Suns Articles of Interest
(Click on article to enlarge)
Article taken from a Suns game program
Taken from a Sun's first year end of season game program
Eastern Hockey League All Stars
Suns Hinchberger & Yeo chosen first team
Kea & Pilling second team selections
After Gregg Pilling left the Suns he went on to coach the Roanoke Valley Rebels.
Here is a nice story about Gregg from a 1973-74 Rebels game program.
Here is a essay submitted by former Cape Cod Cubs radio broadcaster Jon Wetterlow to our website. Joe Sherman sent an update as well. Thanks to both gentlemen for their time and efforts here.
The Cape Cod Cubs arrived as an expansion team in the Eastern Hockey League in time for the 1972-73 season, playing in the brand new 5,000-seat Cape Cod Coliseum. Team President Richard “Bud” Terrio’s dream of bringing professional hockey to Cape Cod had finally come true.
The Cubs enjoyed considerable first-year success under General Manager Jack Crawford and Coach Bronco Horvath, both former Boston Bruins’ stars, and Communications Director Joe Sherman, who was later to become General Manager. They won the EHL’s Central Division championship, but were later eliminated from the playoffs by eventual champion Syracuse, one of the most powerful minor league teams ever assembled.
A highlight of that inaugural season was a January 1973 trip to St. Petersburg, Fla., for a two game set against the Suncoast Suns. The Eastern League was a notorious bus league; no unnecessary expenses were to be incurred, so teams generally traveled to and from away games by bus, often arriving home around dawn the next day.
But not this trip to St. Pete. The Cubs traveled like National Hockey Leaguers -- departing Boston’s Logan Airport for the weekend trip to St. Pete. It was a chance to escape away from a New England winter -- at least for the weekend.
The Bayfront Center, home of the Suns, had a beautiful setting overlooking Tampa Bay, whose calm waters were sprinkled with all sorts of yachts, and it was adjacent to Al Lang Field, a famous Spring Training site.
The Cubs and the Suns met Friday and Saturday nights, and then it was back to reality -- an early Sunday morning departure for Boston, a bus ride to Woonsocket, R.I., and a Sunday night game there against the Rhode Island Eagles, like the Cubs another expansion team. Three games in as many nights!
Unfortunately, the trip to St. Pete was a one-time experience because the Suns along with the rest of the Eastern League’s Southern Division --Charlotte, Greensboro and Roanoke Valley -- broke away to form the Southern Hockey League for the 1973-74 season. The Cubs became charter members of the new North American Hockey League, along with Maine, Long Island, Syracuse, Mohawk Valley, Johnstown, Binghamton and Philadelphia.
There was some player movement between Cape Cod and the Suns. Defenseman Dan Cowley played two seasons for the Suns before joining Cape Cod for the 1973-74 season. His name was well known in the Greater Boston area, his dad Bill having played for the Bruins. Denis Lemieux, John Raynak, Wayne Hawrysh and Bill Berglund were other former Suns who later found themselves in Cape Cod uniforms.
Similarly, Jacques Royer and Rick Barefoot, original Cubs, saw service with the Suns in the 1973-74 season.
Royer played left wing on one of pro hockey’s highest scoring lines in the 1972-73 Cubs’ season, joining his Granby, Quebec, buddy Luc Simard and Jim Sherritt.
Simard, playing right wing, scored 68 goals and totaled 124 points in the Cubs’ inaugural year, and center Sherritt earned himself a contract with the Houston Aeros of the WHA, where he skated on a line with the legendary Gordie Howe.
Joe Sherman's update