It wasn’t until the 1996 Adam Sandler movie “Happy Gilmore” that most saw hockey and golf somehow intertwined. It happened again this past week, when the guys from the popular golf YouTube channel Good Good challenged six Coachella Valley Firebirds players to a round in the Coachella Valley.
The video of the round, posted on Wednesday, had more than 114,000 views within the first 11 hours and has now eclipsed more than 294,000 views.
The six Good Good golfers, who have more than 1.4 million followers, played against Firebirds’ Andrew Poturalski, Kole Lind, Shane Wright, Logan Morrison, Luke Henman and Jacob Melanson on one evening at The Lights at Indio Golf Course — the only night-lit course among more than 120 in the valley.
The Firebirds narrowly won the round, by a stroke, which was filmed in early November, with Henman sinking a putt on a playoff hole. The Firebirds had trailed by two strokes late in the round before forging a comeback.
“I’ve been watching their videos from the start,” Henman told The Desert Sun over the phone, “so it was cool to meet them, and the fact that I got to play against them was also really cool.”
The round came together because Garrett Clark, co-founder of Good Good Golf, and Shane Wright follow each other on social media. Clark initiated the invite, Henman said, and Wright helped organize it from the Firebirds’ end.
Many of the Firebirds players are avid golfers who are known to play together during their downtime between games. Poturalski and team captain Max McCormick have joked on social media about taking money from each other on the golf course, and rookie Ryan Winterton has said that hockey, family and golf are his three favorite things.
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The team played a Christmas Eve round together at Stone Eagle Golf Club in Palm Desert last year, with Poturalski saying that it’s becoming an annual tradition.
For the round against the Good Good guys, Henman said that the six Firebirds were not necessarily the best golfers on the team but instead the avid golfers who also closely follow the Good Good guys on YouTube.
“We have a lot of good golfers on our team,” said Henman, a Nova Scotia native who has played golf for 10 years. “But we wanted the guys who knew of the Good Good guys and watched their videos to play the round.”
The segment on the Good Good channel, which is about 40 minutes long, was the first time the public has had a chance to see Firebirds players swing a club. There were a few of the highlights:
Melanson has an absurd swing
Melanson, a 20-year-old rookie from Nova Scotia, might have the best (or at least most powerful) swing on the team. Though it was just a glimpse of one round and just six players, not the entire team, Melanson’s swing impressed even the Good Good guys.
“Dude, you’ve got a swing in you, man!” one of the guys was heard saying after one of Melanson’s drives. The forward, who has scored a pair of goals this season and engaged in one of the Firebirds’ biggest fights of the year on the ice, spend the entire round drilling the ball down the fairway, straight almost every time, with one Good Good guy even suggesting he enter a long-ball competition.
How is Wright still a teenager? Really?
You cannot be around Wright for long before you want to see a copy of his birth certificate. What I mean is, it’s so difficult to believe he’s still just a teenager. Well, he will be for at least a few more days. That surreal reality was reinforced during this round of golf.
It’s one thing to watch Wright, who was the fourth overall selection in the 2022 NHL Draft, on the ice and witness his enormous talent there. But talking to him off the ice, there’s a maturity and intelligence about him. Then, watching his crisp swing and savvy golf game on this YouTube segment, you can’t help but wonder how the guy has time to be so good at multiple different things.
On the sixth hole, Wright drilled his tee shot straight down the fairway and the ball landed about six feet from what would have been a hole-in-one. Unreal.
“I guess I like that 8-iron,” Wright said with a smile while shrugging it off.
Poturalski and Henman have a nice short game
During the round, both players showed off a strong ability on the green. Poturalski sunk a putt to keep the Firebirds within a stroke entering the final hole of the challenge, and Henman drained another to force a playoff before sinking another to win the round for the Firebirds.
It makes sense, too, because both “Potsy” and “Henny” are known for their shooting touch around the goal out on the ice. Poturalski has also shown plenty of power with his shots but displayed a much different stroke at a short distance on the course.
It was not much of a surprise that Henman came through in the clutch. He has done that a few times for the Firebirds, most notably scoring the lone goal in the 2022 Teddy Bear Toss game inside Acrisure Arena.
Henman said that he considers himself a strong player on the green, but he added that he putted especially well that November night in Indio.
“We’re all competitive guys and we have some good golfers,” Henman said of the Firebirds. “Did I know that we were going to win? No. But I knew we would be competitive.”
Andrew John covers sports in the Coachella Valley for The Desert Sun and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at andrew.john@desertsun.com.