Not that long ago Ed Kerrigan walked away from the game. At least the coaching aspect of it. 

A rabid New York Islanders fan, devoted hockey dad and passionate adult league player, he was also a Level 4 coach. But along the way he noticed a change in the attitudes of some of the teenaged players he was coaching, and one day he had enough.

Then, approximately four years ago, Kerrigan’s wife saw a Facebook post that changed not only his life but the lives of a group of hockey players who overcame long odds to find their place in the game. The post was looking for coaches to work with a local blind hockey group on Long Island. It didn’t take a lot of convincing to get Kerrigan to venture down to the rink to at least give it a try.

“I went down to their first practice, saw what was going on,” he recalled. “I saw the enthusiasm that the players had. I saw the skill levels and I said, ‘I can help these guys.’”

And along the way, working with the New York Metro Blind Hockey program has helped Kerrigan rediscover his love of the game and his passion for coaching.

“Even though I’ve been there for years, they still thank me after every practice for coming down. That kind of makes me feel good,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been adopted into a small family and I just love it.”

Working with blind players has not been as challenging as Kerrigan first thought it would be. He has simply taken some of his favorite drills developed during his years of coaching and has adapted them to suit his current players who range  from having low vision to being completely blind. 

“Basically if I keep those passes 15 feet or less so the guy making the pass can see the puck, the guy receiving the puck can see it,” Kerrigan said.

“When I see these guys take what we’ve been practicing and do it in a game you know you got through to them. They’ll try anything. You just have to be patient. That’s why I do it. I just love it.”

His players range in age from a 13-year-old named Liam to 57-year-old retired Air Force colonel John O’Connell. They mostly practice and scrimmage against each other with the occasional road trip. Some of the Metro Stars recently made the trip to Chicago for the USA Hockey Blind Hockey Classic, and in late March the team is slated to head to Bridgeport, Conn., to take on the Hartford Brailers. 

The NYMBH’s numbers have grown significantly since Ted Caputo, another Long Islander, started the program in 2018. Despite his lack of hockey knowledge, Caputo was quickly drawn in after his two sons were invited to try blind hockey with the N.Y. Islanders. It took that one event for the family to be hooked. 

“I’m thinking ‘I can’t coach, I can’t skate, I don’t really know much about hockey,’” Caputo recalled. “I started researching and surrounded myself with people that could help.”

Not only has the roster expanded with new players, but the program has a healthy support system of volunteers and sponsors. 

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and we’ve been working pretty hard on this for the past [several] years,” Caputo said.

“To see that we’re making a difference makes it all worth it. Just knowing that we’re getting people off their couch, people that would normally sit at home and not be that active, either socially or physically.”

Blind Hockey has been played in Canada since the early 1970’s and eventually made its way to the U.S. In 2014 the first ever Blind Hockey Summit was held in Newburgh, NY., and the following year the discipline made its debut at the 2015 USA Hockey Disabled Hockey Festival in Buffalo.

There are now several other established programs around the country, including fairly large groups in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. 

The sport closely follows traditional ice hockey with only a few changes to make the game accessible to players who are blind or visually impaired. Players must be classified as eligible in one of the three classifications set forth by the International Blind Sports Federation. 

The biggest adaptation is the puck, which is larger and made of sheet metal with ball bearings inside.

Kerrigan said these pucks can take a beating and at $50 apiece he is working with a friend to come up with a better design that will allow them to get more use out of them.

Working with the Metro Stars helped Kerrigan rediscover his passion for the game so much that he is now running the Mite initiation program with Nassau County Hockey. 

“[The Metro Stars] brought me back to it because I had walked away from it altogether. I’ve had so much fun with them that I said, you know what, let me go back to the little guys because they were always a lot of fun. 

“We follow the ADM plan with six stations and rotate the kids every five or six minutes. Then on Saturday mornings we have an hour of ice time and that’s just free play and the kids love it,” Kerrigan said.

“We just have a lot of fun with it. Now I enjoy hockey again like I used to.”