The 3ICE 3-on-3 hockey league will award the Patrick Cup to its inaugural champions this weekend in Las Vegas. Just don’t expect the winning players to lift it over their heads.
“It’s heavy as hell, man,” said E.J. Johnston, the founder and CEO of 3ICE. “It’s like 65 pounds.”
The first year of this start-up league has been defined by inventive thinking, creative solutions to challenges and an untraditional approach to hockey. So it’s only fitting that the 3ICE season — which concludes with a four-team tournament at Orleans Arena on Saturday (4 p.m. ET, CBS) — would end with a string of meetings about the proper way to present a trophy that weighs as much as a German shepherd.
“It’s a running joke internally,” Johnston said. “We’ll likely take if off the table and then have them skate it below their waist. Certainly not above their heads.”
To create the trophy that 3ICE wanted at a lighter weight would have taken a year. Time being of the essence, the trophy-makers used a heavy porcelain base for the Patrick Cup, which is named in honor of league commissioner Craig Patrick.
Joe Mullen, who coaches the eponymous top seed in the 3ICE championship tournament, hoisted Lord Stanley’s Cup three times as an NHL player. This trophy weighs nearly twice as much.
“I hope I get the chance to win it, but I’m not even tryin’ to lift it,” he said, chuckling.
Johnston said the plan is to create a lighter championship trophy for the second season of 3ICE.
There are other weighty issues facing 3ICE as its first season concludes. But after nine weeks of exhausting, exhilarating and frequently innovative hockey, there’s a celebratory mood about this first campaign — and not just because there’s $1 million on the line in Vegas this weekend (with around $127,000 going to each player on the winning team).
At the end of his six-team league’s first season, Johnston is left wondering about how the imaginative rules could influence the NHL’s 3-on-3 overtime — like allowing the puck to be played off the netting — and whether 3ICE is ahead of a curve that could see the format adopted as a Winter Olympic event in the near future.
What Johnston is certain about is that 3ICE hit most of the targets he envisioned.
“I think we’ve crushed it. When the fans come and see us, they’re so psyched we’re here,” he said. “It’s a rocket ship. The sky’s the limit.”
3ICE WAS ANNOUNCED in January 2020, a league that sought to capitalize on the kinetic qualities of the NHL’s 3-on-3 overtime format…
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