze for him. This gave Teddy plenty of time to focus on hockey, the game he loved. Playing on his high school team was a fantastic experience for him. As a Freshman, Teddy made the varsity roster out of tryouts and played on a line with two seniors. Playing with two seniors drastically improved his game. He gained valuable mentoring from the two guys. His linemates and the rest of the team immediately took Teddy in as one of their own, even though he was a freshman. Most of the time, the opposite would happen to freshmen, but Teddy was different. Everyone in the locker room knew he was special and that he was going to do great things in the future. The seniors taught him many things, one of them being poise. They taught him how to play like the big boys and how to not back down from anything. They taught him how to do the right thing in all situations. Teddy got miles better from their mentoring. In his freshman year, Teddy let his high school league in freshman scoring, and his team won the division 1 championship for the first time in twenty five years. This really put Teddy on the map for scouts. Teddy continued to play in high school for another year. He was being scouted by many teams in the SMJHJ. He was leading his high school league in points as a sophomore and also had the best plus minus. Still, Teddy was extremely underrated by most scouts. This was most likely due to his young age, making scouts consider him a “project” and not a player who was ready to make the jump right away. By the time the draft went around, Teddy was surprisingly low on the draft board. In fact, Teddy ended up going undrafted. No team from the SMJHJ called his name on draft day. This made Teddy upset, but did not set him back one bit. If anything, going undrafted fired Teddy up and gave him the drive to become a better player. Teddy exploded in his high school league, going three points a game after the SMJHJ draft. These kind of numbers were absolutely unheard of, and soon Teddy had multiple SMJHJ teams wanting to sign him as an undrafted player. Teddy heard offers to many teams. One team that really caught his eye was the St. Louis Scarecrows. Their GM, Joe was extremely welcoming and helpful after he went undrafted, telling him what he needed to do better. Joe offered him a contract and Teddy was quick to accept. The Scarecrows were coming off a s35 game six Four Star Cup loss to the Detroit Falcons, but were on a run and were looking to get back to the Four Star Cup Finals and win it this year. Teddy has always been a winner and has always wanted to win. After Joe described the team, Teddy knew he had to go to St Louis. Teddy was the perfect bottom six player for the Scarecrows. Joining a star-studded lineup, the team was on a roll. With veteran stars making up the top lines and a fantastic rookie class making up the bottom lines, with the new addition of Teddy Cuddles on the fourth line, the team looked to be unstoppable. Teddy was having trouble getting used to the SMJHL life. However, a rookie, looking to become a mentor, Roman Augustus came to Teddy’s aid. Roman taught Teddy the ins and outs of everything the SMJHL had to offer. How to improve as a player, how to make money, everything he needed to know. With Roman’s help, Teddy inserted into the Scarecrow=ow’s lineup easily. In just his fifth career SMJHL game, Teddy scored his first goal and point. Teddy had officially made the show, and he was ready to help St Louis win the Four Star Cup.

Thanks to @karey and @JSS for the sigs!

Teddy Cuddles  |  RW  | Edmonton Blizzard | Hall of Fame
Player Type : Two Way Forward
Height: 6'5" | Weight: 220 lbs | Age: 19
Number: 79
Birthplace: Providence, Rhode Island, USA
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Regular Season Stats :
S35 | STL | GP:28 | G:2 | A:1 | P:3 | PIMs:5 | HIT:7 | Shots:25 | +/-:-4
S36 | STL | GP:50 | G:10 | A:10 | P:20 | PIMs:5 | HIT:97 | Shots:88 | +/-:-1
S37 | STL | GP:50 | G:13 | A:27 | P:40 | PIMs:56 | HIT:120| Shots:146 | +/-:+10
S38 | EDM | GP:50 | G:6 | A:7 | P:13 | PIMs:62 | HIT:114 | Shots:83 | +/-:-18
S39 | EDM | GP:50 | G:7 | A:15 | P:22 | PIMs:36 | HIT:161 | Shots:78 | +/-:-10
S40 | EDM | GP:50 | G:13 | A:29 | P:42 | PIMs:46 | HIT:197 | Shots:109 | +/-:+7
S41 | EDM | GP:50 | G:17 | A:17 | P:34 | PIMs:49 | HIT:143 | Shots:121 | +/-:-4
S42 | EDM | GP:50 | G:17 | A:24 | P:41 | PIMs:52 | HIT:135 | Shots:132 | +/-:+9
S43 | EDM | GP:50 | G:14 | A:23 | P:37 | PIMs:24 | HIT:121 | Shots:121 | +/-:-2
S44 | EDM | GP:50 | G:21 | A:32 | P:53 | PIMs:28 | HIT:131 | Shots:214 | +/-:+19
S45 | EDM | GP:50 | G:13 | A:24 | P:37 | PIMs:51 | HIT:170 | Shots:185 | +/-:+9
S46 | EDM | GP:50 | G:29 | A:31 | P:60 | PIMs:53 | HIT:152 | Shots:195 | +/-:+9
S47 | EDM | GP:50 | G:17 | A:33 | P:50 | PIMs:46 | HIT:182 | Shots:199 | +/-:+8
S48 | EDM | GP:50 | G:22 | A:23 | P:45 | PIMs:26 | HIT:182 | Shots:210 | +/-:+7
S49 | EDM | GP:50 | G:20 | A:25 | P:45 | PIMs:36 | HIT:149 | Shots:208 | +/-:+1
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Post Season Stats :
S35 | STL | GP:7 | G:0 | A:0 | P:0 | PIMs:0 | HIT:2 | Shots:4 | +/-:+1
S36 | STL | GP:6 | G:1 | A:1 | P:2 | PIMs:7 | HIT:14 | Shots:12 | +/-:+3
S37 | STL | GP:13 | G:4 | A:5 | P:9 | PIMs:26 | HIT:26 | Shots:30 | +/-:+7
S38 | EDM | Did not qualify
S39 | EDM | GP:7 | G:3 | A:3 | P:6 | PIMs:4 | HIT:18 | Shots:10 | +/-:+1
S40 | EDM | GP:7 | G:1 | A:6 | P:7 | PIMs:4 | HIT:33 | Shots:15 | +/-:+2
S41 | EDM | GP:7 | G:2 | A:3 | P:5 | PIMs:12 | HIT:15 | Shots:15 | +/-:+1
S42 | EDM | GP:11 | G:5 | A:8 | P:13 | PIMs:10 | HIT:25 | Shots:38 | +/-:+1
S43 | EDM | Did not Qualify
S44 | EDM | GP:11 | G:4 | A:7 | P:11 | PIMs:12 | HIT:31 | Shots:42 | +/-:+3
S45 | EDM | GP:18 | G:7 | A:11 | P:18 | PIMs:24 | HIT:56 | Shots:68 | +/-:+8
S46 | EDM | GP:4 | G:0 | A:0 | P:0 | PIMs:2 | HIT:9 | Shots:11 | +/-:-5
S47 | EDM | GP:6 | G:3 | A:2 | P:5 | PIMs:6 | HIT:24 | Shots:25 | +/-:+2
S48 | EDM | GP:5 | G:2 | A:2 | P:4 | PIMs:0 | HIT:11 | Shots:19 | +/-:0
S49 | EDM | GP:23 | G:7 | A:17 | P:24 | PIMs:18 | HIT:76 | Shots:89 | +/-:-2
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Awards and Achievements:
S37 | STL Kanye Summers Award for Regular Season Team MVP
S37 | STL Bradley Wingels Award for Best Forward
S40 | Gold Medal Winner
S40 | Aidan Richan Trophy Winner
S44 | Became 4th player in Edmonton Blizzard History to reach 1000 Hits
S45 | Challenge Cup Champion
S45 | Anton Razov Trophy for Playoff MVP
S45 | Silver Medal Winner
S46 | 1st Team All Star
S46 | Sarmad Kahn Nominee
S46 | Jef Darr Nominee
S47 | Jef Darr Nominee
S49 | Challenge Cup Champion
S49 | Anton Razov Nominee
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Draft/Signing/Trade History:
S35 | Signed to STL
S36 | Drafted to Calgary 26th overall
S36 | Traded to Edmonton


Ambacas “Femboy Hooters” Cuddles | D | Tampa Bay Barracuda

Former USA Fed Head, Carolina Kraken Co-GM, Tampa Bay Barracuda GM

Good stuff bud keep it up!