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There's Another Flyers Team In Town
Sled Hockey Team No. 4 In US, Aiming To Be Champs
PHILADELPHIA - It is the off-season for hockey – except for one group of Flyers.
The first goal of these hockey players was just getting the chance to play.
Now, these guys want to win a championship.
These players in orange in black have cleared many hurdles to play sled hockey, and they're just getting ready for their season.
Once he's out of his car, it's not easy for Zach Jackson to get around. Because of a birth defect, he has never had the use of his legs, which means he couldn't play his favorite sport.
But Jackson is still an athlete. He says he loved baseball and hockey never crossed my mind – never, until he was introduced to sled hockey.
Zach is the goalie for the Flyers Sled Hockey Team. It's still two blades, just on a sled instead of skates.
Seventeen players, ages 16 to 55, practice at IceWorks in Aston, and each one got here on a different path.
For Mike Doyle, No. 77, it was a motorcycle accident in 1976, when he was only 20.
Doyle said he was going too fast, crashed into a woman's car and slid down the road and mangled his leg.
He hasn't lost that need for speed, but now he keeps it inside the rink.
Our new sled cam showed Fox 29 News cameras that this game is still physical.
They check into the dasher boards, some of them admitting that they've been rattled around by some big boys.
Greg Scott has been coaching hockey for 24 years, from mites to high school and now sled hockey for the past year and a half.
Scott remembers the first practice and thinking he had to take it easy on these guys. That lasted "about 5 minutes," he said.
For Jackson, the only thing that upsets him is giving up the occasional goal.
Otherwise, he wouldn't change a thing.
"I'm happy the way my life is going. If somebody came to me and said, 'You could have the use of your legs back,' I would say I don't want that because, you know, I would miss out on the people that I've met and the things I've experienced," he said.
Ranked fourth in the country, the team will play in a new league in the Atlantic region this fall. The National Hockey League's Philadelphia Flyers help with jerseys and other donations.