Fiery buses, beer showers and the smell of manure: life in ice hockey’s minor leagues

When Arizona Sundogs rookie Joey Sides walked into the Wichita Thunder minor league hockey arena in 2009, he smelled manure. It was little wonder: the venue doubled as a home for the local rodeo. But that was nothing compared to the stands, which seemed to go almost straight up. Behind the bench, fans could practically reach out and grab players’ jerseys – they were that close. You could hear everything the wild crowd of about 10,000 said. “It felt like mayhem in there,” Sides says. The rabble threw beer at players and were dragged out of the stadium by security. “I could hear one of the fans yelling at my buddy on the ice, saying, ‘Hey, Jonesy! Mix in a salad, you fat fuck!’ as he chucked a beer at him. It was insane.”

Then there was the time later in his career when another team purchased a decommissioned bus for the players at a bargain. “That thing broke down, like, six times on us,” Sides says. It got so bad that the players agreed that if it showed up for a game against Kansas City, they’d refuse to get on. But their coaches said the team owners would be upset by the boycott. So, they got on and rode. The bus didn’t have shocks and Sides watched his teammates flying around, hitting their heads on the ceiling, while it drove over speed bumps. Going 75mph, the vehicle then blew a tire and the whole interior began to fill with dark smoke. It came to a screeching halt on the highway. The players sat on the side of the road so long, waiting for a new ride, that the sold out game in Kansas City was canceled and the players instead celebrated St Patrick’s Day in a Podunk town bar, singing karaoke with locals.

Another time during his rookie year in Arizona, tempers began to flare during a game. His coach put in the team’s two 6ft 5in enforcers, who instigated a brawl. “One of our enforcers was punching a guy right in front of me on the bench, smiling and feeding this guy right hooks to the face,” says Sides. “He pops off the kid’s helmet, and it falls to my feet and my teammate starts knee-dropping the helmet and flattens it into a pancake, then chucks it into the penalty box. It was an absolute circus!” Another time, on yet another team, one of Sides’ assistant coaches tried to pick a fight with a ref, throwing sticks and water bottles at him, taking off his suit coat, ripping his shirt open and yelling, “Let’s fucking go!”

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For Sides, who grew up in Sun Valley, Idaho, this was all part of the life he lived for 15 years until he retired from hockey in 2023. Born in Tucson, Arizona, he always loved the game. Sides recalls his parents balling up foil for him to hit around the kitchen with a mini hockey stick on his sister’s roller skates. Later, in Idaho, his father built an ice rink in the family’s backyard that the local fire department let him fill with a fire hose connected to a hydrant. The rink became so popular that Wayne Gretzky stopped by a few times while vacationing in the resort town during the 1994-95 NHL lockout. “The Great One” played with a nine-year-old Sides and his friends, signing sticks and sports cards. He even stayed over for dinner. “He was the most gracious, generous guy,” Sides says, still inspired.

In high school, he attended Avon Old Farms School in Connecticut, where he and his team won back to back New England Championships his junior and senior years thanks to Sides and future NHLers Cam Atkinson and goalie Jonathan Quick. After that, his dream was to play Division I hockey but he didn’t get any college scholarship offers ahead of graduation. So, Sides played Division III at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston instead. After Wentworth, Sides got a tryout in the American League, which is effectively the NHL’s top farm system.

In his first ever professional game, Sides was waiting in the tunnel with his teammates to hit the ice for warmups. They egged him on, telling him he was the one to lead them out. “Doesn’t the goalie usually do that?” he asked. But they said no, it was his first game. It was free T-shirt night, too, and several thousand fans were in the stands already. When the doors opened, Sides raced out, but no one followed. He was out there at the other end of the rink all by himself. Welcome to the league, kid. Minor league hockey is full of pranks. From untying a teammate’s skate and lacing it up backwards to putting rocks into someone’s hollowed-out hockey stick to mess with balance. But that’s the kind of stuff Sides loves and remembers. “The relationships you build with players on the teams,” he says. “I’m so grateful for that.”

Camaraderie is key when young men are traveling by bus for half a season for anywhere between 50 and 72 games (depending on what league you’re in) and each is making between $550 a week and $60,000 a year (if you have a two-way AHL contract). “My rookie year,” says Sides, “I was introduced to credit card roulette. That’s where you all go out to dinner and at the end of the meal, you put your credit cards in a hat. Then the waitress comes over and one by one she takes them out. The last one pays for the whole meal. Every time I played that, I was losing my shit. I was so nervous. The bill would practically be my entire paycheck! Luckily, I never lost.”

During his career, the skillful Sides played abroad in the Netherlands, Germany, Scotland (where he was sponsored by a hotel) and Newfoundland along with US cities such as Tulsa, Fort Collins, Wichita, Reading, Rapid City, Kansas City, Jacksonville.

“For me,” Sides says, “I had an all-over-the-map kind of career.” In the Netherlands, for example, he played in a town north of Amsterdam and the league featured both indoor and outdoor rinks – not exactly top notch. “It just wasn’t on the same level as playing pro in the States,” Sides says. In many of the smaller areas, though, fans had close relationships with their teams and Sides would get stopped in grocery stores or on the street to sign autographs. It could even feel like European soccer, with fans in the arena banging drums and going mad for their hometown boys.

Sides in now in his late 30s, but says his body remarkably remains in good shape – well, except for the five shoulder surgeries he underwent due to playing injuries. His career highlights include being maybe the first hockey player ever to wear a GoPro camera during a professional game. Sides, when in Newfoundland, saw icebergs floating through town (he even made cocktails from them) puffins hanging about and humpback whales swimming off the shore. In Scotland, his team was .500 and owners threatened to send all 15 foreign players packing to save money. But the squad promised improvement and they made a historical playoff run. He also participated in the first-ever pro hockey game at Lake Placid’s arena – The Olympic Center – where the US famously upset Russia in the 1980 Olympics’ Miracle On Ice. Prior to the game, he went up into the stands to take it all in. “I just sat down and was so grateful for being able to have come as far as I had,” Sides says.

For Sides, who only wanted to prove he was worthy after starting his pro career out of a small Division III school, he made his mark. A prolific goalscorer and speedster on the ice, he also found himself in the penalty box perhaps more than his coaches (or mother) would have liked. But minor league hockey can be brutal. Sometimes you have to fight back. “I like to say I never started anything,” he says, with a laugh. “Only retaliated.”

But today, with those 15 years behind him, he’s happy with what he’s seen and done. Now, he’s moving, traveling from Idaho to Brooklyn to start a new life with his girlfriend. But what’s most amazing, he says, is that as he drives cross-country, there are myriad people along the way he knows. Players, teammates, coaches from all of his teams – friends who’d welcome him any time he needed to crash.