Stevie Lyle: From school to the Superleague with Cardiff Devils

Cardiff Devils' recent Elite League Play-off Final win was their tenth title under the current ownership since 2015 and 25 years since the club won the first British Ice Hockey Superleague.

Central to the Cardiff Devils success in 1997 was a Cardiff-born goaltender - Stevie Lyle.

Aged 17, Lyle was in his second year of being a professional hockey player having made his debut at the age of just 14.

The fact that Stevie Lyle came to play for the Cardiff Devils was something of an accident, largely due to his father being the manager of a newsagents in Cardiff city centre, yards away from the now demolished Wales National Ice Rink.

"Every Saturday I'd go ice skating and the Devils players would come and pick up whatever they needed and my father got speaking to them about the under 10s junior programme," Lyle recalls.

"Then one weekend they needed a goalie so they gave me a pair cricket pads and I did ok and went on from there."

Within a few years Lyle was training with the senior team saving slap-shots hit by Cardiff Devils legends, the Cooper brothers, Ian and Steve, and Canadian pair Doug McEwen and Shannon Hope

In 1994 Devils player-coach John Lawless decided it was time to give the teenager his first-team debut.

Stevie Lyle (second from left) signs his first professional contract with Cardiff Devils head coach John Lawless as team mates look on.

It wasn't any old game. It was in the quarter-final pool of the Europa Cup staged in the Netherlands.

In their first match Lyle was selected to play against the Ukrainian team Sokol Kiev who were in fourth place in the post-Soviet CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] Supreme League.

The Devils pulled off one of their best performances in their then eight-year existence with a remarkable 6-2 victory.

In the second game against the Dutch side Tilburg Trappers, Lyle started on the bench. However, in the fifth minute the Devils' first-choice keeper Jason Wood was injured when the puck breached his face-guard, so the inexperienced youngster ended up playing the rest of that match which was lost 7-4.

Lyle remained in goal for their last group game against Kamenogorsk Torpedo of Kazakhstan, which saw them pull off another shock with a 4-3 win.

Cardiff finished top of the group to become the first British hockey side to reach the semi-final stages of a European hockey competition and Lyle was named as Netminder of the Tournament.

Lyle is still grateful to John Lawless for selecting him at such a young age.

"Of all the coaches I played for and against I don't think any of them would have given the same opportunity to a 14-year-old like me," Lyle said.

"But that's why he made the Devils what they were because he was willing to give guys a chance."

Where many teenagers could have struggled to cope with the spotlight, Lyle managed to keep his feet on the ground, but it wasn't without its challenges.

Lyle reflected: "It was weird hanging out with adults on the weekend and then going back to school and trying to be a normal child.

"But I never got ahead of myself and never got big headed at all. I look back now and I really appreciate what I did at that age."

One thing about playing so young was that Lyle didn't have to worry about getting involved in any fighting on the ice, which in the mid 1990s happened far more frequently than it does today.

"I remember there were two bench clearances with Nottingham Panthers," Lyle added.

"The other goalies were a lot older than me so they would just come and have a conversation with me because they couldn't really go beating up a 14-year-old kid!"

Lyle went on to become the first-choice netminder for the Devils, winning the inaugural British Superleague in 1997, which had seen the limits on import player numbers relaxed with the hope of raising the standard of hockey in the UK.

"When we won the Superleague we went on a double decker bus tour and had lunch with the Mayor, I see pictures of that and I just think what a great day that was," remembers Lyle.

He would go on to travel the world and at the age of 17 Lyle wanted to see if he could make it at the sport's highest level in North America.

He signed with the Ontario Hockey League side Plymouth Whalers - a feeder team for the dominant NHL [National Hockey League] side, Detroit Redwings.

"I went over and there was a goalie who was already signed with the NHL team, and when you go to these affiliated junior teams these organisations want those guys to play, so no matter how good or bad you're playing, he would always be playing," he said.

"It was a bit of a knock-back having just come off quite a big high because I was lucky enough to be MVP [Most Valuable Player] in Superleague that previous year."

Cardiff Devils celebrate their Super League win in 1997.

Within less than a year Lyle had gone from being the GB keeper and a league winner with Cardiff to carrying kit bags in the minor leagues in Canada.

"It was a big head turn after playing for your home town and doing ok, it was just a shock to my system," Lyle said.

After limited games with Orlando, Lyle was sent to a farm team in the Redwings' system - Kindersley Klippers.

With opportunities to move back up the system seemingly few, it was time to come home.

Lyle said: "I could have stayed on after Kindersley, but it had been a long season. I knew where I was with the Devils."

When Lyle came back he won the 1999 play-offs with Cardiff, but the following seasons were filled with financial struggles with the club eventually going bankrupt and dropping down to the semi-professional British Hockey League [BHL].

Little did Devils fans know at the time that after winning their ninth major title in the 13 seasons since the club had been founded, the 1999 play-off triumph would be one of just three cup wins in 16 years - the other two being the 2006 Challenge Cup and the 2007 British Knockout Cup.

Lyle followed his former coach John Lawless to the newly formed Manchester Storm and when they folded he had spells with Cardiff again, Guildford Flames and Sheffield Steelers followed by Bracknell Bees in the BHL.

Lyle then went overseas again, first to play for Eppan Pirates in the second tier of Italian hockey.

"That was like a holiday for a whole year. It was a lovely place to live right next to Bolzano on the Austrian border," Lyle said.

"I'm not a big red wine drinker, but I don't think I've ever drunk so much red wine. The Italian boys all had vineyards, so they would just invite you into their cellars."

The following season he played in the French top division for Pengouins de Morzine-Avoriaz, winning the Ligue Magnus title.

"That worked out well," he said.

"In my contract I had ski passes and we didn't train until the evenings so any day I wanted to go skiing I'd just go up on the slopes for an hour or two and then come back down and go to practice.

"I did a lot of things over there - white water rafting, I'd never really skied before, it was good hockey as well."

When Lyle returned from France in 2007 he joined Basingstoke Bisons, which turned out to be a mistake due to the club sponsor pulling leaving players unpaid.

Having played 11 games at Basingstoke, the current managing director of Cardiff Devils Todd Kelman, then General Manager at the Belfast Giants, picked up the phone to offer him a chance to return to the Elite League.

Lyle said: "The Giants were really struggling at the time.

"Luckily enough I got the call from Todd, it was really nice to play in that arena, you feel like a proper professional when you get to that rink."

The move proved to be successful for Lyle with him winning the Challenge Cup, the British Knockout Cup and given a Player of the Year Award.

After two seasons in Northern Ireland Lyle then signed a three-year contract with the Cardiff Devils, which included a testimonial.

In the latter years of his playing career he joined Basingstoke Bisons again in 2013 and then went to Swindon Wildcats becoming their player/head coach in 2015. Two years later he made his last appearance on the ice.

Lyle has enjoyed seeing the success of the Cardiff Devils under the current ownership, especially the recent tumultuous 2021-22 season which saw them beat Elite League Champions Belfast Giants in the Playoff Final.

"When I heard about Todd Kelman's appointment as General Manager [in 2014] I knew there was only going to be one way for the Devils and that was going back to winning ways, and that's been proven," he said.

"With the Devils this year it was always going to be a tough ask purely on the number of new players they had to bring in - a whole new team basically.

"Going into the playoff weekend I always fancied the Devils to win.

"It was a great final, you could see how much it meant to the guys and hopefully they'll bring most of the team back."

Stevie Lyle in action for Cardiff Devils

Since his retirement Lyle bought into a franchise called Driving Miss Daisy, which offers transport to elderly and disabled people with the idea of also spending time with them.

Lyle said: "I've gone from being a hockey player and just worrying about getting on the ice in the morning to dealing with lots of phone calls throughout the day.

"It's not just transport from A to B, it can be a full afternoon with clients. Every day is different, when you're dropping people off, you can see what it's meant to them, it's a great thing."

And how does Lyle reflect now on his 23 seasons in professional hockey?

"I look back now and people say, 'Oh, you should have done a lot better,'" Lyle said.

"But I really enjoyed myself and the teams that I played for. I don't think I had a bad career."

A debut in top level European hockey at the age of 14, over 80 games for Great Britain, six major title wins, and an inducted member of the UK Ice Hockey Hall of Fame suggests that Lyle might well be right.