By Perry Lefko, Sportsnet.ca

When they aren’t hitting the stage, some of Canada’s top rock ‘n rollers are playing in a competitive hockey league and each year competing in their own national tournament.

The Exclaim! Hockey Summit of the Stars has been an annual Easter weekend event for 10 years and is named after the Toronto-based music newspaper Exclaim! The trophy loosely resembles the maple leaf crest of the ’72 Team Canada squad.

The tournament collects non-perishable food donations for the Daily Bread Food Bank and music instruments and accessories for ArtsCan Circle, an independent, volunteer-run group working to link creative artists with Native youth at risk in Canada.

From its start with only two Toronto teams, the Summit has grown to 36 teams from across the country and takes place at York University.

"It’s bigger than Jesus," musician/hockey author/filmmaker Dave Bidini, who plays for the Toronto-based team The Morningstars, says on the tournament’s website, a cheeky reference to the late John Lennon’s controversial comments about the Beatles. "Easter used to be about scratchy pants. Now it’s about hockey. It’s big."

"You get tons of these guys getting together and it gets pretty serious because people want to win," says Bidini’s teammate Stephen Stanley, one of the members of the now-defunct alternative rock group The Lowest of the Low.

The Morningstars play in the Toronto-based Hockey Association of the Arts (HAA), which is a gathering of musicians, artists and employees in the entertainment industry.

Some of the other members of the Morningstars include: Alun Piggins, formerly the founder of the thrash/folk band The Morganfields and now a soloist/engineer/producer; bass player Johnny Sinclair of the Universal Honey, and Tyson Parker, communications vice-president with Universal Music Group.

"The level of play in our division (in the HAA) is quite good," Stanley says.

"We won (the Hockey Summit of the Stars) the first three years, but there was only two and then four teams involved. This year we made it to the quarter-finals, but you’re playing against some pretty good hockey players when you get up to that level."

The Toronto-based band The Meat won this year’s tournament.

Aside from the action on the ice, the tournament is also competitive off the ice. At night, the teams trade in their hockey gear for their rock ‘n roll equipment and play in a battle of the bands.

"It’s about community, and when the play stops, the music starts," says George Stroumboulopoulos, host of CBC’s The Hour.

"There’s some pretty interesting stuff and some of it’s funny, some of it’s not very good, some of it’s really good," Stanley adds. "The guys from Sloan are on one of the teams and they usually do something pretty cool musically. It really depends. This year a team from Vancouver with a couple guys from The Odds were here and they did something pretty cool. Everybody is trying to one-up each other."