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Hanging out with the Griffins

January 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The AHL’s Grand Rapid Griffins were hauled in to help their parent club, the Detroit Red Wings, tune up this week, as the hurried preparations for this shortened post-lock-out NHL season heat up.

Someone was smart enough to bring along a GoPro and make a video of being behind the scenes at the Wings-Griffins practice scrimmage. It includes the first footage of Henrik Zetterberg in the C, on the ice, and has a great angle on Bertuzzi’s ludicrous shoot-out goal.

Tingles. Bring on the weekend and the return of NHL.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Old Man and The Knee

January 15, 2013 by 1 Comment

(* See what I did there?)

My third year of hockey life is underway and it feels unexpectedly good.

I say unexpectedly because I blew a knee, for the first time ever, right at the close of 2012. I have had many sporting accidents, fallen off a large cliff, played footy, come hard off mountain bikes, but somehow had never hurt a knee before. It’s not fun.

After the final night of dev league, my left knee was troublesome; just sort of achy. At the Next Level Christmas party three days later, I didn’t skate, to look after it. Being oh, so sensible.

Then, the next day, turned out in 38 degree heat for the final Bang! footy session of the year. Galloped around Wattie Oval for 40 minutes or so, then joined the bangers in diving into the cool waters of Elwood beach. Refreshed, galloped around Wattie Oval for another hour, including kicking only drop kicks for the last 15 minutes or so, in celebration of the Christmas break to come, Horse winning player of the year and all the joys that another year of Banging had brought.

Then wondered why my knee was hurting when I turned over in bed sometime in the long dark teatime of that night, and then went to get out of bed the next morning and found I couldn’t use my left leg.

The whole debacle meant on Christmas Day I was hobbling like somebody who had broken his leg in six places, and for most of Christmas week. I eventually went and saw a doctor at Lorne, who was hilarious. His name was Evan, he’s a total cat in Austin Powers glasses and he spent the entire consultation reminiscing about various Place family members he’d known in his time as a trainee doctor at Camperdown. “You had to be nice to them because if you were pulled up by a cop, it was going to be a Place, or if you bought something at a shop down there, it would be a Place serving you,” he said, staring out at the blue waters of Louttit Bay through the gum trees.

“If we could just get back to my knee …” I said.

“Sure. I’ll just call up ‘knee’ on Wikipedia,” he said, typing.

(I’m not making this up.)

Wikipedia's version of a knee; research assistant to good doctors everywhere. Well, Lorne. And Fitzroy North.

Wikipedia’s version of a knee; research assistant to good doctors everywhere. Well, Lorne. And Fitzroy North.

As it loaded, he lent back in his chair. “Yeah, those Places, man, in Camperdown. They were everywhere.”

For the record, I am not related to any of those Place people, or have any connection beyond bumping into a couple at Lorne over the years. I even tracked it down once with one of them, who lent me a thick book, which was their family tree going back to about 1727 or something in England. Couldn’t find a single connection (which is kind of strange, in a small place like Australia).

Anyway, I mentioned this complete disconnect and we got back to Wikipedia, looking at diagrams of knees.

“Here’s what I think,” he finally told me, looking doctorly. “You’ve got an injured knee.”

Genius, I thought.

“If this was 100 years ago, we’d strap it up and have you lie on a bed for three or four months.”

Umm, I thought.

“But it’s not 100 years ago. It’s 2012, almost 2013,” he said confidently.

“Yes’, I said, feeling a need to get involved in this conversation. “Yes, it is.”

“So we’re not going to put you in bed for four months,” he smiled.

“Good,” I said, cautiously.

“Instead we could book you in for an MRI, which will take a picture of your knee and then you’ll probably need an arthroscopy. Now when will you need that? It might be a week, it may be five years.

“If you want to fan the flames, go running every day this week. If you want it to be in a few years, rest it for a week or so and see if it settles down. That’s pretty much it. Here’s my mobile. If you need a referral to get an MRI, just text me and I’ll fax one through. You don’t need to make another appointment or any shit like that. You know, I’m pretty sure, now I think of it, that one of the Place clan in Camperdown had a problem with a knee once …”

Turns out Evan has just started full-time at a new clinic in Fitzroy North, not far from my house. He is SO my doctor, as of now.

The good news of the whole appointment is that among all this eccentricity, he did push and pull my knee in various directions and we both felt satisfied I hadn’t done a cruciate or medial ligament, which would have been Bad. Something had flared, but it was nothing really sinister.

A day or so later, I hobbled across the deck of a friend of mine’s caravan, in Jan Juc. This friend is a highly qualified medical professional so when he asked to look at the knee, I sat and stretched it toward him. He grabbed a tub of some sort of gel and started massaging and probing the sore spots.

Chloe, watching all this, picked up the tub and read the label then silently handed it to me, raising an eyebrow in a way she does very well. For somebody for whom English is a second language, she misses nothing …

“For animal treatment only” was written in clear white letters on blue. The fine print explained: “- for use on horses and dogs”.

“Relax,” said my friend. “Athletes everywhere know about this stuff. It’s brilliant as an anti-inflam. And costs 20 bucks instead of about 120.”

For use on animals only. Well, me.

For use on animals only. Well, me.

And he was right. The next day, my knee felt fantastic. Was streaky here and there for another couple of weeks, especially if I’d been sitting, but basically started to mend.

So the holiday wound on. We travelled to Tasmania, dodged bushfires, visited the southern ocean in 38 degree heat, went to MONA where I got to see all sorts of wonders including watching myself take a dump through binoculars (true story – middle cubicle on the right as you walk into the toilets on the lowest basement level, near the bar) and watching a machine do a human shit. See video, below.

There’s a lot of shit and death at MONA, but it’s awesome.

Back in Melbourne, I hooked up with the hockey family again. Thursday night was a general Jets training session, where I tried to remember how to stand and move on skates after three or so weeks away. My knee didn’t collapse on me, which was a plus but my skating was as wobbly as you might expect. A Mustangs player and senior Jets took us through drills and I acclimatized to the feel of catching a puck with my stick again. So rusty.

The next day was Charlie Srour’s funeral, which was desperately sad, as it was always going to be. And then that night, there was a social game; Rookies v IBM. After the funeral, several rookies didn’t feel like they had it in them to play, which I totally understood, but I was the other way. I couldn’t wait to blow everything away on the ice, and it felt fantastic to be in a game situation, helplessly chasing some Swedish guy who used to play sub-NHL level in his homeland, and just feeling the burn in my legs as I tried to skate hard.

The knee held. In fact, the knee felt better and better with the work.

With every day of training, this is proving to be the case. After sitting for three hours watching The Hobbit, I’d been hobbling again, all creaky. After an hour on the ice last night doing skating drills and then an hour in the Icehouse gym, with Army and Jason Baclig pushing us hard, my knee felt great. My whole body feels great.

I’m training pretty much every night this week, planning to spend several hours each day on skates and in armour, or in the gym, and I can feel my fitness and legs responding to the challenge.

Likely new Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg hits the gym this week. Pic: Detroit Free Press.

Likely new Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg hits the gym this week. Pic: Detroit Free Press.

The Interceptors’ first official game isn’t until the end of the month, it’s still hovering in the high 20s, early 30s with the occasional day over 40 in a blazing hot summer, but I’m an ice hockey player again and life is fine.

The NHL lock-out is even over, thank God (and fire Bettman), and the Detroit papers are full of images of the Red Wings sweating it out in the gym, and doing skating drills on the ice, getting ready for a shortened, intense season.

I read every line, looking to see who is training the house down.

And then, half a world away, I aim to do the same.

Let the new year roll on. I’m good to go.

The fabulous MONA poo machine …

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A death in the family

January 3, 2013 by 11 Comments

Oh, Charlie Srour. Goddamn.

Charlie Srour shooting for goal, playing for the Fighters.

Charlie Srour shooting for goal, playing for the Fighters.

For the first time, my little hockey family has lost somebody forever. It was only a few months ago that Charlie and I were shooting the shit, pre-dev league.  Big Charlie, with his usual goofy grin, trying to convince me that, as a Lebanese-Russian, he was the toughest guy on the ice. An ethnic combination that definitely deserved respect. Me pointing out that as the direct descendent of a Van Diemen’s Land convict, and of Scottish heritage, I had some claims too, even if things did go a little wrong at Culloden all those years ago when the Scots took on the English.

This entire debate flying against the fact that Charlie was the most likely to be caught grinning happily mid-game, from the sheer joy of being out there on the ice. Charlie nothing but a gentle giant at all times. He was that guy who was always laughing, always hanging shit, always had eyes shining with the joy of being alive. That guy. A guy you loved being around and who you were happy to see walk into a change room. A giant ball of positive energy and laughter.

The day after that dev league game, my favourite Lebbo-Ruskie hockey player went into Monash Medical Centre for tests and didn’t immediately come out.

After a couple of weeks, I messaged him, saying I needed to step clear of our usual verbal sledging and trashtalking for a moment to ask a serious question: WTF? He wrote back, saying that he’d been unwell, mostly fatigued, for months and now they were running all kinds of tests. “I’m fine and could play hockey except for the fact I am yellow,” he wrote in typical breezy Charlie fashion. “I miss the sledging …”

“There’ll be time for sledging,” I replied, equally breezily.

Hockey folk who play regularly at Oakleigh would drop by and post pics of them goofing around, and the pics would include that brilliant Charlie smile, but in the unusual surround of a hospital ward instead of the Icehouse. Somebody found the worst possible photo they could – of Charlie gobbling like a turkey – and printed it so we could insert his face, like Dicky Knee in Hey Hey It’s Saturday into any social occcasion or hockey-related event. Rookies phoned him the pics. It was a temporary Charlie, filling his place until he got out of hospital.

Except that he didn’t. They found what he called “the suspicion of cancer” on his liver, along with other damage to that organ, and an operation was set up, to remove half the liver and to be followed by a long period of recuperation for regeneration. Except that he kept turning back into a Simpsons character, all yellow skin, his own body poisoning itself, and the op was put off several times. He messaged of his frustration and concern turned to real worry on the part of his friends. I can’t imagine how sick with fear his family and girlfriend must have been by now.

I’d sent him a copy of my new novel to read, to fill the hospital hours, and he messaged me at one point to say he hadn’t been able to read it for a few days because “I’ve been pretty crook.” I sensed the understatement in the words.

The op happened. All went quiet. We assumed he was in ICU, starting the long road to recovery. His mother posted photos of prayer candles. We all held our collective breath.

What none of us expected was that Charles’ girlfriend would post on his Facebook wall yesterday that he hadn’t survived beyond 7.41 pm on New Year’s Day. At the time of writing, I have no idea what went wrong; whether it was the tricky operation Charles didn’t survive or the illness that put him under the knife in the first place. It doesn’t matter, I suppose. The only thing that counts right now is that Charlie won’t be back among his Spitfire Fighter teammates, won’t be at dev league, won’t be at our usually impromptu dinners or drinks or sharing a post-game drink in the car park, or a Big M at crazy hours at a Footscray service station. Won’t be living the happy, smiling life that he was leading, pictured endlessly pulling faces or hamming it up (if you’re a Facebook friend of Charlie, check out the “gorilla love” photo), or hanging off his girlfriend Emma’s arm, both of them laughing.

I’ve written several times on this blog about death and here is yet another example of the truth: you don’t know how long you’ve got, peoples, so live while you can.

Charlie is a young death, and one that is very hard to find positives in. A friend of mine died in a car accident at the age of 21 and his death had the same feeling: that it couldn’t be positively spun, that it couldn’t be shrugged off as “oh well, she was old” or “he had a good innings”. Charlie was indisputably too young to go, had his whole life ahead of him. Had so many countless hours to skate, chase a puck, get married, have children, see the world, do all the things that we hope for in our life.

We’ve had others leave the hockey world; drifting back into non-hockey life so that it’s only later that you realise you haven’t seen them for a while. There was Renee, skating to ward off a serious health issue and bravely getting back up after every fall, and there was a woman who left the ice crying after performing a Superman, but landing hard on her chest (the female equivalent of being kicked in the balls, I’ve been reliably informed) and never returned. There was a dev leaguer who was helped off the ice with a broken ankle and who I haven’t seen since, now I think of it.

You hold out the hope that they’ll turn up one day for class, or to watch the Melbourne Ice or Mustangs; returned for us to say hi to. To find out that their life is going well, and they’re having new adventures, even if they’re not part of the crazy Melbourne hockey rookies ride anymore.

Charlie’s death has a bottomless permanence to it and is proving very hard to digest, 12 hours after hearing the news, even if we’d all feared the worst since the dreaded medical c-word was mentioned in association with his liver. Under any scenario, it hadn’t occurred to me he wouldn’t be here beyond the dawn of 2013, and I simply can’t imagine what his family and close friends must be going through.

All I could say to them is that, as a parent, my heart aches so much that it could burst. I am so sorry for their loss.

I was only a bit player in Charlie’s life, somebody who occasionally skated and laughed on the same block of frozen water in Oakleigh or the Melbourne Docklands. In the movie of his life, I’d be one of those unspoken roles, at best. “Bystander at fire”, “Dog-walking guy” or “Bar room loudmouth”. If I even made the credits.

But his death has hit me hard, as it has most of my little hockey tribe, and his wider circles, going by the outpouring of grief on Facebook.

I’m assuming that my team, the Interceptors, the sister team to Charlie’s Fighters, will wear black armbands in respect of our mate when we play our next summer league game. I’m sure, knowing the passion and great minds of the hockey crew, much better tributes are being schemed.

I’m posting this from Tasmania today so am likely to miss Charlie’s funeral. I have no doubt the hockey world will be represented, and represented well.

If I’m not back in time, then I will stop, on Bruny Island or wherever I happen to be, to raise a whisky glass to a fallen friend. I’ll stare out to sea and wonder yet again why some are cut down and others aren’t. Especially why somebody who was a constant source of humour, smiles, happiness and enthusiasm, a force for good, would be taken so young.

There is no explanation; that’s what you learn over the years. It is totally fucking random, and that’s why I’m going to breathe the Tasmanian air deeply, hug my lover literally like there is no tomorrow and set my usual New Year’s resolution: to live hard and energetically and hopefully, more often than not, with a smile on my face. Like Charlie did.

And damn, I’ll miss him.

To his family, and girlfriend … every condolence the universe can allow. Rest in peace, Charlie.

Charles Srour. You will be missed. Pic: Facebook

Charles Srour. Pic: Facebook

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: ,

2012 in review

December 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment

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

Click here to see the complete report.

Filed Under: Ice hockey

It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)

December 21, 2012 by 3 Comments

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.

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

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 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

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

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Monkey bombs

December 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The simple joys of life: passing pucks with fellow Ceptor-Jet Dan Byrne.

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.

Filed Under: Ice hockey

Wonders of the world

December 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

An unlikely scenario

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)

I’m not making this up:

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.

The three-peat doco: centre stage

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)

Wednesday nights at the House

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 eye of a blogger

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.

Filed Under: Ice hockey

Canada 5, Nicko 0

December 4, 2012 by 1 Comment

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

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

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.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Sometimes you need context

November 28, 2012 by 10 Comments

Me, battling it out against an Ice Wolf, as Kittens supports. Pic: Elizabeth Vine

So, I had a shitty weekend of hockey. My first loss as a member of the Interceptors and the game went pear-shaped, from pretty early on. We didn’t play well, as a team, for the first time in my experience, just couldn’t get any magic happening, and the other team played really well. We copped a bunch of penalties, not all of which felt justified, so that the game felt like an endless penalty kill and we fourth liners sat and sat and sat. I’m not whingeing (no really, coach, I’m not). Just saying it was a crappy game, as far as a hockey game can ever be sub-awesome.*

The game put me in a foul mood through to Monday, which surprised me, because I try not to take hockey that seriously. I am, after all, playing in the lowest level of social amateur hockey in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; a long way from Canada or the American Original Six cities.

But I’ve played enough sport to know there are bad weeks along with the great weeks. That self-doubts and demons are lurking as soon as things don’t go well. That all you can do is front up again and improve, work on your game, get better.

And yet … Sunday sat in my stomach like a badly digested hamburger.

The Victorian Supreme Court: where the nasty side of real life gets judged. Pic: Herald Sun.

Happily I spent Monday afternoon at the Supreme Court, being grilled by barristers, and context was very quickly restored. I wrote a university thesis a million years ago about whether journalists should get psychological debriefing after covering trauma, and every now and then it bobs back up in my life as an important document in that area of the world (which is lucky, because in my professional career, nobody, as in NOBODY, has ever asked if I have a BA in Journalism. Nine years of night school and it’s the most irrelevant piece of paper in the world, other than maybe a document outlining a Dedication of Goodwill & Respect  between the NHL executives and the NHL Players Association, if such a thing attempts to exist.)

Revisiting my thesis was a trip and a disturbing one. I read it carefully for the first time in a few years. Journalists talking about covering murder scenes and fatal car accidents, getting home and looking at their children and struggling not to cry, having spent the entire night reporting on the rape-murder of a six-year-old girl found in a gutter (no really, that’s one of the stories). Detailed eye-witness accounts of the senseless Hoddle Street shooting, the Australia Post mass shooting, the Russell Street police bomb. Bringing up my own memories of my time on the “Graveyard Shift”, covering murders and fatals. One anecdote I’d forgotten in the thesis was of two cops who were feeling around under an overturned car in a massive puddle. They felt something and pulled from opposite sides of the car until the object gave and one cop suddenly found himself sitting up, holding a human leg. They laughed their arses off. He ended up needing intense counseling.

The Supreme Court case is about potential damage done to media workers, or one in particular, and I was a witness and it was draining, being cross-examined and all. I got home to hear that my sister’s cat, one of my top five cats ever, had died that day. My partner was stressed about some real life problems. A schoolie had died an unnecessary death on the Gold Coast. The NHL lock-out parties weren’t talking again. Storm clouds were literally gathering over Melbourne as we got home from dinner in the city, and by 1.30 am, I was unexpectedly awake and alert, thanks to thunder claps, and out in the backyard, dragging hockey gear off the line as the rain pelted down. (It was pretty awesome lightning, actually. I love storms.) My brain turned to all of the above and I couldn’t sleep until near-dawn. My old life, as an insomniac, revisited.

Just another week.

Of real life.

Of reminders that some people have much more difficult lives than I do.

Of the occasional struggle to go on. To literally go on. To process life as we choose to live it, and as it sometimes rises up against us.

That real grief is a lot different to a shitty hockey game.

Like I said, context.

Tonight I have dev league, to hang with the hockey crowd, to skate my legs off, to sharpen up for the weekend.

Then a game against the highly-rated Champs on Sunday.

Maybe we’ll win, maybe we’ll lose. Maybe I’ll play well and get heaps of ice time. Maybe I’ll stink up the Henke Rink.

Who can say?

The key is to care intensely and yet only to a certain point. Act like hockey is life and death, but know deep down that it actually isn’t.

That’s the trick. I just have to remember that. We all do.

(*This blog is going to get tough from here, because I don’t want it to turn into Interceptor Weekly, good or bad. I’ve thought about whether it’s actually time to shut it down, now that my journey to trying to be a hockey player – even if a crappy fourth liner in a low team – is presumably through the major learning curve, but I may still have things hopefully worth saying. I don’t think I’ll be posting as regularly, to try and keep it fresh. For anybody still turning up to read it, thank you. I appreciate it.)

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Pucks, like life, can bounce randomly. Ask Rodriguez

November 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It’s been a patchy couple of weeks, in terms of hockey. The NHL lock-out rolls endlessly on, with occasional flares of optimism that a deal will get done and hockey will be played but then, no, everybody walks off in a huff, like schoolkids fighting over marbles.

I’ve been reduced to watching documentaries about Detroit. A few weeks ago, I watched the mesmeric Detropia, and last night Chloe and I finally hit the Nova to see Searching for Sugar Man, an astonishing and moving documentary about Rodriguez, who you, like the rest of the world, had probably never heard of before this film. Strangely, I had, because of one of my more ridiculous little-known hobbies. It goes like this: sometimes, on a whim, I march into Polyester or one of my other favourite music stores, on a mission. The challenge is to choose a CD or vinyl album that I have never heard of, that purely attracts me on the day. It might be cover art or the name of the band or who knows what “Use the Force, Luke” factor that draws me to it.

I can only choose one.

I can never have heard of the band.

It’s a hobby that has clearly led to some horrible mistakes. There are definitely vinyl albums and CDs sitting on my shelf that have had only earned one or maybe two optimistic listens. (A copy of Fourtet’s “There is love in you” double vinyl album is going way cheap if anybody is interested) but not as many disasters as you’d think, and the wins can be huge. The Herbaliser’s “Same As It Never Was” CD probably remains my single greatest triumph of this game, although local artist Matt Bailey’s first album “The Three I’s” is a rival for Best Ever. (A graphic designer friend of mine, who turned out to have designed the art for a Bailey follow-up album, when I looked at the liner notes, said to me, in amazement: “How did you discover Matt Bailey??” Hopefully sales have picked up. For a down low night at home, it’s up there with Massive Attack.) Other honourable mentions go to The Two Things In One (Together Forever – The Music City Sessions; back cover pic won me) and Delta Swamp Rock (vinyl – the sheer name and the photo of two dweebs sitting awkwardly in a picnic area as the cover shot. How could I not?)

Yes, this back cover photo convinced me to buy an album. I never said the game was smart, or sophisticated. But really, how could you not want to hear this band?

So one day, playing this game, I wandered around a shop on the corner of Gertrude and George Street and stumbled upon a CD, “Cold Fact” by some guy called Rodriguez. It was clearly very old … late Sixties or Seventies old. He was pictured, cross-legged, in big dark glasses and a hat, as though floating.

Dunno. Looking at it now it’s an unremarkable cover. One track, “Sugar Man”, rang a bell but not one that I could isolate and identify. I honestly don’t know why I chose it. There’s every chance it was the title of a song more often known as “The Establishment Blues”. Its full title is: “This Is Not A Song, It’s An Outburst: Or, The Establishment Blues”.

Yeah, actually, that would have won me for sure. Where’s my wallet?

Back in the car, I slotted the CD and Sugar Man, and The Establishment Blues justified the money on their own. Rodriguez went into rotation on my iPad and life moved along. You know, the usual … I worked, I fell in and out of love, I bought other CDs with varying degrees of success, my dog and I grew older, I started playing hockey, I finished a novel, I swam with manta rays, I went to America with my boys, I saw the Red Wings live (but not win). I fell in love again … Rodriguez was part of the soundtrack.

And then this doco came out and the story is mind-blowing. Go see it. I openly cried. If you’re a creative type, it’s the ultimate bittersweet fairytale. Which is quite an achievement for a film that explains before the opening credits that Rodriguez, a commercial musical failure, reportedly died when he poured petrol on himself, on stage, and set himself alight.

But guess where the mystery man, Rodriguez, came from? Yep, good old Detroit. Straight out of the opening credits, I’m looking at a helicopter shot of the city, and having been there a year ago, I was easily able to spot the unglamorous blocky shape of the Joe Louis Arena by the Detroit River. Even better, Chloe (who a year ago may never have heard of ice hockey) squeezed my hand when somebody walked past a shop window with a poster celebrating various Red Wing Stanley Cup championships.

Even if you’re not a Wings fan or an increasingly passionate Detroitophile like me, it’s a brilliant doco.

But that’s as close to the Red Wings as I’ve been able to get lately. Detroit stars are scattered across Europe or training listlessly at minor rinks, waiting for the lock-out to end. The 2012-13 season shrinks and is probably gone. No Datsyuk magic in the winged wheel for another year? Fuck. Although Dats is having fun, making the best players in the top professional league in Russia look like development leaguers up against Lliam Webster:

(Thanks to Zak Wookie for that link)

Luckily, half a world away, on Melbourne ice rinks, hockey is being played, and sometimes by me.

In Rec D, my team lost 7-1 but then won 2-0 over the past fortnight. I missed the loss, because I was making sandcastles at Lorne, which might possibly endanger my claims for Devoted Team Player of the Year.

In between, we had a strangely listless two hours of dev league on the Wednesday night; one of those nights where players were flat-footed, waiting for the puck to come to them, not powering up and down the ice. I was probably as guilty as anybody, it was just a night where mojo was missing, although I did wake up sore the next day, which is always a good sign I’ve skated hard, and I did manage a goal – my third in four games.

The best thing was that when I woke the next morning with my usual Thursday morning hockey hangover, I was unexpectedly aware that I had made a surprise breakthrough in my hockey learning.

I had spent the night, especially the second game, determined to “own the puck”. As in, if it was there on my wing, I was going to win it. There are many better skaters than me in dev league; many better puck-handlers or more experienced players. But that’s what is great about dev league. It’s training, it’s learning, it’s not entirely about the scoreboard, even if we pretend it is. So I  didn’t back off when I would normally think, ‘Oh, that guy’s good; he’ll beat me to it/win it,’; I better go into defensive mode early. Instead, I kept charging. And the shock was that I won a share of pucks. Not always, obviously, but enough that it reminded me all over again how much easier hockey is and how the puck comes to you, when you take this attitude, instead of feeling, in the back of your mind, that you’re somehow making up the numbers. It’s the same in footy, probably the same in most sports. Confidence and commitment leads to good results.

Maybe it’s the fact I’ve managed a few goals lately? Maybe it’s false confidence? Maybe I’m delusional?

I don’t care. It’s been working and tomorrow night, when dev league cranks up again, and this weekend, against the Ice Wolves, I’m looking for that puck.

And after that? As Rodriguez sang, I’ll slip away.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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