Four Hawks grew up dominating youth hockey on an unbeatable team

All over the greater Vancouver area, there are men in their mid-20s who remain scarred by some of their youth hockey experiences.

Specifically, the ones that required them to compete against the Pacific Vipers summer team that featured future Blackhawks Brent Seabrook, Troy Brouwer, Colin Fraser, Andrew Ladd and three other pre-teens who went on to play in the NHL.

To put the staggering amount of talent on that squad into perspective, it's as if some Arlington Heights parents put together a U-10 traveling baseball team in 1995 - sticking within a 30-minute radius to find its players - and half of the boys on the roster made the big leagues with others in the minors still clawing to get there.

"We had a pretty good team," Seabrook said with no apparent eye roll to emphasize the magnitude of his understatement. "It was a lot of fun to play. I think at one point, we were 25-for-25 in tournaments.

"A lot of us played together at 9 years old and the rest of the team was sort of built at 10 (years old) and we just continued to play real well."

When Seabrook says the Vipers won 25 straight tournaments, you need to understand Canada's youth hockey structure to realize how long their reign lasted.

During the school year, top youngsters play for minor-league clubs whose rosters are dictated by geographical boundaries.

But in the off-season, from April to July, it's similar to today's AAU basketball scene in which interested parties are free to assemble talent as they see fit.

Gary Seabrook, Brent's father, and a few like-minded dads did a solid job scouting the greater Vancouver area for prospective Vipers.

"They just grabbed kids from all over the Lower Mainland," Fraser said. "The other teams were doing the same thing."

But Seabrook had the best hook in his low-key sales pitch: John Grisdale and Harold Snepsts, a pair of former Vancouver Canucks with more than 1,250 games of NHL experience between them, coached the Vipers.

"They were kind of enticing as far as our parents wanting us to have good coaching," Brouwer said with a laugh. "A lot of good players at that age flocked to good coaches when you could get them."

Those players tended to stay with Grisdale and Snepsts, too. The Vipers played just five or six tournaments each summer, so their winning streak extended for five years as they ranged as far as Edmonton (a 720-mile drive) to defeat other teams filled with boys born in 1985.

They frequently faced older players and usually whipped them, too. Snepsts told The Province that the Vipers lost fewer than 10 games in their six years together.

"We were the team to beat for sure," Fraser said. "When teams did beat us, even when it was just round-robin play, it was like they celebrated winning the Stanley Cup."

Ladd, who has broken out as a two-way star in this year's playoffs, can vouch for Fraser's view.

The Vipers tried to recruit Ladd for their squad, but he joined them for just one big occasion - the fabled Brick Invitational in Edmonton. The rest of his early years, Ladd played with the rival Vancouver Venom as he preferred to stick with his buddies.

"I think I remember beating (the Vipers) a couple times," Ladd said. "Those were big moments when you were a kid."

In most Vipers games, though, the biggest competition was between the Grisdale/Snepsts duo and their youthful charges.

"After a certain point, our coaches would try to get us to make two or three passes in the zone before we were allowed to shoot the puck," Brouwer said. "I remember one game, we were up 5 or 6 to nothing after the first period and our coach came in and started yelling at us that we weren't playing good hockey. He wanted us to have our skills and develop our skills."

The Vipers' roster at various times also featured forward Nigel Dawes (14 goals for Calgary this season), center Trevor Smith, who played briefly with the Islanders in 2008-09, and goalie Chris Holt, who made his NHL debut at age 20 with the Rangers in 2005 but has been fighting to get back to the league since.

Despite all of that top-end talent, it wasn't difficult to discern the best Viper on the ice.

" 'Seabs' was always the best, right from when we were little guys," Fraser said. "He was huge, just like he is now, and he was just better than everyone."

The Vipers' dominance ended when they had to move up to junior hockey and go their separate ways in 2000 and 2001.

Never did they dare to believe their hockey careers would intertwine again. And who knew they'd get to share a better fairytale than winning 25 tournaments in a row?

"Me and Brent were really good buddies growing up," Fraser said. "We had sleepovers at each other's houses during the tournaments. We still talk about the good old days. 'Remember that story? Yep. Remember this story? Yep.' "