SHAWN ROCCO - srocco@newsobserver.com
Jeremy Bost stretches during a break in a 3-on-3 game during a morning skate at the Polar Ice House Thursday.
CARY -- There's nothing unusual about a group of hockey players getting together to skate in the early morning of a hot Triangle summer, not anymore. For a decade, Rod Brind'Amour led on-ice workouts for his Carolina Hurricanes teammates throughout the offseason.
Thursday morning, 10 players gathered at the Polar Ice House in Cary to prepare for the impending hockey season. Not a single one of them plays for the Hurricanes, and that's unusual.
It's easy these days to look around the Triangle and see the ways hockey's roots now run deep in this area, but the group on the ice Thursday was as good an indication as any - 10 minor-league, college and junior players, led by former Hurricanes forward Bates Battaglia and his brother Anthony.
Hurricanes forward Chad LaRose has been skating with this group, although he was a no-show Thursday. Former Carolina defenseman Joe Corvo has shown up a few times as well. Not this day, though, when an almost completely organic group of Triangle-raised hockey players went through drills and scrimmages.
"We just started skating this summer, Anthony and I, and a couple other guys came out," Battaglia said. "There were only like five of us. All of the sudden, guys just started showing up. I don't even know who they are."
How times have changed. When Battaglia moved to Raleigh with the Hurricanes in 1997, he couldn't find a pick-up game. He played with a few holdovers from the ECHL IceCaps, but as they got older and quit playing, Battaglia saw his options dwindle - at least until his Hurricanes teammates returned to town.
Battaglia played in the AHL and in Germany last season before wrapping up the season with Anthony and the Tulsa Oilers of the CHL. Now 35, and four years removed from his last NHL appearance, Battaglia intends to play again this season and resumed his usual summer routine with the usual handful of cohorts.
Word spread quickly. Without warning, new arrivals swelled the group. As it turned out, the Triangle is pumping out some pretty good hockey talent.
"The one day when a bunch showed up and I didn't know who they were." Battaglia said. "At first, I was worried. You don't want just anybody coming out here. But there are a few that can play pretty well. It's good to see."
If Battaglia is amazed and impressed, he's nowhere close in that department to some of the players sharing the ice with him.
Sean Spero, 19, grew up in Cary watching Battaglia, LaRose and Corvo play for the Hurricanes. He went to the Hurricanes' camps. And now, 10 days away from returning to his Boston-based team in the Eastern Junior Hockey League, the defenseman has been getting quality time on the ice with them.
"It's pretty awesome," Spero said. "You can't get this kind of experience anywhere else. There's no better skate to go to. It's fast-paced, and you're playing with the best."
Soon, the Hurricanes will start coming back to town and the kids will head back to their junior teams and colleges, but not before making an impression on at least one ex-NHLer.
"This guy's really good," Battaglia said, gesturing to one player still on the ice.
Who is he? Battaglia was asked.
"I don't even know," he said. "I think he's a defenseman."
Battaglia stood and watched for a second, as the anonymous - for the moment - next generation of Triangle hockey players occupied the ice.
