Las Vegas hockey community mourns the passing of Eddie Samuels

Lee Samuels, the affable and longtime boxing publicist for Las Vegas’ Top Rank, Inc., was telling stories and sharing anecdotes about his hockey-playing son Eddie on Thursday. He was speaking at a chapel in a mortuary, which is the most difficult place for a grieving father to be telling stories and sharing anecdotes about a son.

One particular story briefly brought a smile to Lee Samuels’ face. It was about how when Eddie was around 10 years old, after he had started playing street hockey, he saw a sign out front of the old Crystal Palace roller rink.

LEARN HOW TO PLAY HOCKEY. SATURDAY. 10 AM.

At a little before 10 a.m. on Saturday, little Eddie Samuels had his mom, Mary Margaret, drop him off at the rink.

He learned how to play hockey.

It wasn’t long before Eddie was playing roller hockey in tournaments all over the country against much older players. Eventually, he would discover ice hockey. He played both ends of the ice and he dug the puck out of the corners and he had a knack for setting up his teammates with pinpoint passes on the tape — it was said that one season, he had like 89 assists.

And when a teammate passed the puck to him with an opportunity to light the red lamp, that’s just what Eddie did.

Eddie Samuels was part of the first wave of talented Las Vegas youth hockey players, a wave that would wash up on hockey shores from coast to coast. These were the kids who inspired another wave of talented Las Vegas youth players who came up behind them.

Lee Samuels said Jason Zucker, the first local kid to play in the NHL, was only 3½ when he showed up at Crystal Palace to learn how to play hockey. He brought his own stick.

When Eddie Samuels died Aug. 6 of heart failure, he was 30 years old. A lot of his former coaches and teammates, a lot of Las Vegas hockey people — a lot of boxing people, including five-time world champion Tim Bradley, WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas and trainer Robert Garcia — dropped by to share their own stories about Eddie Samuels.

Travis Hackney was Eddie’s first teammate in street hockey games in the cul-de-sac in front of their parents’ homes in the Los Prados development. They’d play 2-on-2 and 3-on-3, and every now and then, all the neighborhood kids would show up and they’d choose up sides.

Were there fights?

“Of course,” Hackney said.

Who won?

“Eddie, most of the time.”

Mark Ollila was Eddie Samuels’ first ice hockey coach, in the squirt and bantam divisions. “He wasn’t a very good skater at first but he had great vision for a kid that age. He’d put the puck on kids’ sticks and most people would never see it.”

Rob Neumann was Eddie’s coach with the San Diego Jr. Gulls. He said it was a sad coincidence that heart problems caused Eddie’s death, because that’s the first thing he thought of in describing him as a player. Eddie had heart.

“He was skilled with a rough edge around him, a guy that goes in the corners but also can bury the puck. He and (best friend Eddie) DelGrosso stayed with me for a season. I could count on him. He was family,” Neumann said.

Eddie DelGrosso was playing for a team called the St. Louis Heartland Eagles when he quit and drove nonstop halfway across the country to be reunited with his pal in San Diego.

“Growing up, playing hockey together, you don’t have a lot of (high school) friends,” DelGrosso said. “You practice three times and then you leave to go play hockey somewhere. You develop that bond. We were like brothers; there wasn’t anything we wouldn’t do together or for each other.”

The two Eddies, that’s what hockey people called them. Eddie DelGrosso said he was supposed to get fitted for a tuxedo soon — Eddie Samuels was engaged to be married to his girlfriend, Lelani.

Lee Samuels kept introducing people that his son had played for or with or against. He said he didn’t feel like talking much, but then he would. It was mostly about hockey or Vegashockey.net, the website he started when Eddie started digging the puck out of the corners.

Every now and then he would interject a thought that conveyed a father’s pain in losing a son.

“It shouldn’t happen like this,” he said quietly.

He told a story about how right after Eddie died, Eddie’s sister, Mary Cate, was sitting in her car when she spotted a golden butterfly fluttering around the windshield.

“That’s a symbol the soul is at peace,” Lee Samuels said.

“I’ve been looking for those butterflies, by the way. I haven’t found one yet.”

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow on Twitter: @ronkantowski