Friendship bolsters forward line

The players in one Phoenix Thunder forward line know each other better than most team-mates.

Dylan Devlin (23), Joe Orr (25), and Jacob Hurring (23) have been playing ice hockey together for years.

Orr and Hurring went to the same primary school, Andersons Bay, and have been playing for about 15 years.

Orr took part in the Kiwi Hockey programme, which teaches children the basics of the sport; Hurring signed up soon after him.

They met Devlin, who has been playing for about a decade, at Tahuna Normal Intermediate School before all heading to King’s High School for their senior years.

While they grew up playing together in various teams, this is the first year they are playing together as a forward line, nicknamed King Line.

In ice hockey, there are five players — two defencemen and three forwards — plus a goalie on at a time. The three forwards are called a line.

Each line substitutes regularly, so a team usually has multiple sets of lines that roll on and off the ice.

"We’ve played heaps together throughout but we’ve never actually been one, two, three," Orr said.

Devlin used to be a defenceman, but switched last year after the season was disrupted by Covid-19.

Since there were only a few games and limited opportunities to train, their coach put them together since they knew each other so well.

"We played quite well together last year and just carried on from there," Hurring said.

Aside from those few games last year, this season was the first time they had all been on the ice together at the same time.

"To actually play ... as a forward line, it’s honestly really cool," Orr said.

"And even just watching, you can tell that we just know each other a bit better than your average line."

Knowing all three were going to be on together also helped their friends who watched, Devlin said.

"They get around it a lot more knowing that three of us are going to be on the ice at the same time," he said.

Devlin, Orr and Hurring enjoyed playing alongside each other — they could learn from each other, communicated well and also shared a few friendly digs.

Being friends off the ice made for good chemistry on it.

They were all pleased to be part of the team, which did not even exist when they were growing up.

"I can remember we always cheered for the Stampede, which is the Queenstown team now but they included a few Dunedin players back in the day," Hurring said.

Orr joined the team in 2012, Hurring in 2013 and Devlin in 2014.

Devlin and Orr are assistant captains.

The Thunder beat Auckland Mako 9-1 in Dunedin on Friday and 5-2 on Saturday;

its next games are against the Canterbury Red Devils in Christchurch on May 22 and 23.