Daily e-Edition
Evening e-Edition
Sign up for email newsletters
Sign up for email newsletters
Daily e-Edition
Evening e-Edition
Trending:
Former E.O. Smith/Tolland boys hockey player, Peter Mayer, center, is surrounded by current players, coach John Hodgson, center left, and former teammate Josh Barnes, center right, as he is honored prior to a game at Toscano Family Ice Forum in Storrs, Conn., Sunday, March 2, 2025. (Jessica Hill/Special to the Courant)
Former E.O. Smith/Tolland boys hockey player Josh Barnes, left, shows his teammate, Peter Mayer, an old video of them playing together before Mayer is honored at Toscano Family Ice Forum in Storrs, Conn., Sunday, March 2, 2025. (Jessica Hill/Special to the Courant)
Peter Mayer, center, shakes hands with E.O. Smith/Tolland boys hockey players after being honored prior to a game at Toscano Family Ice Forum in Storrs, Conn., Sunday, March 2, 2025. (Jessica Hill/Special to the Courant)
Peter Mayer, left, shakes hands with his former E.O. Smith/Tolland boys hockey team coach John Hodgson, right, after being honored prior to a game at Toscano Family Ice Forum in Storrs, Conn., Sunday, March 2, 2025. (Jessica Hill/Special to the Courant)
Former E.O. Smith/Tolland boys hockey Peter Mayer shakes hands with current player Sasha Filipovic, right, as his parents Bruce Mayer, left, and Rita Malenczyk look on before a pregame ceremony honoring Peter at Toscano Family Ice Forum in Storrs, Conn., Sunday, March 2, 2025. (Jessica Hill/Special to the Courant)
Former E.O. Smith/Tolland boys hockey Peter Mayer, left, pushed by his former teammate Josh Barnes is greeted by the E.O. Smith/Tolland boys hockey team as he is honored prior to a game at Toscano Family Ice Forum in Storrs, Conn., Sunday, March 2, 2025. (Jessica Hill/Special to the Courant)
Former E.O. Smith/Tolland boys hockey player, Peter Mayer, center, is surrounded by current players, coach John Hodgson, center left, and former teammate Josh Barnes, center right, as he is honored prior to a game at Toscano Family Ice Forum in Storrs, Conn., Sunday, March 2, 2025. (Jessica Hill/Special to the Courant)
The high school hockey players sat in the darkened middle school classroom, watching as Peter Mayer skated hard down the ice and scored one goal, two goals, three, and then, improbably, four, in the state championship game.
It was 2015 and the E.O. Smith/Tolland co-op team was playing in its second straight Division III championship game.
After each goal, Mayer celebrated. He mimed shooting an arrow. He feigned ripping open his shirt. The E.O. Smith/Tolland fans loved it. They cheered and cheered, wearing their red shirts that said “Bucks Nation” on the front, and “Antlers Up” on the back.
Peter was their guy. Nobody could stop him. They called him “Mr. March.”
The Bucks won 5-2 over Masuk, capturing the program’s first and only state title. The Masuk fans had been giving Peter a hard time during the game; Peter looked at them toward the end and pantomimed putting a ring on his finger.
“He had a lot of fun,” his linemate Josh Barnes said. “He was very energetic and charismatic. Reminds me of (the Washington Capitals’ Alexander) Ovechkin – especially in his early days, he would celebrate like it was the first time he had ever scored – that was the joy, the energy that Pete brought to the game.”
Barnes was at Mansfield Middle School that Monday night a few weeks ago, sitting near his former linemate, watching the 2015 game. His old hockey coach John Hodgson asked him to come, and he drove up from Hartford. It was an emotional ride. He hadn’t seen Mayer much, except for a few alumni games and some pond hockey games after graduation, but they had kept in touch. He had not seen him since the accident.
Mayer was there too that night, sitting in a wheelchair, his face expressionless as he watched his past heroics unfold on the screen.
A group of current E.O. Smith/Tolland hockey players – who happen to be having their best season since 2015 – sat in the classroom behind him, watching the game. Some of them had been there. Back then, Mayer had been a larger-than-life figure.
But now Mayer, 27, is fighting to recover from a horrible accident. Last April, he was hit by a car while crossing the street in Denver, Colo. He suffered a traumatic brain injury and underwent five brain surgeries and months of rehabilitation before he could return to Tolland last November to live with his parents.
Hodgson had been in touch with Mayer and his parents, and visited him in the hospital when Hodgson was in Colorado last summer. Maybe when things were more stable, Peter could come to a hockey game to watch his old team? It would be good for the current players to see him, to include him in this year’s playoff run.
“We knew his time playing on our team was a great part of their family’s lives,” Hodgson said. “Our players are aware of Pete; we try to share important elements of teams past, to continue a culture. I think the stronger players on this year’s team are intrigued by the 2015 team and how they found their success.
“Once they met him and saw the situation he was in, they had an interest in trying to have a connection with him. A lot of this has been driven by the players, which is neat to me.”
Maybe it would be good for him. Nobody knew. Would Peter be upset because he had been so active, and now he can’t walk unassisted? Or would he be happy to be part of the team again, in his own way?
“The first time I took him to a game, he was kind of quiet and didn’t seem very engaged,” his father Bruce Mayer said. “Somebody who he had known came over and said, ‘He looks angry.’ And he did.
“But he came home, and he said, ‘Yeah, that was great, I want to do that again.’”
‘One of the best players I ever coached’
Peter, who grew up in Tolland, started playing hockey when he was 3 years old at the Bolton Ice Palace. His older brother Sam played; his younger brother Nick soon followed.
He didn’t play his freshman year, opting instead to play bantam hockey for his club team but joined the Bucks his sophomore year. The next year, Nick joined the team, and the Mayer brothers helped E.O. Smith/Tolland to the state championship game, where the Bucks lost to Newtown in overtime in what Hodgson called the best hockey game ever, even though his team lost.
The Bucks were ready to win it all Peter’s senior year. They dominated the state tournament, beating Newtown – the team that beat them the year before in the final – 10-0 in the first game, Staples-Weston-Shelton 5-0 in the quarterfinal and Shepaug-Litchfield-Nonnewaug 8-1 in the semifinal.
It had snowed the night before the championship game and Bruce Mayer arrived at Ingalls Rink at Yale a little late. He missed his son’s first two goals; he heard the roar of the crowd as he hurried in.
Peter scored two goals in the first seven minutes, with Nick assisting on both. Nick got the next one. Peter scored twice more in the second period.
Barnes had the assist on his last goal.
“He got me a lot of points,” Barnes said. “I would just pass it to him and Nick, and they would do all the scoring.”
After the game, Peter was interviewed on the TV broadcast.
“This year at the beginning of the season, they ranked us No. 1,” he told the interviewer. “We knew the hardest thing is at the end of the season being ranked No. 1. We knew we had to be all business and do everything we needed to do. We had to work twice as hard as last year if we wanted to get here.
“And the boys, they did it, they’re amazing, they rose to the occasion.”
Peter scored 76 goals and had 74 assists in his three-year career. He is tied with his brother Nick, who played for four years, as the second-leading scorer in E.O. Smith/Tolland history.
“He was one of the best players I ever coached,” Hodgson said. “There was no one with more success. He was a great teammate, and he loved being part of our program.”
Upon graduating, Peter went to college in Florida. That lasted a year – “School was not for him,” his mother Rita Malenczyk said – and went to work. He surfed and went spearfishing with his friends. When his friends decided to move to Colorado, Peter did, too, and got a job as a sales rep for a tech company.
He didn’t play hockey that much anymore, but he was always active, snowboarding and hiking. He went to the gym every day.
But the morning of April 26 last year, his parents got a call from a hospital in Denver. Peter had been in an accident. They rushed out to Colorado.
“He had a pretty difficult time in the hospital,” Bruce said. “He almost died a few of those times. He’s definitely lucky to be alive.”
It was another blow for the Mayers. They had lost their youngest son, Nick, who died in 2019 at age 19.
“The last few years have been really, really hard for our family,” Bruce said. “But you find a way to get through it.”
‘No biggie’
When Peter returned to Connecticut, high school hockey season was about a month away. E.O. Smith/Tolland had lost in the quarterfinals of the Div. III tournament last year but had a solid group returning. The first line of Sasha Filipovic, Ryan Fantry and Declan Bayne reminded Hodgson of the talented 2015 line.
The Bucks won their first five games before they lost to Newington, 2-1. They won 12 of their next 13, with one tie and are 18-1-1 heading into the Division III tournament.
Peter went to his first game in January. He and Bruce have been to four games at UConn’s Toscano Family Ice Forum, where E.O. Smith/Tolland plays. After the second game, the seniors went up to the concourse to talk to Peter.
The players thought he might like to watch the 2015 championship game. Some of them had never seen it. Hodgson dug up the video. On Feb. 21, they all did, in a classroom at Mansfield Middle School. There was pizza and a lot of conversation and Barnes and 2015 goalie Matt Schoen showed up to watch the game and talk to their former teammate.
Bayne, one of this year’s captains, was at the state championship game in 2015.
“I think I was 7 or 8,” he said. “You almost don’t see them as people, they’re like these crazy figures. I was one of the Junior Bucks to skate out with them. It was cool to see them win. It was an electric atmosphere.
“(Peter) was a great leader and one of the fastest players I’ve ever seen.”
Filopovic, the left wing, sees a lot of similarities between the 2015 team and this year’s team.
“We want to replicate that,” he said. “And the connection – it’s about the message or culture about the Bucks being a family. No matter when you were a Buck, you’re still a Buck. (Peter)’s someone you can look up to.
“He’s been through so much. And God knows, he needs us, and we need him right now.”
Peter has difficulty speaking and his face remains expressionless much of the time. He will laugh occasionally at a joke or smile, his father said. Sometimes he will speak in a whisper and occasionally, he will talk. But he tires easily and can be overwhelmed. He has continued to improve with ongoing therapy.
“There’s a lot going on (in his head) but he has difficulty expressing himself and processing is slow,” Bruce said. “If you ask him a question, the mistake we made for a long time, you ask a question and you don’t get a response then you move on and ask another question, but he’s still working on the first one. Hopefully over time, you get that back.
“They’ve told us you can expect major improvements up to two years after the injury and slow improvement after that. He’s not going to be skating around any time soon, but the hope is he will be able to live an independent life.”
Barnes, his old teammate, wasn’t sure what to expect when he walked into the middle school classroom and saw Peter in the wheelchair.
“On my drive there, it was definitely emotional, but once you get there and start talking with him, that definitely cheered me up,” Barnes said. “He talked a bit to me, which was great.
“I was joking with him – somebody said, ‘Do you remember Josh?’ I said, ‘Of course, he does, he was the one who got me all those points back in high school,’ and he leaned into me, and he said, ‘No biggie.’”
Senior Night and onto the playoffs
Saturday night, Peter went to the Bucks final home hockey game of the regular season. It was Senior Night and the seniors invited him to go out onto the ice to be honored with them. There were a lot of tears.
“It was definitely emotional,” Hodgson said. “Having Peter come out on the ice and Josh Barnes pushing him out there and all the seniors skating down there…”
The players collected money on their own and presented Peter with some gift cards and candy.
“He’s been a historical part of our program,” Bayne said. “He was on one of the best teams we ever had. I think seeing the culture that’s needed and having him supporting us is actually really helping us this year.
“They’ve had an unfortunate situation and he’s battling through it and he’s making an awesome recovery and it’s awesome to see so we’ll do anything we can to help and support him and his family.”
After E.O. Smith/Tolland beat Hall 7-3, in what has become a postgame ritual, the players skated over to the end of the rink to tap their sticks and salute Peter, who sat in the concourse.
And this time, for the first time, Peter raised his arm and waved back to them.
Copyright © 2025 Hartford Courant
