Why work when you can play? UHL players might not get rich playing minor league hockey, but hey, it sure beats working for a living

Hockey Digest, April, 2002 by Paul Post

"It's got to be very, very difficult," Nolan says. "That's why we do simple things like phone cards to help them call home and keep in touch. Some of them will do this for a couple of years, just hoping to get that break to go to the next level. A lot of them wind up going back home and getting regular jobs like all of us."

Adirondack's Trent Schachle spends summers doing construction work near Anchorage. At anywhere from $25-to-$39 per hour, the pay is quite a bit better than Double-A hockey. His brother owns a $200,000 home, has a handsome retirement nest egg, and no substantial bills to speak of. At 29, Schachle could be in the same boat. But even with three young children, he's willing to delay a few of life's comforts to pursue a life in hockey.

"Is it worth it?" he asks. "I think it is. My kids come out and they like to see me play. The oldest just wants to go to hockey all the time. I think that's good for a kid to get into a sports environment, no matter what the sport is. It keeps them motivated."

Adirondack's Booster Club hosted a team dinner meeting early this season and raffled off a number of items including a large action photo with Schachle's uniform No. 10 in plain view. Schachle's young sons walked up to the photo where four-year-old Tanner turned to his three-year-old brother, Brayden, and said, "Look, there's daddy!"

As it says in the MasterCard commercials: "Priceless."

Schachle believes the rigors of hockey are mild compared to danger he faces working high up in the air on steel construction projects. "I'm working at least 50 and sometimes 60 hours a week, every week, in summer," he says. "It's sort of mindless, just welding. Here you get to be a little creative. You're more like a kid. I really enjoy that, just getting out there and playing.

"That's why I'm here. I'm still having fun playing the game. I think that's why everybody's at this level."

IceHawks teammate Hugo Belanger spent last summer selling cars after capturing the UHL's MVP Award as its leading scorer in 2001. "I needed to find something that was going to give me a decent salary. It didn't matter how many hours I had to put in. But it was definitely different because I was working 11- or 12-hour days and I didn't have weekends off, because that's the time you sell the most cars," he says.

What did he learn? "The next time I buy a car it'll be different, let's put it that way," he says with a laugh.

"I took it as an experience," Belanger adds seriously. "It gave me a lot of communications skills and the way to negotiate with people. It'll definitely help in the future." He's among the league's scoring leaders again this year, so retirement isn't in his immediate plans, but eventually Belanger would like to open his own business, a restaurant perhaps. Hockey has prepared him for such a challenge in many different ways.

"I've had opportunities to meet some very powerful and important people," he says. "What I've really learned is that they're just like you and I are. It's just a matter of status or money. When you go out and have a beer with these people they're exactly the same as you and I are. Usually they're not smarter than you and I are, they just happened to make the right moves at the right time. Maybe they're a little more educated or they did the right research in the right areas. It doesn't mean they're smarter.