Rice, Paul

BORN AUGUST 20TH, 1959, at Oakleigh Hospital in Melbourne Australia, his first contact with Ice Hockey was in 1975 through his brother-in-law, Bill Jones, who started with the Tigers and joined the Demons when they moved to Oakleigh. Taken with the sport, he joined the club in 1976, and played his first competition game at the start of the 1977 season. In 1980 he joined the Demons Committee of Management, remaining there through to 1991 in various positions. He served on the General Committee 1980-87; as Social Secretary in 1984-86; as Club Treasurer in 1988-1991; and as the Demons IHV Delegate in 1983 and 1984.

He rejoined the Demons Committee in 1998 until 2001, and was also the Team Manager of the Demons Senior-A Team during those same four seasons. After another break of a couple of years he rejoined the Demons Committee of Management for a third time in 2007, remaining there as the Demons Secretary until the end of 2013. He was the Belgian National Team `Liaison Officer` for the state association during the 2011 IIHF World Championships, held at Docklands in Melbourne. An official member of the Nite Owls organization since 2004, he has played a total of 650 local games to the end of the 2016 winter season in the years 1977-2002 and 2008-16. He recently rejoined the Demons Committee for the fourth time as a Proxy Club Delegate to the state association for 2017.

Since 1986 he has collected historical data on the Demons Ice Hockey Club and many other clubs of his state, becoming the official Demons Historian in 2008 and assuming the role of IHV Historian in 2012. His work has gone a long way towards restoring data for the last half-century of the Victorian game. But more than that, for 25 years he has been compiling an extraordinary database of game statistics and related information for his club and state from sources as far back as John McCrae Williamson's hand-written Player Registration Books, 1956 - 1966, association president's reports from 1955 until now, and so on. There is also a growing catalog of historical imagery. "I am still adding all the time, even if just the current season!"

He was made Honoured Life Member of the Demons in 1989 and Club Legend in 2009, where his career has now spanned over four decades. In 2017, he was elected a Life Member of his state association for services to his Club and the sport of Ice Hockey in Victoria over an extended period of time, both on and off the ice.

His stats to the end of the 2016 season were:

650 Senior Career Games (4th most in IHV, most at the Demons)
320 Career Goals (2nd Most at the Demons) 309 Career Assists (Most at the Demons)
629 Career Points (Most at the Demons), 549 Penalty Minutes (2nd Most at the Demons),
26 Career Hat-tricks (2nd Most at the Demons) 9 Senior Premierships (Equal 3rd at the Demons)
Multiple 20+ Point Seasons = 15 (Most at the Demons)