On Route road hockey tournament a big hit

August 20, 2013 · 0 Comments

By Jeff Doner

Instead of sitting in weekend traffic on highway 400, many exited at the On Route rest stop by King road for the Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer tournament on Saturday.
Shawn Burt, chief hockey officer for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation, said the weekend tournament was a huge success.
“It’s going great,” he said, with an intense game going on behind him. “We have four teams of at least 10 players here today. This is sort of a warm up for the event that happens on Sept. 28 down at Ontario Place. We’ve got about 40 players here that have probably raised collectively just under $10,000 and we’re hoping to send them all to the main event.”
Burt said that the main event is much larger, with teams and players coming from all over North America to participate.
“It’s a dawn to dusk road hockey marathon and we’re aiming for about 140 teams and looking to raise about $2.5 million dollars. The event itself is now the world’s largest road hockey fundraising event. We’ve raised $6 million in two years since our inception across Canada.”
Aside from the hundreds of players that are drawn to the event, 60 celebrity participants will also be on hand including: former NHL enforcer George Laraque, Hockey Hall of Famer Marcel Dionne, Tyler Stewart of The Barenaked Ladies and many more.
“They come down, they’re draftable and the top fundraising team picks whomever they like, all the way down to 25 and we distribute the remaining players to the other teams,” Burt explained. “We have a lot of fun. It’s very Canadian and it’s all great money for a great cause.”
Aside from his own team “Tenacious D,” Burt said there isn’t much representation from King thus far and encouraged people in the area to put some teams together.
“We’d love to have a few more teams, especially from this area. It’s a real good hockey area,” he said. “We have teams from all across Ontario. We’ve had teams from California, New York, Washington, D.C. It’s an event that is very local, but also has that mass appeal. It’s predominantly 416, 905, 519 and 705, basically the better part of Ontario.”
Those in attendance were also lucky enough to get a free autograph from Toronto Maple Leafs great Wendel Clark and former Leafs forward Mark Osborne.
There were also prizes and raffles for people to bid on.
For more information or to see how you can sign up or donate, visit www.teamuptoconquercancer.ca.