Lou Rabito: A chip off the 'Boxcar'

Sarah Hospodar has heard the stories.

She has seen the videos on YouTube.

She knows about her father's NHL career and all the penalty minutes he piled up. She knows about all the fights. She knows about the brawl he started before a playoff game in Montreal.

She knows that Ed Hospodar didn't earn the nickname "Boxcar" for his ability to put the puck on a track to the net.

"What people don't know is that the fighter that everyone perceives him as is not him," Sarah Hospodar said. "I know him as the biggest wimp in the entire world. My mom would be the one who's kind of the strong [one], and my dad is the crybaby.

"My dad, I see him as sensitive. My mom is sensitive, too, but in a different [way]. . . . My dad, I think, cries more easily than my mom."

More than two decades after his on-ice enforcer days, Ed Hospodar is a hockey parent and, with his wife, Dana, quite the producer of athletic talent. They have raised three children in St. Davids, and all have played field or ice hockey.

Sarah Hospodar might be the best of the three. One of the top high school field hockey players in the area, she is a senior at Merion Mercy who is bound for Boston College.

Last year, she became the first player from her school to be named a national first-team all-American.

"I was only a junior, and I believe there were only five juniors who made it," she said. "So that was kind of a huge honor. That was a goal of mine, so it was nice to get it."

She picked up the sport from her sister, Ashton, 23, who played for Notre Dame and Radnor and then four years for Georgetown.

Their brother, Teddy, 20, played ice hockey at St. Joseph's Prep and went to West Point, where he hopes to play lacrosse.

Dana Sims Hospodar played field hockey at the Academy of Notre Dame and Denison University in Ohio.

Aside from using sticks and nets, ice and field hockey are very different. Ice hockey is a five-on-five game with forwards and defensemen, plus the goalies. Field hockey has 11 players per side, including goalies, and positions that also include midfielders, backs, and forwards.

Then there are the obvious differences in playing surface and footwear, and ball vs. puck.

Sarah Hospodar concedes she really doesn't understand ice hockey, although she says she learned a lot about it, and about her father's playing days, while they watched the Flyers' 2010 postseason run.

Ed Hospodar says he doesn't know enough about field hockey to teach his daughter any fundamentals.

"But on the other side," he said, "where I think I can help her is on the mental side. 'All right, you're in this situation. Did he play you? Did he not play you? How did you do? How did you react to this?' "

Ed Hospodar, 51, was born in Ohio and raised in Ontario, Canada. He was playing in juniors, he said, when a writer nicknamed him "Boxcar" because "he used to say I hit like a runaway boxcar," never stopping or turning.

As an NHL defenseman who occasionally moved to wing, he was an enforcer in an era when intimidation was a much greater part of the league than it is now. In 450 games, he had 17 goals, 51 assists, and more than 1,300 penalty minutes.

From 1979 to '88, he played with five teams, including the Flyers for two stints between 1984 and '87. He met Dana through a friend and married her in 1986. Both sell real estate on the Main Line.

Unlike her dad, Sarah Hospodar is more of an offensive player, filling the playmaking position of center midfielder for the Golden Bears. She also plays for the Mystx travel squad and is an alternate on the under-19 national team.

"Sarah's the perfect center mid for us because she has great vision on the field," Merion coach Jen Campbell said. "Her skills are so developed through discipline. She really can hit any pass that we ask her to make.

"Being in the center of the field, she's able to distribute the ball to everyone on the field. She has great individual skills, which makes her valuable both on offense and on defense."

Her father, obviously, lacked some of that prowess.

"She could at least put the ball in the net. I could never put the puck in the net," he said.

They do, however, share some common hockey ground.

The number 17. Sarah Hospodar wears it with Merion Mercy. He wore it with the Flyers.