Wilkes-Barre/Scranton's Ben Lovejoy Plays for Planet USA in AHL All-Star Game

BY JONATHAN BOMBULIE
STAFF WRiTER

Published: Sunday, January 25, 2009

WILKES-BARRE/SCRANTON, Pa. - On the surface, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins defenseman Ben Lovejoy will look like a true underdog in the AHL all-star game tomorrow night.

He'll look at his Planet USA teammates and see first-round draft picks, products of college hockey factories, players whose relatives are NHL all-stars and hockey Hall of Famers.

And there will be little Ben Lovejoy, unable to hack it at Boston College, undrafted out of Dartmouth, every bit their equal.

It's an inspirational tale, but not an entirely accurate one.

Lovejoy only looks like an underdog if you don't take a good hard look at his game.

A gifted skater who can kill penalties on one shift and go end to end the next, Lovejoy is a true NHL prospect, a candidate to play full-time on Pittsburgh's blue line as soon as next season.

His underdog status was earned because hockey players are drafted at age 18, and that wasn't the best year of Lovejoy's career.

“I went to Boston College as an 18-year-old and I probably wasn't ready to play at that level,” Lovejoy said. “I didn't have a great year.”

Everything changed once Lovejoy decided to transfer to Dartmouth.

“Turned out to be a blessing in disguise,” he said. “I went to a place I was more comfortable, close to home. I sat out a year. I remembered how much I loved hockey and how much I missed it when I wasn't playing. That was a big thing. You kind of take hockey for granted sometimes. The sitting out really reenergized me.”

So much so that the Montreal Canadiens came calling with an NHL contract in hand after his junior year.

Lovejoy turned them down.

When the only solid offer of employment that came his way a year later was an AHL deal from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, it looked like he may have blown his big chance.

But Lovejoy didn't see it that way.

“If I had gone and had a bad year, what was I going to do? If I had gone and spent the year in the East Coast league, I would have been pretty disappointed with myself,” Lovejoy said. “The Dartmouth coach went out on a limb to take me as a transfer. I appreciated that and wanted to play three years for him.

“Money wise, that obviously would have been nice at the time, but that money certainly wasn't going to last the rest of my life. If I was going to make it, I was going to make it. If I wasn't, I wasn't.”

And now, it certainly looks like he's going to make it.

Lovejoy led the Penguins with a plus-16 rating as a rookie and earned the NHL contract that he passed up years before. This season, leads the league at plus-26 and even earned an NHL call-up, making his Pittsburgh debut Dec. 8 against Buffalo.

That night, Lovejoy felt like the underdog.

“I do take things like that and my mind tends to blow things out of proportion,” he said. “I get a little nervous.”

But he won't feel that way tomorrow. He'll feel like he belongs among the AHL's best.

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