Omaha Stylee

Written By: Andy Chaves

The 1986-87 Omaha Lancers were a unique team.  Captain Obvious might as well have typed that line.  But there’s one truly unique item about this team that I’d like to address in this latest blog entry: this team had more local influence on their roster than perhaps any other team in the league.

Six players who had long called Omaha home were on this roster at one point or another during the season. Look at any given USHL roster today and you’d be hard-pressed to find even one player skating with his hometown team. Jed and Jeff Ortmeyer in the mid-late 1990s with the Lancers come to mind, but to have even one is rare today and it was rare back then.

The six players who hailed from the Big O are forwards Jim Murcek and Tim Lowndes, defensemen Tony Ivaskevicius and Bob Kersigo, and goalies Mark Vap and Shaun Sartin.

The Lancers’ first head coach Les Gall held a tryout in the summer of 1986.  There were some players there that had tried out for various other USHL teams that didn’t make the cut, there were some local kids that learned to play under the tutelage of the legendary Motto McLean and other coaches in the Omaha youth and high school ranks, and there were some players the Lancers selected in the draft in May of that year.

Now when we say draft, don’t think of it like the big NFL Draft TV production, where the commissioner of the league comes out and hands you your uniform, has the big photo op, and analysts break down your skills for the next 10 minutes. The USHL Draft in 1986 was a little more scaled down than that. “I think I was just notified by phone call that there was a draft. I didn’t know there was a draft,” Jim Murcek told us.

Murcek, who had been playing Division III hockey at St. Mary’s College in Minnesota, saw the Lancers as an opportunity to further his hockey career. “Playing Division III I wasn't gonna move up. The D1 schools didn't recruit D3 schools, so this was my one last opportunity to reach my goal to play D1 because that league did get scouted by D1 schools.”

Tim Lowndes found out differently. “By the newspaper I learned that I was drafted along with some other guys from Omaha.  I still have the newspaper clip somewhere just saying that me and a few other guys are drafted and it was like, ‘Sweet!’”

To the local players, not much was known about the Lancers and what playing in the USHL would all entail. They were just excited for the opportunity to keep playing beyond the youth leagues and high school.

“I was just getting out of high school, graduating, and heard that they were coming to town,” Tony Ivaskevicius told us. “So prior to that I just kept skating a lot and trying to stay in shape and threw my hat in the ring to see if they would acknowledge me to come to the rink and they did with a letter.”

Goalie Shaun Sartin, an Omaha native at Millard North High School, had an even different path to the team. He tried out for the Lancers initially, but was coming off of a hernia surgery and didn’t have a good tryout.  He didn’t make the team out of the gate, but later during the season the Lancers needed help in goal. “Ed Bruneteau called and said ‘I need a goalie.  Can you help me out this weekend?’ I looked at my parents and said ‘What do you think?’ Well, you help Ed because he was always there for [us].”

Ed Bruneteau was a former Omaha Knights player that had coached in the Omaha youth leagues and was well-known around Omaha hockey circles.

He wasn’t an Omaha native, but he may as well have been. Les Gall was let go after the first 10 games and the Lancers needed an interim coach.  For Eddy—who was 67 years old at the time—not helping wasn’t an option. “That sums it up very well,” Lancers’ original team owner and founder Tom Edwards said.  “Eddy was one of the most giving people we ever met. He would help in anyway he could. Before we hired (third head coach) Shawn (Jones), Eddy was getting weary before we traveled. Two days was a difficult trip.”  We have many great stories about Eddy, but you’ll hear more about those in the documentary. We promise!

Then of course, there’s Mr. Omaha Hockey himself Motto McLean.  Motto is the patriarch of the Omaha hockey scene and had an influence on all the local kids that made the squad.  “He was a legend back then and he became even more of a legend,” Murcek said. “Back then he was the best coach Omaha had.  He treated everybody with respect and had a great hockey background.”

The three of us with Motto McLean following our interview with him!

“He was a good mentor to try to follow,” Ivaskevicius told us.  “It’s the trust and the relationship you had with him. You just kind of felt he was guiding you in the right direction.”

And while Motto didn’t have a lot of direct input with that first Lancers team, he did help Edwards find Shawn Jones, their third head coach that season.  Motto told us, “We went to lunch in Benson and (Tom) said ‘I’m in trouble.’…I said the All-Star Game for the USHL is up in Rochester this weekend. We’ll go up there and find ourselves a coach.”

This pioneering 1986-87 Lancers squad did so much for hockey in the city of Omaha, but having the direct influence of so many Omaha locals makes it an even greater Omaha story.

This is how they do Omaha Stylee.
 

The Puck Drops in Omaha Once Again!

Written By: Andy Chaves

On April 19, 1975, the Omaha Knights lost to the Salt Lake Golden Eagles 4-3 in game 4 of the Central Hockey League’s Adams Cup Playoffs semifinals, and for the next 4,186 days the city of Omaha would be without a hockey team to call its own. 

When Tom and Marilyn Edwards announced in May of 1986 that the Omaha Lancers would be joining the United States Hockey League and would begin play just five months later, you can imagine the buzz it created among hockey fans in the city.  And after drafting, hiring a coach, scouting, recruiting, holding tryouts, practicing, behind-the-scenes organizing, exhibitions, and even some bumps in the road, the Lancers were finally ready for their first game on October 3, 1986.  Of course, the process from May to October wasn’t that simple, but we’ll get into those stories another time.

Around 900 fans filled Hitchcock Ice Arena that night in anticipation of the Lancers’ official opening game against the Des Moines Buccaneers. But even before the doors opened, there were indications that things would not go very smoothly, starting with the sweaters.  “We developed a logo and it was a pretty good looking logo. So we ordered from the vendor that everyone else was ordering from,” Lancers founder and first team owner Tom Edwards told us.  “The day of our first game, the boxes show up and they're not our logo!  They decided that they would create a better logo because they knew more about it!”  The logo was never supposed to have an orange ring--it was supposed to be black, which was the logo’s design following the first season.

As anxious fans packed into the arena, it was time for pregame introductions!  And like the sweaters, that didn’t go off quite as planned, either:  “There was going to be the hoopla with player introductions,” Edwards recalls. “So we had the introductions with the spotlight and to make that work, you turn off the lights in the arena.  We had never practiced turning off the lights, so we turned the lights back on, and it took a long time for them to come back on. So it took away a little bit of the initial charge.”

Finally the referee dropped the puck and it was hockey time in Omaha!  Well, the game itself didn’t turn out to be much of a game.  Des Moines jumped out to an early lead, but about midway through the second period, the Omaha Lancers scored a goal for the first time in team history!  According to Omaha World Herald archives, “[Tim] Lowndes scored on a breakaway at 6:28 of the second period to make it 5 - 1. Lowndes took a pass from Kevin Kamenski just before breaking over the Des Moines blue line. He skated in on goalie Mike Gulenchyn and beat him from close range.”

Finally after 11 Des Moines goals (yes, 11) on 59 shots (yes, 59), the game came to an end, with 11-1 being the final score.  For most everyone involved with that first game, the excitement of the night was over.  Everyone that is, except for head coach Les Gall. According to an Omaha World Herald report, an errant puck hit Gall during the game.  Throughout the third period Gall was feeling dizzy and nauseous, and the feeling continued after the game as well--so much so, that Gall ended up going to the hospital.

In interview after interview, and phone call after phone call, we couldn’t find anyone that could recall exactly what happened or who shot the puck that injured Gall.  For me, it had turned into a little side pet-project—finding the mystery puck-shooter!  Was it a Lancer? Was it a Buccaneer? Was it intentional? (That would be cruel, but not every player on the team thought highly of Gall. It’s our duty to explore every possibility!)  Finally, in one of our final interviews, winger Bruce Weaver filled us in on the mystery of Gall’s injury.

“Brian Knieriem had this wicked slap shot, but he couldn’t control it! He didn’t know where it was going. Nobody knew: the crowd, the goalies, nobody knew where it was going.” Weaver recalls, as he laughs about it—Knieriem’s shot that is, not Gall’s injury. “Les Gall was sitting on the bench, on the edge of the boards running some drills, and Piscopo rips a shot and it goes all the way around and hits him and knocks him backwards. He falls off and cracks some ribs on the players’ bench where they sit.”

Side note: players on the team called Brian Knieriem “Piscopo,” because they thought he looked like Saturday Night Live star Joe Piscopo.  Editor’s note: I can see it.

Weaver’s version disputes the reports we had seen, but Weaver is certain it happened before the first game was even played. “It was the morning skate and then after the game he wasn’t feeling good and turns out he had a couple cracked ribs.  He didn’t go right away,” Weaver recalls. “It was kind of a surprise because he [Gall] was a tough guy and he just kind of wiped himself off. He was hurting, then he ended up in the hospital and we’re like, ‘What happened?’  They said he got hurt during the game and we’re like ‘no, it was a practice injury.’”  According to the World Herald, Gall’s injury was serious enough that he had to remain in the hospital for a number of days, and even missed the Lancers’ next two games.

Thankfully, the pre and post-game excitement was calmer for most of the remaining games.  “Most” is the operative word here, but those are stories that you’ll learn more about as this project progresses.  But the story of the Lancers’ first ever game is a story that is probably more interesting than most any other teams’ first ever game, and just one story that was a part of this unique team.

Thanks to DropYourGloves.com and the Omaha World Herald for facts and information in this post.

The Typo

Written by: Andy Chaves

If not for one typo, the Lancers’ 0-48 season may never have happened.

If not for one typo, there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t be producing this documentary.

Through our research and interviews, we have discovered that while several factors contributed to the Omaha Lancers going winless for the 1986-87 season, the main underlying cause was simply that they didn’t have the talent throughout their line up to compete with other USHL teams.  And while one player wouldn’t have necessarily turned the Lancers’ season around, it’s very possible that even one player could have tipped the score sheet just enough to get the Lancers in the win column that long first season.

Just one day after owner and founder Tom Edwards publicly announced the Omaha Lancers would begin play in the USHL, coaches and owners from across the league gathered in Mason City, Iowa for the annual league meetings and player draft.

“I don’t know that they (the Edwards) had the experience or anybody to work with on how to get a USHL team together.” Said Brian Knieriem, a forward on the 1986-87 Lancers.  “There were guys I played against in the USHL at Denver University and I know those coaches that had been coaching for years in the USHL knew how to do it. They looked at rosters, looked at ages, looked at anything they could to grab a player and get rights.”

As the draft progressed, the Lancers and the other nine teams took turns selecting their players. 

Enter Rick Berens.

For dozens of American teenage hockey players, the best route to D1 hockey (and perhaps beyond) was through the USHL.  And in the summer of 1986, Rick Berens was looking for his own path to hockey success.  The Lancers liked what they saw in him, and selected him to be one of the very first Omaha Lancers. 

Another coach had his eye on Berens as well:  Rochester Mustangs’ head coach (and current Air Force Academy head coach) Frank Serratore.  “Rick Berens was a kid I wanted pretty bad.  When they drafted him I was like, ‘Geez, I wanted Ricky Berens.’” Serratore reflected during our interview with him.

According to Serratore, when you drafted a player you had to state the player’s name, hometown, and birth date.  But the Lancers’ brass made a critical mistake that may have changed the course of Omaha Lancers history.

“When they drafted him they gave Palantine, Illinois, and they gave his birthdate.  And they gave the wrong birthdate.” Serratore recalled. “I feel bad now….[but] I waited for my last pick and I drafted Rick Berens from Palantine, IL…with THIS birthdate. And I ended up getting Rick Berens on a technicality.”

And just like that, because of a typo, the Lancers missed out on Rick Berens.

Knieriem recalls, “A coach looked at his birthday and it was wrong, so he called them on that and went on to play in Rochester.  Otherwise [Berens] was in Omaha, and that would've changed things.”

How much would Berens have changed things in Omaha?  It’s impossible to know exactly, but consider that during the 1986-87 season, Berens scored 43 goals and totaled 84 points on a Rochester team that won the Anderson Cup as the USHL regular season champion, the Clark Cup as the playoff champion, and the US Junior A national championship.  In fact Berens’ 43 goals were more than the Lancers’ top 4 scorers combined! And his 84 points were more than the Omaha’s top 3 players combined!

So let’s go down the rabbit hole.  Would Berens have made enough of a difference to notch a couple of wins?  While the Lancers were outscored more than 9-2 on an average night, not all of their games were blowouts.  Seven of their games were decided by 3 goals or less, including 3 decided by 1 goal or less.  Berens’ 43 goals that season were scored in 40 games, meaning he averaged more than one goal per game that season.

Do the math.

Of course this is all in theory, but it’s certainly plausible that having Rick Berens on the roster would have contributed to one or possibly more Lancer victories that season.

For those keeping score at home, the following season Rick Berens enrolled at the University of Denver, and was named Freshman of the Year in the WCHA, totaling 28 goals and 48 points in 39 games.  To this day Rick Berens is still the University of Denver’s all-time goal-scoring leader, with 94 goals over his four seasons as a Pioneer.

What could have been.

Thanks to EliteProspects.com and the University of Denver Sports Information for statistics.