Login

bozzz · 08-02-2016, 06:49 PM

**** first article bonus, please!

THE VIEW UPHILL FROM ROCK BOTTOM PT 1
The Strange Story of College Hockey Goaltender Georgette Pel

written by: Marcus Anders
for: The Ringer

A/N: Part 2 of this story will be an in person interview conducted live with Georgette Pel tomorrow on our magazine website -- we will be taking questions from our readers, so be sure to check our twitter feed for the exact time we go live!

You wouldn't think it to look at her now, but not even six months ago, 19-year-old Georgette Pel was the best kept secret of the Dalhousie Tigers' women's hockey team. A walk-on her first year, Georgette's startling performance in net during the Tigers training camp had head coach Sean Fraiser scratching his head and wondering how he'd missed the prospecting report on what had to have been a top U19 AAA player.

He hadn't missed anything of course, because Georgette Pel had never played minor ice hockey. Georgette Pel effectively hadn't existed in the world of hockey or outside of it before that August in 2014.

But Sean Fraiser was hard-pressed to question it: after all, she seemed to be exactly what the Tigers had been looking for, with the departure of their senior graduate starting goalie for the CWHL's Canadiennes during the summer. Marie Foucale, the three-year Tigers veteran starting goalie, now part of Montreal's league leading women's crew, had done more for the college club than simply net minding -- her notably aggressive puck handling and large presence on the ice were Dalhousie trademarks. Fraiser had expected the loss of such a touchstone player to not be so easily recovered.

While she spent most of her 2nd year at Dalhousie officially listed as injured reserve, Georgette Pel's inaugural year with the Tigers floored the media and prospect analytics statisticians alike. Pel went from an absolute non-name to putting up record-breaking statistics for the Atlantic University Sports league (AUS). Her first year ended with a regular season set of statistics including a 1.98 GAA, a saves percentage of 95.3%, with 704 raw saved shots, playing the full 23-game season and playing every single game. While Dalhousie's overall defense stats were middling to poor, and an otherwise strong offense stuck saddled with the worst powerplay special team in the league, the Tigers made second round of the playoffs in 2015, primarily on the strength of Pel's performance.

No woman can become an overnight leader, but the anticipated blow from Fouale's departure was delayed. For a while, based on Fraiser's effusive media spotlighting of Pel, it seemed like the Tigers had dodged the fall-out from losing their star player all together. The truth, however, is more strange and fraught even now with so many unknowns.

Earlier this month, I made the trip up to Halifax to talk to the Tigers' hockey office in an attempt to understand the roots of the troubled unsigned goaltender, and Fraiser was more than willing to talk about the history of the Dalhousie Tigers with me.

"It's normal, you know, to have a slump," he says to me while watching tape reviews in his office out of the corners of his eye. "You don't want to have a slump, but women like [Foucale], they make lasting impressions on their teammates. They become iconic, mythic almost, a part of the great tradition of hockey intangibles. She -- Foucale, I mean -- she was touched. They make the whole team better. And when they move on, which, I mean, they have to move on right, but when they move on, it's rough on everyone."

Fraiser's office is less spartan than you might imagine for a women's collegiate hockey program coach, but then again -- some of that is almost certainly thanks to the star power of the woman whose passing through he's still so clearly mourning. More than just the will to win, Marie Foucale brought an enthusiastic media rapport and impressive on-ice acrobatics to one of the most poorly ranked members of the AUS women's hockey division. Those same qualities turned both her and the Tigers as a team into local media darlings and had the effect of skyrocketing ticket sales. And in the wake of those very same sales now comes Fraiser's reward: a tastefully furnished room (honestly larger than a broom closet), a trophy case, a elegantly modern desk with several computers, several monitors, a conference table and, even, a view of the Northwest Arm of the Halifax Harbour.

I let him review some more tape; he's not a man intimidated by long silences, apparently, and it seems only courteous with training camp only two weeks away. Watching him work is curious -- nothing honestly changes all that much from when he's attempting to answer my interview questions, but he's openly methodical to a fault about his tape reviews, dispassionate in a way that doesn't carry over to his bench personality when his women are on the ice. Eventually, though, the need to disturb his reverie outweighs my interest in studying him as a person -- I have to bring up the topic of Georgette Pel, regardless of what wounds lie underneath the mention of her name.

My questions about her, at first, don't even seem to warrant a raised eyebrow.

"Georgette had a way about her, like -- we thought she was gonna step right into Foucale's skates, you know? They seemed almost the same size, but. It's like Peller wasn't quite meant for this existence -- I know how that sounds, but it's true. And if -- and it's a big if -- you were able to get her fully focused and fully into the present of the game, she was," Fraiser pauses, stopping the tape still running on the screen farthest left from him. He takes off his glasses for a minute, cleans them with a lint cloth he produces from his pocket, and then seems to find his words again.

"She was something else, if you could make her play."

Fraiser takes a minute to pull up footage he has of Georgette playing in goal, a highlight reel worthy of a starting SHL goalie -- clever poke checks, impossibly placed glove saves, reaction speeds that make it seem like Pel operates at faster frame rate than the eye can physically track.

"There are players and then there are legends, and Georgette should've been a legend, well beyond the four years she would've spent playing for us, but something was missing."

Missing how?

"I'm not -- I'm not a psychologist. I'm not sure. Maybe drive? Maybe the will to compete? She had the most incredible amount of fun playing I'd seen from anyone in the game, you know, outside of -- hell -- maybe Novice hockey, I don't know. Something was missing," Fraiser shrugs, finally, and puts on his glasses. "She was never really unreliable on the ice, but her skating needed extra practice, and she just. Didn't come to the scheduled sessions to work on her ice confidence. And then she stopped coming to practices all together. It was the weirdest thing, she hadn't been to a single skate for a month, and then at a home game, Simon -- her captain at the time -- spots her watching the game from the stands.

"And now, as I understand it, Georgette's no longer a student of Dalhousie, so."

I tell him about Pel's ambition to join the SHL, and he looks skeptical for a long minute, searching my face as if it's a piece of sheet metal and he's looking for flaws. The intensity of his focus is astounding, and a full 360 from the man only half playing attention to my questions a moment ago, however amiably he was answering them. Suddenly he smirks, face crinkling at the edges.

"Well, hell, how about that. How about -- I'd ask how it's going, but I'm afraid I already know the answer. But who knows? Maybe ambition's a good look on Georgette. She definitely didn't have any when she was with our organization."

I thank Fraiser for his time and walk back throu gh the university campus, unguided, and find myself migrating towards their hockey rink. I think about Fraiser's dismissal of Pel's potential as a driven, ambitious athlete, and find it honestly a little hard to believe with the facts as given: a girl, at 17 years of age, walks into the first organized ice hockey practice she's ever attended and blows everyone else in the rink out of the water.

That's not just talent.

I managed to schedule a phone interview with Pel's mother, who was beyond incredibly hard to find not least because she doesn't have the same last name as her daughter, and found myself deciding to take it in the Dalhousie arena, up in the top bleachers, recorder in hand. Georgette Pel's mother is Brigit Malenfant, a senior member of Cirque Alfonse who make their home in Sept-Iles, QC. The first thing I do when I get her on the phone is ask her what she does for the circus.

MA: What exactly is your job with them?
Malenfant: I'm sorry, I thought this was a call about my daughter?

She's not the friendliest on the phone, but her English, however thickly accented it is, is impeccable. I try to explain what I'm getting at, and how I'm trying to get an idea of Pel's roots, what kind of kid she was, how she grew up, and provided it was mostly with her mother -- which is something Pel herself has confirmed -- what she does for a living matters.

Malenfant: Well you know, I guess consulting would be the most comprehensive way of putting it. I help produce the show. I specialize in certain performance elements and make sure we hire performers who are capable of putting on the kind of show our name and act are associated with.
MA: And what kind of show would that be?
Malenfant: We -- precision stunt work, mostly, some acrobatics, but we work with knives, swords, fire, hooks, some of it crosses into side-show body modification performances.
MA: Can you elaborate?
Malenfant: When I first joined, way back twenty years ago now almost? There was less regulation, the venues weren't as big or as careful, and you had to, to sell tickets, you know, you had to put on a show. We had a man, Elias, he had figured out how to put thirty knives into his body without injuring anything vital, bleeding out, or passing out from the pain. It was incredible -- we had to give him a month off to recover after two shows, but he had it down to a science. So you know, stuff like that.
MA: It's still stuff like that?
Malenfant: Well maybe not quite so dramatic, but, in spirit, yes.

I don't know what to ask next, it seems too surreal. Had Pel gone with them on the road? Had Pel ever performed with the circus? And although her eventual failure to assimilate seemed more and more understandable, what had sent Pel running from that to the relative normalcy of Dalhousie sports and college life?

Malenfant: I was on the road, so Georgie was on the road; that's just how that was. But you know, every walk of life plays games. They played ball hockey. The stage hands let Georgie play as soon as she could walk. Georgie stole a pair of roller skates from a sporting goods store in Baie-Comeau, I can't remember the name, and I was so angry with her, but she was proud because she'd been good enough with her hands not to get caught. And so they played hockey on skates. As far as I know, Georgie never skated on ice until she went to Dalhousie with her father's money at 17, but Georgie did plenty I never knew about. I was busy. I had a show to run.
MA: Why'd she leave?
Malenfant: I don't really know, but if I had to guess?
MA: Yes?
Malenfant: She wanted to get better.
MA: At what -- hockey?
Malenfant: Of course, at hockey. Hockey is her game.
MA: Like how the circus is yours?
Malenfant: And how asking intrusive questions seems to be yours.
MA: I haven't even tried to ask anything all that intrusive yet.
Malenfant: You're doing alright without trying.

I know the next question is likely to shut her down for good, but again, like with Frasier and Pel, somethings have to be asked.

MA: You said she went to Dalhousie because of her father?
Malenfant: She went to Dalhousie because of hockey. That she was able to go to Dalhousie at all, that she -- at some point -- had finished her TENS and her GEDTS to even apply to college, that was something he'd arranged to help her with, behind my back.
MA: Is he still around?
Malenfant: I have no idea, and I prefer it that way.

She ends the call with me soon after that.

My day is winding down at this point, regular office hours almost over, but there's enough time to stop by the registrar's office and try and sweet-talk my way into viewing Pel's academic record. I have a signed release form with me, although strictly speaking, my wanting to see it isn't proper use of the release. I'm not given a hard time, though.

Georgette Pel seems to have spent a year and a half at Dalhousie, her academics never really all that great, but with a severe slump in her last semester -- everything peppered with incompletes or failing grades. According to her records, she's still on a extended leave of absence, although because she's in academic poor standing, she'll have to reapply regardless to return to her course of studies. It doesn't seem like what she's destined to do, at any rate.

As to why she dropped out of college? Rumors at school and on hockey prospecting websites claim everything from drugs and alcohol to pregnancy and emotional breakdowns. If you talk to the woman herself, she'll just shrug it off -- say school wasn't for her. My pre-interview phone call for her was short, though not terse or ill-received. Pel's agent (yes, she has one, had to get one when media scrutiny became unbearable two years ago after her sudden college drop-out) had put us in touch via e-mail, and she seemed excited to be doing an interview. I'm looking over my interview notes from it now, finally back in my hotel room in downtown Halifax, getting ready for my flight back to slightly fairer weather tomorrow.

Georgette Pel is very clear about a few things, things that speaking with her mother corroborated. Her father gave her money when she turned 15, even more of it when she turned 18 and was on record as being enrolled in college. It was a lot of money -- enough that if she'd left it alone she would've had to worry about employment at some point, but probably not for a very long time. Georgette Pel, however, has not left the money alone.

It's not (probably) what you think, though. Despite the party animal rumors, and the drug addiction rumors, Pel has put over fifty percent of her trust into a series of organized charity works -- all of them surrounding, you guessed it, hockey. She has a series of sliding scale hockey camps that double as day-care programs, provided you can furnish the appropriate paperwork, that accepts government assistance waivers so working parents can have a safe, educational, and supportive environments to leave their kids on school break.

It's all legitimate, it's all very community based and low-key, hardly something she wants her name attached to because she's insistent it's not about the publicity the camps could bring her.

Another thing Pel is clear about is her desire to play hockey this season -- even giving me the go ahead to quote her e-mail response to me about prospecting the SMJHL as a free agent as a teaser for tomorrow's live interview.

"College wasn't for me, but organized hockey is -- definitely is -- without a doubt for me. I learned a lot from Sean Fraiser's system, even though I only played in it for a little over a year. I went from having very little idea of what it was like to be a professional at playing a game to being tossed in at the deep end. The jump from playing street hockey to college hockey is huge. When you're a kid, the idea of responsibility and play don't go hand in hand, and I think, when I came to the Tigers at 17, I was still a kid. I'm 19 now, but in two years, I feel like I've learned so much about the space that exists inside of the core of sports, of hockey, that feeds on things like responsibility and sportsmanship. I'm ready to play, I've been ready to play, but now I'm also ready to play professionally -- in every sense of the word -- and I want to do that with the SHL and the SMJHL. I need hockey to keep me anchored to who I am, and I'm just not built to do anything other than what I love for the rest of my life. The SHL is a part of that destiny now, one way or another."

Sean Fraiser was never convinced Georgette Pel was ambitious enough to go all the way, and let her go. Pel's mother was entirely convinced Georgette Pel's only path in life was to follow where hockey lead her, and let her go. Georgette Pel, on the other hand, is about as likely to let go of her dreams as she is to take up investment banking, if her e-mail is anything to go by. Maybe she was just waiting for the clouds to pass before starting her climb up the hill hockey immortality sits on top of -- it always helps to have clear line of sight when setting yourself up for a shot at the top.

Come back tomorrow when we get down to the nitty gritty of what Georgette Pel expects from her professional hockey career, her playing style, what she envisions she can bring to the SHL, and how she plans to go after it after stumbling down from college hockey.

(words: 3041)

**RomanesEuntDomus** · 08-02-2016, 07:19 PM

Wow, great read, keep it up =D>

vbottas17 · 08-02-2016, 10:48 PM

This is awesome, I can't wait for part 2!

Eggy216 · 08-02-2016, 11:05 PM

Hey <a href='index.php?showuser=2349' rel='nofollow' alt='profile link' class='user-tagged mgroup-3'>Fivehole</a> you actually get a bonus (like $1M or something) at 3,000 words so you should try to add the less than 300 you need to get that extra cash!

Jenny · 08-02-2016, 11:11 PM

this is so interesting, i love it!

bozzz · 08-02-2016, 11:16 PM

Quote:Originally posted by Eggy216@Aug 2 2016, 10:05 PM
Hey <a href='index.php?showuser=2349' rel='nofollow' alt='profile link' class='user-tagged mgroup-3'>Fivehole</a> you actually get a bonus (like $1M or something) at 3,000 words so you should try to add the less than 300 you need to get that extra cash!

Oh shit, for real? Hmm

Let me see what I can do to fix that, then, thanks for the heads up!

mel24 · 08-02-2016, 11:46 PM

This is fantastic! I can't wait to read what you've got for us tomorrow. Good luck in free agency!

Eggy216 · 08-03-2016, 07:22 AM

Quote:Originally posted by Fivehole@Aug 2 2016, 10:16 PM

Oh shit, for real? Let me see what I can do to fix that, then, thanks for the heads up!

Yep! There's a few little increases in the pay scale along the way, but the biggest and final one is at 3,000 from 2.4M to 3.5M, so you'll get 7M with the first article bonus

Angello · 08-03-2016, 07:58 AM

Great article! Smile

Navigation

Extra Menu

About us