UMass Magazine Online

Winter 2005

Departments

Prerequisite

Features

A Fruitful Partnership

A New Kind of Farm a New Breed of Farmer

Dear One Absent This Long While

Prerequisite

Running with the Pack
Even with his NHL spot on ice, Thomas Pock still toes the blueline

–Matt Vatour ’96

THOMAS POCK ’04 WASN'T THINKING about the NHL lockout last November. He wasn’t reading about it nor worrying about it. “I don’t really know what’s going on with it right now,” Pöck said. “I’m just concentrating on playing right here.”

Right here is Hartford, Conn., where Pöck is a member of the Wolfpack, the New York Rangers’ top minor-league affiliate. While NHL owners have locked out the league’s players over concerns about escalating salaries, the American Hockey League is still playing a full slate of games.

Any NHL player with a two-way contract (under which the parent club can call him up from, and send him down to, the AHL) was eligible to be assigned to the minors to continue playing.

Pöck signed with the Rangers shortly after UMass lost in the Hockey East finals. He made an impression with two goals and two assists in six games. He was in position for a permanent job on the Ranger blueline in preseason if the NHL season had proceeded normally. Now he’s just glad to be playing somewhere.

“If I couldn’t be playing here I’d have gone home to play,” said Pöck, a native of Klagen-furt, Austria. “I’m 23 years old. I can’t be sitting around not playing.”

He had enough of sitting around during the first seven games of the season, when an abdominal strain sidelined him. He returned to action in early November.

The NHL lockout isn’t impeding his progress as a player. “I’m just trying to keep getting better,” he said. “This is a good league. The best players from college are here, mixed with the best guys that played junior hockey. Plus there are guys in this league now who would normally be in the NHL.”

Being close by in Hartford also lets him keep tabs on his former team. “UMass has strong young talent,” says Pöck. “They should be pretty good.”

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