A rollicking journey into a very foreign sport.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 44,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 10 Film Festivals
So, the world is ending later today, according to the Mayans.
10.11 pm, I think I read, which will come as a real bummer for anybody watching “You Only Live Twice” on Channel Seven, because the film will have about half an hour to run when the Earth implodes. (Bond beats the bad guy, if that helps).
I’m fine with the world ending, by the way, which is a good way to be. I can’t remember if I’ve written about this before (I’m sure I must have), but I have long held the view that we should live our lives hard and for the moment. My cousin, a leading cancer specialist, taught me this, having spent his career treating people who suddenly ran out of time, who suddenly found out life is not an endless resource to be savoured at some point, when they get around to it.
You Only Live Twice: Connery as Bond. Hard not to like.
The elevator pitch of my life philosophy is this: at your funeral, you don’t want anybody crying and saying, “Oh, poor (insert your name here) … he/she was so young, hadn’t lived yet, had all these things he/she was going to do … what a tragedy.”
You want everybody holding a good old fashioned Irish wake, getting pissed, crying sure but also playing music with a beat, laughing, shaking their heads, telling stories of your escapades. “Well, it’s a shame (insert your name here) got caught up in that bizarre shark versus giant octopus fight but, hell, he/she packed a lot into that life. Here’s to him/her.”
That’s what you want people saying.
I’m aware that age helps, in this situation. I’ve been on Earth for a while now, although not as long as a misunderstood Mayan calendar, and so have had the chance to pack in the adventures. And, oh hells yeah, I have. Not even going to attempt to list them.
But the bottom line is this: if John Cusack runs past my house, looking wild eyed, at 10 pm tonight, and then the buildings inexplicably shake and fall into giant fissures (good word, not often I get to use it, but don’t Google it; Google goes wrong fast on that one) I’ll take one final sip of good whisky, hug my beautiful partner and know that I died after a very satisfying final week of hockey for the year.
Which is all that matters, right?
It all started on Sunday. Big Cat Place and I drove out to Oakleigh, which gave us a lot of time to chat and listen to songs, ad we found ourselves listening to “Thrift Shop” again, by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, and I had a bolt of lightning idea out of the blue that I’m excited about.
And then we played the Nite Owls, which was a particular thrill for me because this team is known as the “old men” of Summer League, or of Victorian hockey for that matter. The team is an Over-35s team, which of course makes them ancient in the wider hockey community. One guy had a snowy white beard but mostly they looked disconcertingly younger than me, mostly because they were.
To be clear, I was almost a teenager when most of them were born.
But on Sunday, I was safely hidden among my mostly younger teammates and my trusty red helmet and face cage. One Nite Owl, midway through the second period, was puffing hard and I was cheeky enough to ask him if he was okay, if he was feeling alright with all this exertion? Poor old guy …
The Interceptors ready for a face-off, versus the Nite Owls. Pic: Elizabeth Vine
There’s a good chance I will one day limp into the Nite Owls’ club rooms, or nest or tree branch or wherever owls hang out when off the ice, and plead to be allowed to trundle my mediocre hockey wares in their midst, but for now I pretended I was a rookie, a sapling, and skated like a maniac. It was fun. And the Ceptors played our best game maybe ever, playing smart, fast, skilled team hockey, to win 3-1, The Nite Owls’ only goal deflecting off my stick, as I charged a defender driving a shot from the blue line. Beating our goalie, Jay, with the deflection. (Sorry, Jay)
They were a very good team, though. Perfect positioning, tape-to-tape passing, just as we’d been warned. It was a very solid win by us, a brilliant way for the Interceptors to finish the first half of our season, and our calendar year. We now go to a break for a month or so, which is a good thing given my current injury toll, as noted on facebook:
Right hammie undiagnosed habitual tightness.
Left knee dislocation or maybe chipped bone.
Right elbow tendonitis.
Left bicep undiagnosed cramping and muscle strain.
Stomach bruising (from user-error impalement on stick against boards)
Yes, I could do with a break but the season is already a massive win. I stood in front of the team before we even went onto the ice and felt a need to make a speech. The team no doubt rolled their collective eyes but they knew the risks when they gave me that ‘A’ for my chest. There would be speeches.
But all I had to say was this, and I meant it: Playing for the Interceptors is probably the most fun I have EVER had in sports. I’ve played some schoolboy footy (and, of course, The Bang, my Sunday footy zoo, which is amazing in all different ways, but is not technically competitive sport and therefore doesn’t need to be compared), as well as running, cricket, indoor cricket, surfing, boxing, one triathlon … I don’t know what else.
Nothing compares to ice hockey, and to being part of such a fun, got-it-together, love-playing-for-each-other team.
After midnight in a Footscray car wash …
After the Nite Owls, all that was left was the final night of Wednesday dev league for the year, which always has a carnival atmosphere. Big Cat played four games of scrimmage in five hours (and then lay prone on the couch all Thursday). I played my usual 10 pm then 11.15 pm games, and scored a goal in both, which was a first – a two goal evening. Decent goals too. Anybody would think I’m improving. God knows there’s a long way to go (backward crossovers, anybody?) but four goals in the last three Wednesdays … sweethouse.
At 1.30 am on Thursday, as Melbourne slept, 15 or so hockey players, still smelly and steaming from the game, stood in the traditional, glamorous post-dev league surrounds of a deserted car wash cubicle at a Footscray BP service station, drinking Big Ms or variations thereof, swapping shit, laughing and celebrating the end of another hockey year. Gentle rain fell outside our car wash and a year and maybe the world ticked to its end.
I went back to my first nickdoeshockey blog post of 2012 to see what I’d written. The key words were these:
I feel confident that the goal a group of us have, of forming a team ready to join summer league next September, is very achievable. And I should be proficient enough to play by then, or something has gone horribly wrong.
Nothing did go horribly wrong. We did it, through the hard backroom work of Theresa Neate, and then the ongoing work of Chris Janson and a bunch of other rookies. We got some teams together and we have proven to be competitive, in summer league Rec D. Who knows where it goes from here, where I go from here? Some or many of our team will go into winter competition, which is harder and has a player draft, while others will aim for next summer, once this competition is over. Mackquist, now 17 and skating better every day, could well be ready to join me in summer in 2013-14. It would rock to play a season with him, or even Big Cat and Mackquist.
Dev league bench shenanigans. Pic: Brendan Parsons
See, that’s the thing that should never be confused about my life philosophy. Even though you want to rack up the adventures, and the moments, and the achievements, and feeling loved and loving, and the travels, and the sensations of miracles and wonder and enduring sorrow and heartbreak and everything else life has to offer and hit you with … you never want to stop looking ahead, and wondering where next to gallop.
If the Mayans are right and it all ends at 10.11 pm, then so be it. It’s been a turbulent year in many ways, full of disappointment but also revelations (I almost physically died twice, that I can count), and 2013 may be more of the same but, in hockey, I’ve improved more than I ever could have hoped for and am playing at a level I would have shaken my head at in January.
If by some non-Mayan quirk of fate, I happen to wake up tomorrow, my skates will be sharp, my keyboard will be ready, my heart and eyes will be open and my legs are strong.
Have a great Christmas and New Year, hockey fans. Skate to where the puck will be, not where the puck is.
Giddyup.
Nicko
The simple joys of life: passing pucks with fellow Ceptor-Jet Dan Byrne.
Heat grips Melbourne. The Icehouse is refreshingly cold. I score a goal, crashing the slot, just like Coach Dave asked me to. The clock ticks past midnight on a Wednesday and our happy dev league crew is skating, happy, competing, living in our hockey world.
Real world issues recede. Meetings with lawyers, demons, clients, expectations, publishers, reality fall away in the first moments of a Thursday morning, as you chase a puck. Think of nothing but chasing a puck.
On Sunday, in the late afternoon, I came gasping desperately to the surface of Port Phillip Bay after a dive gone wrong (I haven’t told my mother about this yet). Mortality confronting me in the cold water and a suspected rogue upward current. It’s not often that we are truly frightened, lose our shit, fight to control panic on an uncontrolled ascent, and find ourselves breathing pure oxygen from an emergency supply on the dive boat in lurching waves, wondering if, instead of Wednesday hockey, a long stint in a recompression tank at Alfred Hospital awaits.
Happily, it didn’t. Instead, I cautiously played defence in the first game on Wednesday night, just to let the game come to me and see how my body felt. Felt fine. Second game, back to forward and skating hard. Relief and joy in my legs moving, my lungs working. Strange that, almost two years in, hockey can feel like a comfort zone.
And this Sunday, late afternoon, I can feel less fear in the prospect of trucking out to Oakleigh, tackling a team called the Nite Owls.
But now it’s Thursday. Reality is everywhere. Life swirls. Friends rise. Others close doors. I wave goodbye. It’s hot and windy outside. Feels turbulent. Unsettled. Life in the wings of fate and maybe the Mayans.
What are you going to do? Shrug, think about being where the puck will be, not where the puck is. Or was. Dive into your life and love those who love you. Find meaning in the way roads have twisted, or at least work to accept the journey.
And if all else fails, smile at the monkeys, doing excellent cannonball bombs. And head to the Fitzroy Back Beach or, whoa, watch an unexpected thunderstorm roll in, and let the thunder vibrate through your body, still breathing, still here, heart beating; not in ways you thought it might, but still beating.
You close your eyes and have the sudden memory of seeing lightning from a high point, under a towel, drinking beers and feeling unexpected worlds open up. Feel your pulse. Think about a new team waiting on Sunday. And you go with that. And you let life happen.
A puck spills free. Holy crap, it’s me, face to face with Nate, the goalie. Everybody else’s momentum taking them the other way. Like a penalty shot in a game situation, and this is a fraction of a moment of a second. I need to swing.
Nate knows, from us playing against or near each other for a long time, that I have no ability to shoot high, to raise the puck to the top corner. He must know he only has to drop to his pads to put up a solid wall for my inevitably feeble shot.
So I go high. Rip it into the air. Beat him clean, but hear the heartbreaking ping as it carooms off the top of the cross bar. And stays out.
The odds of me shooting over the top crossbar? Roughly the same as Bettman winning NHLPA Personality of the Year.
I’m calling it a moral victory, Nate. (Sadly, he gets to call it a no-goal. Dammnit)
From ahl.com (yes, I am trawling the American Hockey League website, and following the Grand Rapid Griffins while the endless lock-out ruins everybody’s year):
(Consolidated Press) Jason Zucker tied an American Hockey League record for the fastest overtime goal, scoring just five seconds into the extra period as the Houston Aeros edged the visiting Abbotsford Heat, 3-2, on Sunday evening.
… Zucker’s goal tied the record set by Dave Saatzer of the Nova Scotia Voyageurs in 1980, and tied by Chris Corrinet of the Portland Pirates in 2002.”
So that’s happened three times? A goal in the first five seconds of overtime? When Alex McNab heard about my infamous/famous face-off goal at Oakleigh, she wrongly assumed I’d smacked the shot from the drop at centre ice and was deeply impressed, at least until she learned the truth.
This Zucker guy might actually have done it … turns out five seconds is a long time in hockey.
At the Icehouse last night, I noticed there is finally a stand of the Ice 3-peat doco, with a small screen even showing scenes from it, which is bold, given some of Jaffa’s more colourful moments within the series. I had heard of some eye-rolling shenanigans on the part of hockey administrators, like shunning the doco makers because a ref took umbrage to one of the funniest coach’s speeches, and some shot of a player pissing outdoors on the Gold Coast (at a rink now deemed unsuitable for AIHL play).
So it’s great that the doco is front and centre in the pro shop and hockey fans looking for Christmas presents can do the logical thing.
(This is not a paid announcement – just enthusiasm)
God, I still love dev league Wednesdays. Cracking group of people, excellent spirit, no-tomorrow skating.
Highlights from classes/dev league last night (aside from my almost goal – as above – and an actual goal I fluked off skates and sticks, plus the fact I might finally have my head and muscle-memory around the fast feet conundrum that has held back my skating for months):
1. Mackquist Place, the youngest, totally acing his Intro assessment, while fully aware that more than a dozen of the Rookies were watching his every move on the ice. Mack always feels the pressure when that happens, assuming that shit will be hung on him, instead of support. (I have no idea why my son is so paranoid about being laughed at. Sheesh) … Anyway, last night, far from being ridiculed, when he performed a copybook pivot towards the end of the assessment, the roar and glass-banging was worthy of an AIHL-winning goal. Army and the other coaches cracked up. Mack is headed to Intermediate and well on the way to passing his old man in skill and skating much faster than I would like.
2. There was a golden moment in the 10 pm scrimmage when coach/ref Lliam Webster laughed hard at a player’s protestations that a goal shouldn’t have counted because it had hit the frame and bounced back into play before the goal was scored. “Well, um, yeah … that’s hockey,” Lliam said, then yelled back over his shoulder to the players on the ice: “… Play until the whistle, idiots!”
He remains an inspiring and motivational coach.
3. I was skating behind the net, wondering if I could attempt a wraparound goal, when suddenly a stick from behind stole the puck. I was somehow pretty much unaware the defender was there, and lost my skates in suprise, mid-turn. Sliding on my knees, I took a while to get back up and Lliam called from the bench with genuine concern to check I was alright.
Sure, I replied, to which he yelled: “You’re getting old!”
“Getting?” I answered. “What getting? I already was, and am.”
We laughed.
Actually the truth was that I took so long to get up because a) I’d skated super hard for almost two hours and was feeling it, and b) I was having a minor self-hating episode that I hadn’t tuned into the defender sneaking up on me and been ready for it. A lot of internal bad language. Grandmothers would have blushed. Note to self: less self-hate while still on the ice, more getting back to feet and chasing puck.
The lock-out is getting to everybody. Linked from Winging It In Motown, one Californian piece made me laugh.
Bloggers should never be confused with journos, but they can put good spin on stuff.
Trusting Steve Burton. Click here for the piece.
So, the short story is that the Champs handed the Interceptors our collective arse on Sunday. Strangely, I left the Icehouse feeling much better than after our loss the week before.
Maybe it’s because the penalties seemed about even? Maybe it was because we landed four goals, even if 10 went the other way? Maybe I was just coming off such a clusterfuck of a week in that bastard known as the Real World that a hockey scoreline simply couldn’t rattle me beyond acceptable levels? Who knows?
Or maybe it’s because, in fact, we were beaten by one really good Canadian and his mate.
Don’t get me wrong. This is not a rant, or sour grapes. We were beaten fair and square. Well played, Champs.
Andrew Poss playing for the Champs. I mostly watched his back as he skated away from me. Pic: Facebook
But five of the Champs’ goals were scored by a guy called Andrew Poss, who carried at least three of them, from memory, end-to-end before casually deeking our goalie to score. Like a Melbourne Ice player in dev league against rookies, a Test cricketer joining a work social match or an NBA basketballer against a weekend amateur team. His mate, Harley Hancock, was also barely breaking a sweat in beating us.
Does it make me feel better or worse to know that Andrew is apparently from Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada, and is a former, or maybe resting, member of a team called the Northstars in the Edmonton Municipal Hockey League? I guess there’s no real shame to being sliced and diced by an experienced Canadian player. But how depressing that I remain so far off the pace. Note to self: DO NOT move to Edmonton and decide to play hockey over there, if Andrew Poss is the average everyday player in that town.
I had a bad game on most levels. I’d been yearning for more skating and more responsibility, the coach gave me both and I didn’t do enough with my moment. Skated hard but ineffectually as this Poss guy and Hancock, in a black jersey with masking tape numbers, carved us up.
The worst moment was after a face-off near our goal in the first period. I was Left Wing and the Champs won the face-off and shot the puck across the slot. It literally grazed my stick. If I’d trapped it, it might have been a fraction of a second of just me and the goalie. Might have been. But instead the puck grazed the toe of my stick, and I realized it was a set play, releasing Poss, lurking behind me, to carry it the length of the ice to score, Interceptors and I trailing helplessly in his wake. It went like that the whole game and Andrew seemed like a decent guy, not celebrating too hard after his fifth.
Hockey in Victoria remains a strange beast. I try to stay well out of politics and all the off-ice theatre that seems to dominate the sport. However, I do think one of the better decisions in recent times was to ban Winter League players from summer comp. Winter League is a much tougher competition, by all accounts. There’s a player draft, so you get chosen by clubs if you’re good enough. It’s intense and the standard is high. Last summer, as these players came back to Recreational League D, which is where I now play, they smashed teams made up of fledgling rookies such as myself. Turning up for training at the Icehouse this time last year, we’d hear horrified accounts of of ugly 20-something-to-zero scorelines. Of demoralized and shattered wannabe players. It was nasty.
IHV reacted, despite the natural grumbling of the winter players who suddenly couldn’t play competition hockey through the summer months, and it’s been brilliant for all of us, starting out. In games where the Interceptors have been against similar players – learning and training for less than two years – the hockey has been even and challenging, yet at a standard where you can feel like you’re part of it, that you can compete, that you’re ready.
Shit, I even managed that goal a few weeks ago.
Hancock in Australian colours: he’s also a better player than me. Pic: facebook
But every now and then, some players or even a team have snuck through. Hancock’s Facebook page has happy snaps of him lined up for the national anthem just before playing inline hockey for Australia. Presumably Andrew Poss didn’t play last winter, so he is eligible to play for the Champs’ summer team and he is simply three or four levels too good for us. And for pretty much everybody else, going by the league scoring records. He had 13 points in three games before scoring a lazy five goals against us.
For the hundredth time, I’m not whinging. The Champs had other good players too. I was really proud of how we Interceptors kept our heads up, fought hard, never crumpled. Some of my teammates really did skate with Poss, Hancock and the other Champs guns, making a contest of it. Our goalie, Jay, saved some beauties, even if – in true goalie fashion – he slumped into a festival of self-hate for those pucks that got through.
And the Champs aren’t the only team with a few gun players. Our Spitfire sister team, the Fighters, also has several players who are also clearly of winter comp standard, not summer. They beat up on mortals like me every week. I’m only jealous that I can’t skate and shoot like that; dubious that I ever will. I only curse Poss and Hancock for their youth and their endless hours on the ice for years before I discovered this crazy sport. I appreciate it when those players don’t gloat about outclassing P-platers on the ice.
And I’m looking forward to the rematch, to see if I can make a better fist of trying to go with them, to get more than the occasional stick in their way as they charge the blue line. It’s how I’ll improve, how I’ll know that I – and the Interceptors – are still evolving through dev league and summer competition, by matching up against the best.
And secretly, I’ll thank the IHV decision-makers, for making that call that such elite players carving through our defences are the exception this summer, rather than the rule.
Nicko Place in a rare off-ice moment.
nick does hockey 