What former player for Erie Lions hockey flew 28 hours for Friday's team reunion?
Father Time is undefeated.
That’s a line occasionally heard when athletes, particularly prominent ones, start to show definitive signs their careers are in decline.
Those words, though, apply to life in general. While Rick Chartraw never spoke them Friday, the most prominent alumnus of the Erie Lions implied as much during a team reunion at the Sunflower Club.
The Lions, an independent semi-professional hockey team that skated from 1963-74, are credited with popularizing the sport in northwestern Pennsylvania. Their games at the John M. Cochran Ice Arena, now known as Flo Fabrizio Ice Center, preceded the Erie Blades/Golden Blades/Panthers minor league franchise of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, and the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters since 1996.
More than two dozen former Lions, most in retirement age, attended the team’s first reunion since 1986. That year’s gathering was highlighted by an exhibition game held before a standing-room only crowd at the Glenwood Park rink they once called home.
Video from that game was shown Friday. Some of the players who competed in it watched it with family and friends.
That included Chartraw, 69, who went on to be part of five Stanley Cup championship teams. The former McDowell student knew he had to be at the team’s first reunion in nearly 40 years.
It why his 28-hour flight to Erie from his current home in Australia wasn’t a deterrent.
“When I heard about this, there was nothing to keep me from coming,” Chartraw said. “I had a great time at the (1986 reunion) with a lot of the guys I hadn’t seen in a very long time. It’s now getting to the point where you have to take advantage of these things.”
“See the people when you can.”
‘Fortunate to live in that era’
No former Lion was more vital to arranging Friday’s reunion than Ron Sciarrilli, 68. The Creative Imprint Systems employee also was responsible for the light blue Erie Lions hats that were handed out Friday.
Sciarrilli was a teenager when he cracked an Erie roster that occasionally included players who were a decade older.
“When some of us were 12, we were sometimes playing guys who were 17,” Sciarrilli said. “I think that what made us better players by the time we were 15. We were good enough to make Lions, who were made up of a lot of ex-NHL and college players.”
Sciarilli was the center for Erie’s “Kid Line” during the early 1970s. He was flanked by wingers and fellow attendees John Chisholm and Tim Wynne.
When that trio was on the ice, often were Chartraw and Erik Engelbrok as defenseman.
Engelbrok, 68, still lives in Erie and works part time for Presque Isle Downs and Casino. The 1972 McDowell graduate, like Sciarrilli, cherished his time on the rink and the team’s camaraderie.
“I don’t want to compare it to the military,” Engelbrok said, “but when you’re assigned to a unit like that, you pretty much are like brothers. You work hard together.”
“We were very fortunate to live in that era. It was great playing when we did.”
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Pride of the Lions
Engelbrok is also credited with getting Chartraw interested in hockey. They lived houses away from each other and with a pond nearby.
They, and other neighborhood kids, enjoyed winter days on it when it froze.
“You could tell even then that Rick was destined for something,” Engelbrok said. “You could see that in him.”
Chartraw never graduated from McDowell. He left his senior year to join the Kitchener Rangers, then a member of the Ontario Hockey Association.
Despite Chartraw’s limited hockey background compared to his teammates and opponents, the Montreal Canadiens chose him as a defenseman with the 10th overall pick in the 1974 National Hockey League draft.
Chartraw, as a member of the league’s signature franchise, was on each of its Stanley Cup championship teams from 1976-79. He saw his name engraved on the Cup a fifth time in 1984 as a member of the Wayne Gretzky-led Edmonton Oilers.
Chartraw also skated for the Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers during his 10-season NHL career.
“I was fortunate,” Chartraw said. “I had a lot of breaks, with one of them just being a big guy. But what I learned from the Lions was responsibility.”
Chartraw was one of three Lions who experienced NHL shifts, according to hockeydb.com.
Bob Bailey, between 1953-58, was a right winger for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings. He died in 2003 at age 72.
Jim Mikol, who died in 2014 at 75, appeared in five games for the 1962-63 Maple Leafs and 30 for the 1964-65 Rangers. He’s better known in local hockey lore as the coach for the 1982-83 Erie Golden Blades, who returned to the Atlantic Coast Hockey League after one season as an American Hockey League affiliate for the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins.
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‘The kind of group we had’
Various Lions’ memorabilia and souvenirs were laid out for viewing Friday. Included were curated newspaper clippings and game programs that detailed the team’s decade-long heydays.
Statistics, though, weren’t the topic of random discussions that were heard. Personal stories of past and present were.
“At some point, (the hockey) stuff will all fade,” Chartraw said. “Being able to be able to come back to things like this, and see people I remember, that’s the important part.”
Engelbrok offered a similar sentiment about Friday’s reunion.
“I wouldn’t have traded my experience with hockey for anything in the world,” he said. “That’s just the kind of group we had.”
Contact Mike Copper at mcopper@timesnews.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @ETNcopper.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Five-time Stanley Cup champion Rick Chartraw attends Erie Lions reunion
