Dunkirk girls soccer coach Chris Piede, a Lake Shore teacher, was nominated for the NHL Future Goals Teacher of the Month award for the month of March. Submitted Photo

Lake Shore teacher and Dunkirk Lady Marauders girls soccer coach Chris Piede found himself competing for something a little different in the month of March.

Piede was nominated for the NHL Future Goals Teacher of the Month in March. He was one of 12 nominees for the award, competing with teachers spanning from California to Boston. Though Piede didn’t end up winning the award, he still got treated to some pretty cool rewards.

“Just for being nominated, I got to go the Sabres game on March 9 and got featured on the jumbotron,” Piede said. “It was quite the honor, I got to take four of my coworkers to the game and we got to sit in our own suite.”

While Piede doesn’t know how he received the nomination, he’s been going through a program with the Sabres for the last handful of years.

“They have a field trip to the arena,” Piede said. “My team of 90 kids or so go and learn about the science behind everything that goes on. We get to see an open practice and ask questions about hockey and the program.”

Piede said that for many of his students, it is their first time going to the Keybank Center, and some of the Sabres broadcast team comes to help with the program, including Brian Duff and former Sabres goalie Martin Biron.

“Biron is great,” Piede said. “He talks to us about the physics behind goalie pads and playing goal.”

In addition to goalie pads, students also speak to the zamboni drivers and those in charge of doing the pregame routines, going in-depth with the technological aspects of the game. In addition to speaking to different people involved with the Sabres, his students also perform twelve different tasks that combine both science and hockey. Some of those tasks include change the temperature of the ice and air while looking at how the molecules move at different temperatures, or monitoring a changing heart rate as they skate faster or slower, while trying to reach a target goal.

The program, called EVERFI is a way for Piede to get his students involved, even now during the COVID-19 pandemic, where Piede and his students are homebound.

“I’m having the kids finish the program at home,” Piede said. “I like to try new stuff for technology, and this is a good activity to do at home. They show videos of hockey with interactive things where you collect data with a quiz at the end. They get a trophy for each science activity they complete, and if they complete all six, they win the Stanley Cup.”

Had Piede won the March nomination, he would’ve received a Sabres jersey, and winning the grand prize of the teachers from January, February, and March would have earned him a trip to the NHL Awards Ceremony in June. While those prizes would have been great, Piede is just proud to have been nominated at all.

“All of my students were invested,” Piede said. “I didn’t really have a way to check along the way how I was doing, and I don’t know what place I finished, but it was cool just to get nominated, especially with it only being 12 people.”

With the nomination behind him, Piede now looks forward to coaching the girls soccer team in the fall, provided that season goes according to schedule.