Gervais’ Career Picks Up Speed in This League

Victor Gervais never saw himself in a Bullfrog uniform--or any roller hockey uniform.

He was just looking to spend a warm summer in California when he landed a tryout for a new team in a new league that intended to play a new version of the old game he grew up with in Prince George, B.C.

Today you couldn’t get Gervais, a forward who is one of the most successful players in Roller Hockey International, to trade in his in-line skates.

“I love this game,” the Bullfrog captain said. “I love roller hockey better than ice.”

It wasn’t always that way.

“I didn’t think it would last,” he said. “When I came here it was different.”

Gervais has flourished in the warmer climate he has grown to love the last four years. A 1989 draft choice of the Washington Capitals, he never made the club but did play with the Cleveland Lumberjacks of the International Hockey League.

But it is in RHI where Gervais, the league’s fourth-best scorer in 1995, has found his niche. He began this season as the Bullfrogs’ all-time leading scorer, holding career records in goals (61), assists (108), points (169) and game-winning goals (6).

He scored seven goals, tying a league record, in a game against San Jose last season and his hat trick in the RHI all-star game last July in St. Louis earned him the game’s most valuable player trophy.

And he has carried the Bullfrogs, who have struggled on offense this season, recording five goals and six assists in the team’s first three games.

“He’s as important a player as any true leader is to your team,” Bullfrog Coach Grant Sonier said. “He’s not only our go-to guy, but more importantly, the guys look up to him.

“He and Darren Perkins and a few others are more experienced than some of the other players in the league,” Sonier said.

“They know what it takes to play this game, which is different than playing on ice. He can take advantage of some of the younger players he is up against who haven’t played the game so much.”

Gervais says he recognized his role with the Bullfrogs early in his career.

“I like to think that I’m a leader. That I’m a guy the players can go to,” he said. “In roller hockey, I have an opportunity to do what I do best and that is, I’m a scorer.”

A rules change, which took effect just hours before the Bullfrogs defeated the Blades June 11, calls for referees to issue a penalty shot to the opponent after a major penalty. It also requires the team against which the major penalty is called to place a player in the penalty box until time expires on the penalty, or until the opposing team scores two goals.

“We discussed this over the winter and we thought it would be put in by now,” said Sonier, who sits on the league rules committee. “But to hear it just before we play a game was a surprise.”

Sonier doesn’t like the penalty shot aspect of the new rule, but said he feels the two-goal limit during a major penalty is acceptable. He said he remembers several times in the last few years when the Bullfrogs scored as many as five goals when playing a man up on an opponent who had been issued a major penalty.