Intended to help grow the game overseas while exposing college players to the possibilities of playing in the United Kingdom, the Friendship Four battle for the Belpot has become an annual tradition. While Scott Conway of the Providence College Friars was held off the scoresheet during his first trip to Belfast, Northern Ireland, it has not happened many other times since at SSE Arena.
In England, if you say your father plays hockey, people likely will assume you mean field hockey. Conway often had to differentiate when talking to friends or neighbors.
“It’s just cool watching your old man play the game that you want to play when you’re older,” Conway, now 27 and a center for the defending regular-season champion Belfast Giants, said. “Not many people do follow it over here. My classmates and stuff were accepting about it. I brought them out to a game here and there, and they thought it was a cool experience.”
His father, Kevin, is a member of the British Hockey Hall of Fame, and his number hangs in the rafters in Basingstoke, where Scott was born. Conway realized early that if he wanted to achieve similar success, he would need to hone his game in a land where the term hockey had no ambiguity.
At a young age, Conway relocated to Michigan to pursue hockey. After a few years on high-level youth circuits, Conway moved south to join the Texas Tornado of the NAHL. His success there earned him a trip back north to play for the Indiana Ice of the USHL. He led the team in scoring. Then, he did the same in the playoffs as the Ice captured the 2014 Clark Cup.
Fresh off a satisfying championship, Conway faced a new reality at Penn State. Then in just the program’s third year of existence, the Nittany Lions were still trying to make their mark. Conway impacted the lineup, but he knew the program was still a few years away from building into a contender. He reflected on his thought process.
“Do I really want to play in a great facility, spot, a great school, but not have a shot at a national championship? If you want a shot at having a national championship, you can’t just be on a second-year team,” he recalled.
During his transfer year, Conway went to Penticton of the BCHL. He absolutely dominated in his one-and-done campaign. Asked if he might have reconsidered returning to college, Conway admitted it crossed his mind.
“I actually had an offer from an NHL team,” Conway said. “My agent recommended that I go to school, and there’ll be more offers down the road. My agent was very strict on keeping me on a narrow line.”
Giving him a little extra persuasion, former Indiana teammate Brian Pinho (North Andover, Mass) convinced him to reunite at Providence.
“(Brian) was a great player. He had some talks with me, and said I should go there,” Conway said.
Conway hoped he would be part of a class that would bring another title to the Friars, who captured the 2015 national title. Alas, he couldn’t accomplish that feat in a PC stint from 2016-19. Nor would he average two points a game. Aside from the classroom education, Conway focused on what he could learn on the ice.
“(Coach) Nate Leaman does a great job. He’s the best coach I’ve played with that’s an X’s and O’s coach. He knows what to get out of his players. For my game at the time, I needed to be a better defensive guy,” Conway said.
In his rookie professional season, Conway would enjoy respectable success. He contributed at near a point a game pace in the ECHL. This allowed him to return to the Rhode Island capital. He only totaled 13 games with the Providence Bruins (2019-20), but Conway managed to collect some points in front of some friends and fans while wearing a Baby B’s sweater.
After another season in the Coast (Atlanta Gladiators), his experience at the Friendship Four — the annual Thanksgiving weekend tournament where this year's competitors will be Quinnipac, Dartmouth, UMass and UMass Lowell — and his memories of his childhood began to flash back.
“I really enjoyed my time over here for that week,” Conway said. “Belfast promotes the Friendship Four. They had a bunch of schools and kids coming out to watch our games. It was a very cool experience to play in front of people in Belfast that aren’t really experienced with college hockey.”
He then compared that tournament with what he wanted next in his career.
“I knew the English league was a decent league. Guys were coming over here I was friends with. They told me how good it was and how good of a time they had.”
Time has improved the level of competition in the EIHL, so it is unlikely Conway will put up the kind of gaudy numbers his father did. Nonetheless, he certainly put on an impressive performance by today’s standards. He racked up 33 goals and 78 points in his debut last season. Both numbers trailed only his teammate, JJ Piccinich.
All of that helped the Belfast Giants reel in the coveted league championship. Many of those 78 points can be considered essential to the cause. However, one goal in particular stood out. Playing against the Sheffield Steelers in a crucial late-season game, the Giants needed just one standings point to capture the league title. The Steelers were on their tail. The Giants failed to collect that point in regulation and overtime. In the shootout (a five-man format, and teams can reuse players after the fifth), Conway got his name called. Conway tried to get the goalie to bite on a deke to the right, hoping to tuck the puck back inside the post. The goalie held strong. Scott was not discouraged.
“I went fourth, and ended up missing. Coach looked at me on the bench, and I looked back at him. I knew that I was going to score the next one because I saw the goalie’s tendencies. I told him, ‘I got this.’ ”
On the next try, Conway came down in a similar pattern. He followed a pump-fake with a shot five-hole. He took a little time to celebrate, paused, threw off his gloves, bowled his helmet, then got swarmed by his teammates.
“That was a jarring moment for me,” he relayed. “I kind of forgot that I just won the game for us and won the league trophy for us, too, until I saw everyone flooding and coming after me.”
The Giants couldn’t complete the EIHL hat trick last year (Challenge Cup, league champion, playoff champion). They failed to capture the playoff title. So it is easy to guess where the team bar rests for this season. Conway’s play will be vital to those objectives. He chipped in 25 points in the first 13 games of this season.
While winning always tops everything, Conway is not shy about confessing to some personal goals, too.
“I’m trying to make an impact, and trying to be remembered wherever I go” he said. “I want to be the guy that it’s like, ‘Hey, we’ve got to try to break your record.’ ”
