There’s a recurring theme in the 2010 Canadian Broadcasting Corp. miniseries about former Hershey Bears player Don Cherry.

Traded to the American Hockey League’s Springfield Indians, Cherry quickly earns the wrath of old-time owner/coach Eddie Shore.

“Bend your knees,” Shore constantly implores Cherry.

That image came to mind while speaking with Chester County’s Andreas Wochtl, who last year began importing a hockey stick called Storm White. Because of its lower lie – the angle between the shaft and blade – the Storm White naturally encourages players into a lower hockey stance, Wochtl said.

Bend your knees, indeed.

Wochtl was born in Sweden. He came to America in 2001 as an exchange student, with dreams of playing professionally. He played for the Junior Flyers, the Little Flyers and at Malvern Prep. He spent one season with Lebanon Valley College’s Division III program under head coach Al MacCormack.

The pro dream faded and he stopped playing. He didn’t have much to do with the game for three or four years. But a few years ago he started coaching and remembered the hockey stick inspired by Swedish skills coach Tomas Storm.

He found the Swedish company that makes the stick (in a Ukraine factory) and began importing it late last year. He’s the only source for it in North America, selling it from his website, www.awhockeyskills.com, and promoting it mostly through word of mouth. The sticks go for $89 to $139 each.

Wochtl, 28, is an accountant for a small family business. He said he does a lot of coaching, lessons and clinics.

His biggest marketing challenge is explaining the concept behind the one-piece Storm White, which is made of carbon fiber and glass fiber. The argument for Storm White is that it induces a player to bend his or her knees, which is the biggest factor in improving skating.

One other challenge is that the Storm White comes in only one blade curve. For that reason, Wochtl sees a greater opportunity with players 15 and younger.

“They don’t have a curve preference,” he said. “They’re still moldable.”

Internet Hockey Database

Even though he spent only one season at LVC, you can find Wochtl’s statistics on the Internet Hockey Database, also known as HockeyDB. The website is the brainchild of a data architect from Springfield, Mass., named Ralph Slate, who started it in 1996.

If you’re a hockey fan and haven’t visited the site, you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s where you’ll find player and team stats going back decades, but it’s as current as last night’s games thanks to software that Slate wrote to comb league websites daily for updates.

The website averages a whopping 600,000 visitors and 10 million page views per month, according to masslive.com. The number of visitors will spike in the coming days as the National Hockey League’s Feb. 27 trade deadline approaches. For instance, Philadelphia fans might want to learn more about defenseman Nicklas Grossman, whom the Flyers acquired Thursday for draft picks.

The Hockeydb website is hosted by a Pittsburgh company, Pair Networks.

Cherry Hill takes the cake

Of course, one of the leagues for which you’ll find statistics on HockeyDB is the old World Hockey Association, which formed 40 years ago this year as an alternative to the NHL. The league operated from 1972 until 1979, when four surviving teams – Quebec, Winnipeg, Hartford and Edmonton – joined the NHL.

In its first season, the WHA included the Philadelphia Blazers, who got off to a rough start when a Zamboni crashed through the ice and the team’s home opener had to be postponed. The Blazers relocated to Vancouver after one season.

The WHA lured some big names with big salaries, including once and future Philadelphia Flyers goaltender Bernie Parent, who played with former Flyer Andre Lacroix on that Blazers team.

Lacroix would spend the next season with the WHA’s New York Golden Blades, who relocated mid-season to Cherry Hill, N.J. (See a pattern of league instability here?)

Mike Emrick, NBC’s lead hockey play-by-play announcer and former Flyers broadcaster, shared an anecdote involving Lacroix back in December, when Emrick was in Hershey to help celebrate Hersheypark Arena’s 75th birthday.

The Cherry Hill Arena didn’t have a dressing room for the visiting team.

“Pro hockey players, Gordie Howe, all these people coming in,” Emrick said. “They dressed at the Hyatt, where they had their rooms. They came down and got on a school bus and they took them down five miles to the rink.”

The arena ice sloped, so the visiting team had to skate uphill for two periods each game.

Emrick said that legendary Flyers broadcaster Gene Hart lived in Cherry Hill and caught up with Lacroix, who had a thick French accent.

“(Hart) went over to watch one of the games, and Andre Lacroix, the former Flyer, was playing in the WHA. He’s one of the guys that took the money. And he was playing for some other team that came in, and Gene went on the bus after the game was over to say hello to him, and he said, ‘Gene, I’ve been arounda hockey a long time, dis place take the cake.’ ”

Canada’s hero started in Pittsburgh

What a year for hockey in 1972. Not just the WHA’s formation but the Summit Series, in which Canadian professionals took on little-known, so-called amateur Soviets.

Of course, American fans can recite chapter and verse about the “Miracle on Ice” team that would beat some of those same Soviets in the 1980 Olympics, but the Summit Series struck at the heart of Canada’s identity.

The eight-game Summit Series was supposed to be a cakewalk for the Canadians, who ultimately prevailed but not before incurring the wrath of their own fans. The first four games were played across Canada. After losing Game 1, the Canadians won Game 2 and tied Game 3. Then they lost Game 4 in Vancouver, where fans started booing them.

Canadian star Phil Esposito’s impassioned post-game interview is remarkable even four decades later:

Play then shifted to the Soviet Union, which won Game 5. But the Canadians rallied for three straight wins to capture the series.

Many hockey fans know that Paul Henderson scored the game-winning goal with 34 seconds left in deciding Game 8, but he also potted the winners in Games 6 and 7.

Henderson has a Pennsylvania connection: He began his pro career as a 20-year-old in 1963-64 with the Pittsburgh Hornets of the American Hockey League.

To get a sense of how nasty the rivalry between Canada and the Soviets got, check out these clips.

• Here is Esposito, having taken a retaliation penalty, challenging a Soviet player to a fight – complete with throat-cutting gesture
• Here is Philadelphia Flyer Bobby Clarke with a two-hand slash to the ankle of Soviet Valeri Kharlamov

Now contrast all of that with another event that started in 1972 between Lancaster, Pa., and Kitchener, Ontario. The Foreign Hockey Exchange is taking place through Sunday in central Pennsylvania.

Can’t we all just get along?

Sites we like

As its name suggests, Seattle-based Ebbets Field Flannels is best known for its historically accurate baseball jerseys and hats. But the company also offers a line of American-made throwback hockey jerseys, including those of the AHL’s Pittsburgh Hornets and the Eastern Hockey League’s Philadelphia Ramblers.

More off Mike

Mike Emrick was the keynote speaker for the Dec. 2 “Night at the Old Barn” to commemorate Hersheypark Arena’s 75th birthday. He wore a brown jacket in honor of Brent Hancock, the Bears’ late public relations director, who always wore a brown jacket.

In an interview, Emrick, who first came to Hershey as broadcaster for the Flyers’ AHL affiliate Maine Mariners, noted that Bears legend Frank Mathers, then an executive, answered his phone, “Hockey club, Mathers.” For the PR director, it was, “Bears, Hancock.”

“The difference was Frank would say goodbye, and Brent, you’d just hear a click,” Emrick said. “And so guys in the league would try to hang up on (Hancock) before he did on them. None of us ever got to do it.”

Pegula Ice Arena construction starts

Construction has begun on Pegula Ice Arena, which will become the home of Penn State’s Division I men’s and women’s hockey programs starting in 2013. The university’s board of trustees approved final designs on Jan. 20.

Matt Caracappa, assistant director, athletic communications for Penn State, said construction began days ahead of the original Feb. 10 start date in order to take advantage of good weather.

Gadowsky on Hobey

Guy Gadowsky is in his first season as Penn State men’s hockey coach after leading Princeton University’s men’s team for seven years. Princeton was the alma mater of America’s first great hockey player, Hobey Baker, whose name adorns college hockey’s version of the Heisman Trophy.

Gadowsky learned some of what he knows about Baker from a presentation that one of his Tigers players made.

“One is that he was an incredibly electric personality,” Gadowsky said. “He did things like when he entered a room he’d walk in on his hands, walk around the room on his hands for a while.”

Baker and Kazmaier

Not only did Princeton produce Baker but also Patty Kazmaier, who played women’s hockey for the Tigers in the 1980s. She died in 1990 at age 28 from a rare blood disease. The Patty Kazmaier Award recognizes the best player in women’s college hockey.

The 2010 winner was Vicki Bendus, a forward from Mercyhurst College in Erie.