Sabres reflect on home away from home

With the SIJHL season starting back up after the holiday break, several Fort Frances Jr. Sabres are leaving their homes out west and returning to their home away from home here in Fort Frances.
Six members are listed on the team’s website with hometowns outside of Northwestern Ontario—hometowns that, in some cases, are as different as they are far away.
Tyler Hodges, one of the more recent additions to the Sabres’ roster, spent his time over the holidays in Medicine Hat, Alta. And while the defenceman said he likes Fort Frances, he can’t pretend it’s not different.
“A lot different. Medicine Hat is a lot bigger. It’s about 50,000 coming down to about nine [thousand],” he said.
The population change isn’t a huge culture shock, with Hodges having made a couple of stops in smaller communities in his junior hockey career, including most recently in Kindersley, Sask. with the Klippers of the SJHL.
But what is a change is the size of the crowds in Fort Frances and the quality of the facilities, he said.
“I was actually surprised when I got to the rink,” Hodges admitted. “Nice people here, too.”
Maple Ridge B.C. native Quinn Amiel, the Sabres’ leading scorer at this point, agreed the sixth man is what’s surprised him most in his time in Fort Frances so far.
“When they said it was 9,000 people or whatever it was . . . I wasn’t sure if there were enough people to support the team, enough people that want to support the team,” he admitted.
“Obviously I was dead wrong about that.”
With Amiel’s hometown being a suburb of Vancouver with a population approaching 70,000, the most noticeable difference for him is just “the closeness of the town” of Fort Frances.
“Being in a hockey community, everyone knows each other. We drive with [defenceman Shaun] Egan and he waves at everybody.”
He’s congratulated on the Sabres’ latest game in his many trips to Tim Hortons and around town—from grown men giving him thumbs up to kids asking him if he’s really THE Quinn Amiel.
And not just sometimes.
“All the time, man. It makes the guys feel like you’re something, really,” Amiel said. “The fan support’s great, the people have been great to me.”
He didn’t sell the fans back in the lower Mainland short, saying they’re“still hockey crazy,” while searching for the big differences between living in the Fort and back in Maple Ridge.
“I dunno, bigger town, mountains. . . . Not as much snow, I can tell you that,” he added with a laugh.
Not everyone went home to the big city over the break. Joey Shaw of Athabasca, Alta., a tiny town of just over 2,500, said the adjustment was easy to make.
“The town I’m from is about half the size of this,” he noted. “It’s kind of an upgrade for me.
“The people are pretty friendly here and they make you feel comfortable, so yeah, it kind of feels like home,” Shaw added.
Shaw is another player who’s seen his fair share of small towns in his junior career, and said he reserved his judgments about the town at first.
Well, most of them at least. “What’s that smell? That was the first thing I was wondering,” he admitted.
He, of course, wasn’t alone airing his early issues with Fort Frances’ famed odour.
“It didn’t smell too good when I first got here, but then I got used to it,” laughed Alessio Tomassetti, one of the Sabres’ star forwards and a native of Quesnel, B.C.—a town with a population just a few hundred greater than Fort Frances and “not that much different” from his new home.
“The town itself is pretty nice,” he added. “Felt like I was at home, everything about it. Not a big town, but comfy.”
But while Tomassetti might not think living in Fort Frances is different from his hometown, playing here is.
He spent last season playing for the Quesnel Millionaires of the BCHL in front of a built-in fan base of family, friends, and those who just love to cheer the local boy.
“It is a bit different because you get all your friends and family out in the stands,” he remarked. “You can’t just come here and expect people to like you. You gotta perform, show them what you got.”
And perform Tomassetti has, compiling 36 points in 29 games and looking like a natural on the Northwestern Ontario ice.
He’s enjoying his time off ice, too, saying one of his favourite things to do when the skates are off is to catch the Muskie boys’ hockey games (“pretty good” hockey, he said).
“[A] few players there that catch my eye.”
Hodges may be new to the team, but he’s already got good things to say about the town. “Billets are really nice. . . .”
Plus the bright lights of a big city aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, he added. “Just smaller, a lot less driving . . . I don’t have the best driving
record, so that’s good by me.”
While none of the Sabres will say they weren’t looking forward to going home and spending time with family over the break, for some players, it was the first chance to go back since August.
“This has been a really good second home for me. It’s been perfect in my 20-year-old year to come here,” Amiel said. “This is probably the best group of guys I’ve been with in my four years of junior hockey.
“It’s fun.”