Life after NHL still good for Brick’s Jim Dowd

Former Brick Township High School hockey star celebrates successes

BY WAYNE WITKOWSKI Staff Writer

The last few weeks have been rewarding for former NHL standout and Brick Township High School hockey star Jim Dowd.

Dowd was slated to be inducted into the NJSIAA Hall of Fame on Dec. 7, along with former St. Anthony High and Duke University basketball star Bobby Hurley at the Pines Manor in Edison. A week earlier, the former New Jersey Devil received the William H. Thomas Citizen of the Year award from the Probation Association of New Jersey for his philanthropic efforts raising money for worthy causes with the Shoot for the Stars Foundation.

“It was great going in with Bobby Hurley,” Dowd said of the NJSIAA induction. “And the probation award was really nice. It was a great thing that came out of the blue. That’s a great group of people.”

Dowd took to the ice at the Prudential Arena in Newark on Dec. 13, the home ice for his former New Jersey Devils hockey team, for a benefit game for the families of two slain Jersey City police officers. Also expected were former Devils players Chico Resch, Bruce Driver, Randy Velischek, Rob Skrlac, Valeri Zelepukin, Grant Marshall, and Ken Daneyko, whom he joins on a Sirius 123 satellite network show called “Ice Breakers” on Thursdays from 7 to 9 p.m.

Dowd also sits in on a show on the new cable MSG Varsity high school sports program, in which he does color commentary as well as pregame and postgame spots of high school hockey games. His latest one was on Dec. 14, between Nutley and West Essex and he also broadcast games involving state powers Randolph and Morris Knolls. He’s looking forward to a broadcast of an upcoming game involving his Brick Township High School alma mater.

“It’s an unbelievable show,” Dowd said. “MSG is first class all the way.”

Dowd’s benefit game came hours after coaching his 9- year-old son, Jimmy, and his Red Bank Generals Squirt AA team to a 5-0 victory over the squad from the Brick Hockey Club, where Dowd had first honed his hockey skills.

“We played a great game and Brick didn’t do as well as they normally do,” said Dowd, whose team is 4-3.

Dowd will be a charter inductee into the New Jersey High School Hockey Hall of Fame in March, along with Brick Township High School’s 1975-76 Gordon Cup state championship team and Bob Auriemma, Dowd’s high school coach, who coached his 1,000th game last season.

Dowd also is busy with longtime friend Drew Gainor, another former Brick Township High hockey player in the late 1990s, in their new entrepreneur effort, The Ultimate Fan. Gainor, who founded the business two years ago after working for years as a ticket broker, calls it a “unique VIP experience” in which fans can get tickets to a sporting event, meet with the stars and get a behind-the-scenes tour. The package also provides hotel rooms, transportation accommodations and access to premiere parties.

Gainor said he is pleased that Dowd joined the venture a year ago with his vast professional contacts. They already have agreements with the Philadelphia Flyers, New York Islanders and Los Angeles Kings of the NHL, the San Francisco 49ers, Arizona Cardinals and Dallas Texans of the NFL, and the Phoenix Suns of the NBA. The two are looking to add more teams.

“We’re trying to go slowly,” said Gainor, who played as a wing on the 1998-99 Brick Township team that won the state public schools title. “We want to keep the quality high and make everybody happy.”

Last February, the Ultimate Fan sent a group of clients on ticket packages to the Super Bowl for the Arizona Cardinals. They also have access to high-profile events such as college basketball’s Final Four and The Masters Golf Tournament.

“Jim’s amazing with the state records and state championships he had in high school and then going on to Lake Superior State and winning a college championship there and all those years [19] in the NHL and playing on a Devils’ Stanley Cup championship team,” Gainor said. “Not too many people can say they have those accomplishments. But yet, he’s just a normal, down-to-earth guy and a hard worker. He’s just had so many opportunities.”

And they’re about to add another with their newest joint venture – conciergelive.com, a software component in the works for the past five years that Gainor said allows corporations to buy and regulate blocks of tickets and luxury box amenities. Gainor said he is in the process of closing deals with some Fortune 500 companies soon.

Dowd is looking forward to slowing his schedule a bit to spend time with his wife and two sons for the holidays and to celebrate his birthday on Christmas Day.

He’ll also have the chance to reflect on his many achievements, particularly his Shoot for the Stars Foundation. The foundation has raised what he said is “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for worthy causes in its 15 years, the last 12 including a benefit high school all-star hockey game during the summer between the best of Ocean County and Monmouth County.

The game lately has been played at the Red Bank Armory after being played for the first 10 years at the Ocean Ice Palace in Brick. Ocean won last year’s game for only the fourth time in the series.

In recent years, the event has included an auction of NHL memorabilia. Last year’s game raised $22,000 for the Frances Foundation for Kids Fighting Cancer.

“I’m really proud of what we’ve done,” Dowd said.

He said they’ve already gotten many benefit requests for the next one, and he will be going through them in the months ahead to set up next year’s game in Red Bank.

His whirlwind schedule has not allowed Dowd much time to reflect on his second season of retirement from the NHL. Although he is hesitant to single out one highlight, most of his friends and fans say the most memorable moment for Dowd was when he scored the winning goal with 1:24 left that gave the Devils a 2-0 lead in the 1996 Stanley Cup finals. The Devils went on to sweep the Detroit Red Wings for the title. Then therewasDowd’s firstmultigoal game three seasons ago with the Devils and his final season when he scored his first goal with the Flyers against the Devils. In that season, he helped the Flyers make the biggest turnaround in the league that season from the worst team in the league the prior season to the Stanley Cup semifinals. Dowd, a blue collar-style center who played as an enforcer who would rough up opposing players, has a career total of 728 games, with 71 goals and 168 assists.