It’s 10:25 p.m. Tuesday, and the Lane County Ice Arena rink is filled with the unmistakable sounds of hockey.
Skates sliding all around on the ice. Pucks banging against the board. The whistle of the coach signaling when to switch from drill to drill.
From the outside, it looks like any other hockey team practicing for its upcoming season opener this Friday night at 7:30.
But when you look closer, you begin to see that there’s much more to this story.You see senior forward and team captain Tyler Shaffar skating down the right side of the rink and slapping the puck directly toward the net.
You see senior goalie Josh Hardin deflecting Shaffar’s shot with his shin pad.
While there is no couch to sit on nor a psychologist to talk to, what you are seeing is therapy at its purest.
For Hardin, Shaffer and seven other teammates who played for the Oregon club hockey team last year, this is their time of healing.
Time of comfort. Time of togetherness. This is the time they’ve been waiting for.Because when they’re on the ice playing the game they love, it helps ease the emotional pain still present from that fateful day back in February.
A day when tragedy struck and changed the lives of a group of young men forever.

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Feb. 17 began as an exciting day for the Oregon hockey team. The Ducks had qualified for their fourth straight postseason appearance and were headed to the Pac-8 Championships down in Los Angeles, Calif.
While their 10-12-1 record at the time showed their inconsistencies, the players were pumped because they knew that anything could happen in the playoffs. What they didn’t know, however, was that they would not play a single game over the weekend.
Oregon arrived into El Segundo, Calif., that night at 11:30 p.m. and checked into the Hilton Garden Hotel. According to Hardin, about eight players then gathered in a hotel room.
“It was not a rowdy party like everyone thinks it was,” Hardin said. “It was just a few teammates hanging out the night before a big game, eating some pizza, drinking a couple of beers and watching a movie. We were not down there to party.”
One player, however, took it a little too far.
Russ Atteridge, a sophomore forward from Amherst, Mass., mixed together the painkillers Valium and Darvocet with alcohol. The result was deadly.

After falling asleep later that night on the floor, Atteridge remained motionless throughout the morning. Finally, at 12:30 p.m. Feb. 18, a teammate realized he was not breathing.
Atteridge was rushed to the Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne, Calif., where he was pronounced dead at 2:34 p.m.
Dead.
The word still pierces through the ears of Hardin and Shaffer.
“I’ll never forget that feeling of losing him,” Shaffer said.
After Atteridge passed away, the Ducks relinquished their Pac-8 games and were struck with the type of grief that one never knows how to handle.
Fortunately for the team, head coach Garreth MacDonald was there to provide adult guidance at such a precious moment.
“Losing Russ was tough for everybody,” said MacDonald, who is in his second year as coach after coming down from his hometown of Toronto, Canada. “The team was hurting and was pretty lost. I did my best to keep everybody composed.
“When we were down there we were sort of isolated and it hadn’t really sunk in yet. But when we came back, the media started calling us with all of these questions, and it just hit us. He was gone.”
The first day that the team arrived back in Eugene they realized that they could be on the verge of losing something else: The entire Oregon hockey program.

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The Oregon Club Sports executive committee launched an investigation of the incident, and for a three-to-four month period, the 2000-01 season was in serious jeopardy.
“I feel quite lucky that we do have a team because my initial reaction was that we weren’t going to,” Shaffar said. “I thought it was done.”
The team, led by MacDonald, was not about to call it quits. They accepted the sanctions handed down to them and then formed some more of their own.
The team had to turn in a proposal, stating its code of conduct, by the first Saturday in July. One week later, MacDonald heard from Sandra Vaughn, the Club Sports recreation coordinator.

“Sandy told Garreth that you will have a team, and Garreth immediately told me,” Hardin said. “I then told everybody else and it was just like, ‘Whew.’ What a relief.”Atteridge’s parents also played an integral role in ensuring that the team would stay as an Oregon sport. Timothy Atteridge, Russ’ father, flew in from Amherst and talked to University President Dave Frohnmayer and others to let them know that he didn’t want the team to pass away along with his son.
“He was amazing,” Shaffar said. “He and his wife helped us get through our feelings and they were just great people.”
Said Hardin: “We all know that Russ wouldn’t have wanted us to quit because of what happened.”

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The big season-opening game against Stanford is only days away, and on this Tuesday night, Hardin and Shaffer can hardly contain their excitement.
“Friday cannot come soon enough,” said Hardin, whose team plays the Cardinal at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at the Lane County Ice Arena located at the Lane County Fairgrounds on 796 W. 13th. “Since everything went down in February in L.A., we’ve been wanting to get back on the ice to prove that we’re not bad guys at all.”
MacDonald has recruited a solid group of freshmen and one junior college transfer that has everyone excited for the season. On road trips, there will be no drinking at all and there will always be a chaperone present.
“I feel very comfortable with the hockey team,” said Vaughn, the Club Sports coordinator. “It’s a big difference from last year in that everyone has really made a true commitment to the team.”
None more so than Hardin and Shaffar, who are intent to end their collegiate hockey careers as winners. And both of them guarantee that they will take Atteridge with them in their hearts as they pursue a Pac-8 championship.
“My season is dedicated to Russ,” Hardin said. “He was a friend of mine, he was a teammate and he really was the life of our team. He would just strip down to his boxers and run around the locker room sometimes to help keep the team light in serious times.”
While both players said they are going to keep the focus of the team more on the present, there will always be a reminder of their fallen teammate hanging on their locker room wall.
It is the number “7” jersey that Atteridge wore. There will also be a moment of silence before Friday’s game in tribute to Atteridge.
“That’ll be a pretty emotional time,” Shaffar said.
The Ducks will then go about doing what they’ve been craving to do all along: Just play hockey. The season will continue through the months of October, November, December and January.
And then, as if on cue, Oregon will get the privilege of hosting the Pac-8 Championships exactly one year to the day since Atteridge’s tragic death.
“It’s destiny, man,” Hardin said. “We’re going to win it all. I can feel it.”
No doubt their number one fan will be watching it all take place from a bird’s eye view in the clouds.