Rob Ray - Binghamton Senators - American Hockey League [AHL] on MLN Sports Zone

In The Bushes
NHL veteran Rob Ray leaves the minor leagues with a newfound respect, following his recent AHL conditioning stint.

By Dan Hickling
MinorLeagueNews.com

03.30.04 -- Binghamton, N.Y. -- Rob Ray wasn't looking for a fight.

Nevertheless when you're, the proud owner of 3,189 NHL penalty minutes, trouble comes looking for you.

It didn't matter that Ray was just taking a brief tune-up run through the AHL with the Binghamton Senators, working his way up to Ottawa.

All he wanted was to get his legs and lungs into game shape after nearly a full year in retirement. His knuckles, as always, were already in prime condition.

However the "H" in AHL might just as well stand for "hopeful", and Ray, who last saw the inside of a minor league rink back in 1990, was going to have to put up with young bucks trying to make a name for themselves against an old one.

Any pretense to the contrary lasted all of one shift; the time it took for Syracuse Crunch enforcer Brandon Sugden to skate his way.

"He wanted to go. I told him I was even warmed up but he wouldn't listen," Ray said. "I guess I was the same way when I was (coming up) in the minors."

That would have been 14 years ago, when he battled his way on to the Buffalo Sabres.

He left upstate NY after last season with far more fights to his credit than goals. There were just 40 tallies, and none for the last two and a half seasons.

The fact that Ray could go 30 months without scoring in the NHL, and then do it twice, in his second and third games with Binghamton, says something about the difference between the NHL and AHL.

In fact, he almost got another goal on a breakaway. Rob Ray on a breakaway?

It was rather like witnessing a train wreck in slow motion. You know you saw it, but you still don't believe it.

Rob claims he wasn't gassed as he lumbered in on Providence Bruins rookie goalie Hannu Toivonen, who was a five-year-old boy when Ray scored his last minor league goal. The joke was that B-Sens medics probably had the defibrillator ready just in case though.

"It started to roll, and I couldn't get it to lay down," Rob said. "Then (number) '18' (David Hymovitz), I don't even know their names, he was screaming to drop it back. I said, ‘I'll just leave it and see if he could skate into it’."

Although Ray came to Binghamton to get his work in and then head back to the big leagues, he took with him a fresh appreciation for life in hockey's bushes.

"Some guys will say, 'Oh, it's just the minors', but when your emotions are going, you don't know where you're playing," Ray acknowledged. "You're in the game and you're doing what you love to do. There's a million people out there who would give their left (eye) to be out there."

He still has both eyeballs, but a face full of stitches, two fists full of arthritic knuckles, some missing teeth and a variety of broken bones are the souvenirs Ray has already picked up in his unrequited quest for the Stanley Cup.

So a few bus trips through the AHL to get him ready for one more crack at the Cup wasn't so bad.

"I knew that if I didn't take the opportunity, and they (Ottawa) did go on to win it,” Ray admitted, “ I'd kick myself in the (rear end) for the rest of my life."