The Sunday Read: How Middleton Changed the Course of USA Sled Hockey

BOSTON –– Rick Middleton came barreling onto the ice, diving into a heap of his Team USA players.

The gold-medal shootout had just concluded. Manny Guerra made one last save, and it was confirmed – the United States had climbed from the bottom of the international sled-hockey barrel, up to the very top.​

The more than 8,300 fans in attendance watched at the E Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, as Team USA was garnished with gold at the 2002 Paralympic Games for the first time in the program’s history.

“It was probably more relief than anything. You see me on the boards, I can hardly look,” Middleton said. “It was something that was really, obviously, unexpected and unreal. And it was only six months after 9/11. There was a lot of nationalism in the country then. We were so proud to have the flag come up and the national anthem play.”

Middleton, who was 14 years removed from his legendary NHL career with the Boston Bruins, found himself at the center of a team he, not too long before, knew nothing about.

The U.S. Paralympic Sled Hockey team had been reeling. It finished sixth out of seven teams at the 1998 Nagano Winter Paralympics, followed by a last-place showing at the 2000 World Cup, and was struggling to survive by 2001. The only reason the group was invited to compete at the 2002 Paralympic Games was that they were hosted on home soil. Going into the tournament, Team USA was ranked sixth out of six teams.

A change in leadership was needed. And so, Paul Edwards – who was a Paralympic skier and also Middleton’s friend - gave the retired Bruin a call to see if he had any interest in getting behind the bench.

“He said, ‘You do know what sled hockey is, right?’ I thought if I said no, he might say, ‘Oh, never mind.’ So I lied, and I said, ‘Oh yeah! I know.’ But I didn’t have a clue,” Middleton said. “All I heard was hockey, Paralympics. I was like, I am never going to get an offer like this again. So I went for it.”

Middleton recruited Tom Moulton to be his assistant coach, and the duo got to work. After holding a couple of training camps, they selected their roster of 15 players. Middleton and Moulton had six months to get their squad ready for international competition.

It was a different pace for the Team USA returners. Kip St. Germaine was on the 1998 roster and welcomed the new voice. St. Germaine, the East Falmouth, Massachusetts, native, had grown up a Bruins fan. He wore No. 4 his entire youth hockey career for Bobby Orr.

Accordingly, he had no qualms when the Middleton hire was presented to him.

“It seemed like an automatic. That was something we needed to do, just based on where the program was at that point in time in history,” St. Germaine said. “Here in the U.S., we didn’t have any respect. Outside of the country as well, everybody thought we were a cakewalk. So to bring in somebody like Rick that had the experience, had the knowledge, and could mold us into what we became – when his name was mentioned, I was like, ‘Yeah, set the meeting up. We’ve got to try to make it happen.’”

Middleton spent 12 seasons with the Bruins (1976-88), logging 402 goals and 496 assists for 898 points in 881 games. Middleton helped lead the B’s postseason appearances in 11 of his 12 seasons, and had his number retired to the rafters at TD Garden in November 2018; St. Germaine was in attendance for the ceremony.

And, despite the illustrious run in the NHL, Middleton came to sled hockey with fresh eyes. There was more to know about the game. He thought back to one of his first camps with the team.

“I had to learn the little idiosyncrasies of sled hockey,” Middleton said. “I blew the whistle, and I yelled, ‘backwards!’ They all stopped and looked at me. I went, ‘Shoot, they don’t go backwards.’ So that was a big laugh. They knew that I really didn’t understand sled hockey as much, but they knew I knew hockey, and that was the main thing.”

Middleton pulled inspiration from his former Bruins head coach, Don Cherry, when thinking about how he wanted his team to play. He landed on a dump-and-run system, which was pretty easy, Middleton said, once you got over the red line: “get that puck deep and go get it.”

“If it wasn’t for Don really stressing a system like that with us, especially in the ‘70s – he made no bones about coming up the boards. We wanted to force another team to come up the boards and have our defensemen pinch in,” Middleton said.

“We looked at tapes, Tom and I, and discovered that they did not have a system. We ran scrimmages, and they were all over the place. We decided that we had to somewhat instill a system because their abilities were really A to Z. It had to be a simple enough system that they could all grasp and learn in six months.”

Team USA took that game plan and put it into action at the Paralympics. And, to most’s surprise, it worked. Middleton’s group went unbeaten in the tournament, outscoring opponents 26-6. They trailed for the first time in the gold-medal matchup, and ultimately went to overtime and a shootout tied 3–3. The U.S. and Norway each scored twice in the first three rounds of the five-round affair. St. Germaine potted what would turn out to be the game-winning goal before Guerra stopped the final opponent shot.

“Once you get into the shootout, as a shooter, you have the advantage over the goalies, because once you get them moving, they have to drop their hands to move, and it opens up the entire top half of the net,” St. Germaine said. “It is something we practice even as kids in youth hockey, you know, pretending you’re going to score the game-winning goal. I am fortunate that I had the opportunity.”

By the end of his career, St. Germaine was heavily decorated. He competed as a player in four World Championships (1996, 2000, 2004 – silver, 2009 – gold) and three Paralympic Winter Games (1998, 2002 – gold, 2006 – bronze). The win in 2002, though, meant a little more.

“I just wanted to be accepted as a hockey player. I had been a hockey player growing up, and then when I had my injury, I kind of thought that I had lost that identity,” St. Germaine said. “And then to find sled hockey, and the international competition, and that whole level of it, it gave me something to strive for. It gave me that piece of my life that I had lost with my injury. I was able to recreate my identity in a new form.”

Since Middleton led the U.S. to the top of the podium, Team USA sled hockey earned bronze in 2006 and gold in the last four Paralympic Winter Games (2010, 2014, 2018, 2022). The 2002 team was inducted into the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame in 2022; it marked the first time a Paralympic team earned that accolade. The team was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2024.

“The fact that the sport has gone where it has since then, it gives me the most pride. Unbeknownst to us. Then we heard that if we didn’t medal, they might cut the program,” Middleton said. “Not only did they surge afterwards, if we didn’t, there may not be any sled hockey in the United States at a national level.”

The U.S. sled hockey team will go for another first-place finish on Sunday at 11 a.m. ET against Canada at the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena at the 2026 Winter Paralympic Games.

Middleton’s journey with the 2002 U.S. Paralympic sled hockey team is chronicled in the new documentary, Ice Gold, directed by Matthew Allen. It combines boots-on-the-ground footage and recent interviews with coaches and players. Ice Gold can be viewed on Peacock.

Rewatching the historic run had Middleton reflecting on what he learned. Perhaps one of the biggest messages? Take the chance.  

“It just came out of left field. I never thought about it in my whole life until it happened,” Middleton said. “And then since I went for it, I kind of had to figure out how to do it.”