Spotlight on P.J. Stock

by Patrick Williams

A trickle of Phantoms trudged down the hallway and out of Pepsi Arena to their waiting bus outside on Nov. 1 in Albany looking very much the part of a sullen group.

East Division rival Albany had just handed the Phantoms their fifth loss in a row, a sloppy 4-3 defeat in front of a sleepy Albany crowd. Spotting the River Rats a 3-0 lead by the second intermission, the Phantoms went on to fall to 2-6-1 to start the season.

This after a long offseason that had seemed promising with the additions of Mike Peluso, Boyd Kane and Mark Murphy.

This while Phantoms assistant general manager Paul Holmgren and director of pro hockey personnel Ron Hextall took in the game from the second level at the Pepsi Arena.

A lengthy postgame meeting with head coach John Stevens followed the loss. A five-hour bus ride to Hershey for a game the next night stared the Phantoms in the face.

That’s the scene that P.J. Stock walked into after having been acquired on loan from the Providence Bruins three days earlier. Andre Savage went to Rhode Island in exchange to begin his second stint with the Bruins.

Something apparently kicked in during the trip south to Hershey. The Phantoms went into Giant Center and laid a 6-2 win on the Bears the next night.

Stock took on Hershey tough guy Mark Jerant during a third-period scrap and the Phantoms have not looked back since, going 26-9-4 (through January) since the Albany loss.

A miserable start to his season landed Stock in Philadelphia, where he spent the second half of the 2000-01 campaign.

Something of a folk hero at the FleetCenter in Boston, Stock fell out of the plans of Boston’s rookie head coach Mike Sullivan during training camp.

Stock played just one game with Boston, winding up an hour down I-95 in Providence by Oct. 15. There he scored once in four games with the P-Bruins.

He arrived in Philadelphia, back in the American Hockey League following three years in the National Hockey League.

A letdown never materialized for Stock, who met with Stevens shortly after the deal.

Recalled Stevens: “He said to me on Day One, ‘If I look like I’m slacking off, get on me, just like anybody else. If I need a kick in the rear end, I expect to get it.’”

“He’s a team guy, and he’s not going to come here and not play hard.”

All Stock has done is liven up what some considered to be a quiet dressing room and inject a serious dose of nightly swagger into the Phantoms lineup.

October’s lineup left Peter Vandermeer to handle the majority of the dirty work, particularly when Kane was a Flyer for a stretch.

Throw a Stock, a Craig Berube and a Jim Vandermeer into the pot, though, and the Phantoms became the AHL’s bad boys.

Stevens welcomes the different dimension that Stock added to the Phantoms dressing room.

“He’s been a great influx of energy. We feel very strongly about the character of our dressing room, but it’s kind of a quiet group. He adds some life to the room because he’s got an infectious personality, he’s loose and he plays hard.”

The easygoing Stock worked to lighten up the Phantoms’ daily scene.

“I just come and work hard. The guys here always had a great work ethic. Maybe things here were a little tense, and I’m not the most serious guy, so maybe I kind of calmed things down here. I just tell the guys to relax.”

“It’s an 80-game season, and there are highs and lows all around. Don’t let the lows bother you, and don’t let the highs bother you.”

The Wachovia Spectrum once again makes for a tough trip to Philadelphia for opposing AHL teams. January saw the Phantoms crank out home wins against the likes of Hamilton, Hershey and Bridgeport. Hartford, one of the Eastern Conference’s stingiest defensive clubs, barely escaped with a 3-3 at the Wachovia Spectrum on Jan. 30.

Other Eastern Conference rivals are working to counter the Phantoms’ snarl that arrived with Stock. Hershey has added Dennis Bonvie while Binghamton picked up Mike Brown.

“It’s good when other teams react,” said Stock. “If other teams are reacting that way [when they] have to play us, we’ve got them thinking about that instead of how they’re going to play.”

Thursday, February 05, 2004