The Hockey Team That Was Essentially Owned By the Mob

What happens when a mobster buys his son a professional sports organization? Find out with this video!

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Danbury Trashers
It isn’t often that a father buys his son a minor-league hockey team, but it IS even rarer when the father places his son in charge of THAT hockey team. That’s exactly what Jimmy Galante did for his then high school aged son, A.J. Back in 2004, Jimmy Galante, a waste disposal mogul, purchased an expansion hockey team for $500,000 thousand dollars as a present for his son.

AJ Galante
AJ’s journey into hockey began when he was around 7 to 8 years old. He explained that his mother once took him to see The Mighty Ducks on a Saturday afternoon, and that was when he fell head over heels for the game. But, he never played the game before nor did he grow up in a hockey loving family. Instead, he got a pair of rollerblades and some street hockey equipment to grow his love for hockey.

General Manager
And that’s why in 2004, Jimmy Galante decided to do a surprising and shocking move to the community. He gave AJ the job of general manager of the Danbury Trashers in order to cheer him up after his on-ice injury. AJ quickly took to the new job and started building his dream team. A team full of tough guys who racked up penalty minutes as easy as breathing.

Team Construction
AJ gave his team the objective of their game. And that was to be the toughest team around. The first player the team signed was forward Brad Wingfield. He was a Canadian tough guy who had 576 penalty minutes in his previous team. Then there were other tough guys such as Jon “Nasty” Mirasty, Frank “The Animal” Bialowas and Dave Macisaac.

Hockey Brand
There were many signature nights for the Trashers during their 2 years of dominance in the league. The Trashers lived up to their tough guy mentality from the get-go and broke the UHL record for penalty minutes with 2,776 in their inaugural season. The Trashers were involved in the league’s biggest brawl that season that happened after the injury of Trasher’s star Brad Wingfield.

Busted
By the spring of 2005, a handful of agents were already deep into the investigation of Galante’s garbage business. According to the subsequent indictment, the investigation was part of an effort to thwart quote “illegal practices in the trash hauling industry.” It had all been kickstarted by a simple complaint from most likely a competitor. Someone tipped off the FBI and said Galante was monopolizing regional garbage collection and driving out competitors.

Aftermath
As for what came after the Trashers, AJ graduated from Manhattanville College with a business major and got a job with a local heating oil company. But admittedly, AJ said life was tough especially after the family incident and losing the team. He described it as a break up and stopped watching hockey completely until around 2018.

Видео The Hockey Team That Was Essentially Owned By the Mob канала Enterprises Explained