Joey Piazza, Michel Cohen and Elie Abi-Saad form three-quarters of St. Laurent Hockey’s administration team. Their differences are bridged through hockey, they said.
(Photo: Pascal LeBlanc)
Hockey with an international flavour
Ice hockey is Canada’s national sport, and so it’s natural that new arrivals to a northern-climate country such as ours would quickly become interested in the world’s fastest game. That said, it’s still surprising to see that the entire administration committee for Hockey St. Laurent is made up completely of people of foreign origins.
The organization is made up of several members, but the four key players are far from what you’d call pure-laine; president Lawrence Mammas is Greek, single-letter vice-president Michel Cohen is Moroccan and Jewish, double-letter vice-president Joey Piazza, is orginally Italian and communications director Elie Abi-Saad, is Lebanese and Christian. That hasn’t stopped their passion from being consumed by hockey, though.
For the kids
You don’t have to look far to understand what has convinced these four men to get involved in minor hockey, because the answer is always around them: their own children.
“A short time after we arrived here, my kids got interested in hockey,” said Abi-Saad. “Because I didn’t really know anything about it, I decided to get involved in order to learn more,” he added.
Abi-Saad spent the better part of his life playing soccer, but he jumped at the chance to be team manager when he was asked to help the organization out.
“I was the manager of a team for three years before joining the committee this year. At the beginning, I didn’t even know how to skate, but I learned and I read a lot of books about hockey in order to better understand the sport,” he said.
Before moving to St. Laurent, Joey Piazza taught his kids, and others, the rudiments of the sport on the ice in St. Leonard.
“When I arrived here, I wanted to get involved right away in hockey, most importantly for the kids, but also because it’s an excellent avenue for socializing,” he said.
For his part, Michel Cohen played for St. Laurent when he was growing up, and when his kids first took to the ice in 1998, he decided to reacquaint himself with the game he had loved so dearly as a child, but this time, as a coach.
Brought together by sports
The directors of Hockey St. Laurent firmly believe that sports have the capacity to bring people together, regardless of nationality.
“Wars, religious differences, and all those things never come up when we’re focusing our energy on positive things like hockey,” Abi-Saad said.
Cohen echoed the sentiment, saying sometimes problems come up, but no one is ever harmed by requirements laid out for others. We’re doing the best we can to accommodate everyone, but we don’t stop everything because a player can’t play on a given day,” he said. For Piazza, the most important thing is to make sure the kids have fun on the ice and most parents seem to agree with him.
“Once the equipment goes on and we’re on the ice, everybody is the same and the world is equal for everybody.”
(Translated by Marc Lalonde)
(Photo: Pascal LeBlanc)
(Photo:Martin Alarie)
Météo: Montréal, 17 mai 2008 / 10°C
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par Pascal LeBlanc 
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