nick does hockey

The kind of monument I think the Icehouse should consider, to celebrate my first broken stick ...

I hit the puck so sweetly I felt the shot right through my forearms in a good way, and right across my ribcage. The puck fairly flew into the bottom right hand corner of the goal, Otto the goalie beaten pointless. And then I realised: the crack of my wooden hockey stick turned out to be a genuine crack of my wooden hockey stick.

This is why I’ve been walking around with my fists under my biceps all week, in case you were wondering. This is why my Play-Off Beard is unfeasibly bushy after only one round of the NHL Play-Offs.

I broke my first stick. It’s a big moment for a budding hockey star. Let me explain …

It all started on Good Friday. Three men. One Perth chick. A lot of ice.

Mack, Georgi Kay, Will and I take advantage of a public holiday to hit a “Try Hockey” session at the Icehouse.

There are only a few people on the Heinke Rink and Georgi – Perth’s hottest music sensation (yes, soak up that free gratuitous publicity, George – who, did I mention?  is playing around Melbourne over the next week: see you there, hockey fans) – proved to be a decent skater, drawing on lots of inline experience. Mack, for a kid who hardly ever joins us on the ice, looks solid, wielding a stick for the first time. He later said he wants to sign up for Saturday morning Intro to Hockey sessions! Three Places on the ice? Too good to be true … we could have our own line in a team!

Over time, the session sorts itself out so that most of the newbies wear themselves out and leave the ice, while a bunch of hardcore hockey dawgs are at one end, enjoying an actual goalie in net, deflecting their shots. And a few of us are at the other goal, with the standard “fake” goalie – let’s call him Otto the auto-goalie for Flying High fans– protecting the net.

Otto the Auto-Goalie. Beaten pointless by my stick-breaking shot.

I’m practicing cross-overs and feeling pretty balanced, while also stick-handling to control the puck. And I’m working on really hitting my shots at goal. Until now I’ve only pushed at the puck. I can send a decent pass across the ice, stroked firmly, but haven’t really wound up on shots for goal until now. So I do, trying to balance on my right foot as I throw my weight and upper body into slapshots.

And towards the end of the session, I start getting it right. Send some cannons into the holes in the corner (still can’t lift the puck to aim above Otto’s shoulder) and then I really hammer one. Well, it feels like it. Big swing, puck flies, perfect aim. Goal. I’m strutting as much as is possible for a guy with dodgy balance on newly sharpened edges.

And then I go to get another puck and realise the bottom of my stick is swinging in a sickening way.

And I’m prouder than ever – I have just broken my first hockey stick, and while scoring a goal. I have become a hockey man.

Sure, it’s expensive, given it was an eighty buck stick (and I end up replacing it with a much better composite stick that costs three times that) but hey, it was worth it for the testosterone rush.

Tommy Powell, of Melbourne Ice and Australian fame, is well impressed when I skate back to the bench for a new stick – they hand them out for Try Hockey sessions, if you need one – and congratulates me on having reached such a milestone, asking what I plan to do with my souvenir – as in, the broken stick? It’s a good question. How much does it cost to frame a hockey stick? Does Ikea run to cheap and nasty frames measuring 180 cm in length?

This was all a forerunner to my return to Intro Hockey class, which was also a lot of fun. Strangely, it feels as though at least two-thirds of the class are repeaters like me so everything that Lliam and Army introduced was met with an air of: “Yeah, sure … swizzels? Let’s go”, but they had to explain them anyway for the true newbies.

I was enjoying the sheer sense of knowing what I was doing. Forward swizzels, for example, where you push off your inside edges and bring your legs around like a frog kick, practicing balance and edge control, took me weeks and weeks first time around – a whole couple of months ago. Now, I was able to just reel them off. Next!

I’m not too cocky though. My snowploughs weren’t in great form and I usually pride myself on them. And the bastard that is the pivot and other such horrors are to come.

Through all this my beloved Red Wings had sat on their bums, watching hockey on tellie. Detroit swept the first round of the play-offs against the Coyotes, becoming the only team to move into Round 2 on a 4-0 scoreline. Most of the other first round series went into a sixth or seventh game, so the Wings rested then practiced to keep sharp, as potential opponents beat the Hell out of each other and wore themselves out travelling across the country. My guy, Hank Zetterberg, was able to return to full practice, having recovered from a knee that saw him miss all four games against the Coyotes.

Now the question, as the Wings prepare to face the San Jose Sharks, is whether all that time off will leave them flat against battle-hardened opponents, or fresh and eager against tired skaters? The Sharks were a tough team for us throughout the regular season. But, hey, all games from here against any opponents are going to be knife-edge. My play-off beard might have a week or a month or more to keep getting all Wild Man of Borneo … who can say?

My play-off beard: after round one.

It’s already been a Play-Offs to remember … The Canucks only edged past the defending Stanley Cup champions, the Chicago Blackhawks, with an Overtime goal in the decider, Game Seven. And then Boston did the same, to sneak past the Montreal Canadiens.

By the way, there was a great article about Detroit’s Russian wonder, Pavel Datsyuk, in Sports llustrated. In raving about his sheer talent, it talked about his best trick being to sneak up behind an opponent who has the puck, gently lift the opponent’s stick an inch off the ice with his stick and steal the puck, without them realising he was even there. This is all at extremely high speed. Sometimes they go to pass or shoot the ghost of the puck and it’s only then they realise it’s long gone. All this after he arrived in 1997 as a scrawny kid who was spotted in Russian junior leagues while the Red Wings scout was there to see a more known, bigger, highly-rated kid. But couldn’t help but be amazed by this weedy genius of a teenager.

How can you not love Datsyuk?

“So,” I said to Morgan and Ray, drinking our first beers at the Harbourside Hotel, all our eyes shining. “Are we hockey players now?”

Nicko (black jersey) v Will (white jersey) in our first-ever Face-Off. Pic: Jay

Their response was immediate and definite. “Yes!”

And damn if we’re not. In the previous hour or so we had taken hits, and delivered them. We had skated the ice in an actual game of hockey. In the final hour of our 10-week beginner course, we had divided into teams of dark jerseys and white jerseys and played actual hockey.

And oh man, you can never know how good it felt. Will’s friend, Jay, came along, with Mack, and took exactly 653 photos. In just about every picture featuring me, I’m grinning like an idiot. Even now, typing this, I can’t help but smile.

In fact, now I’m thinking of when I was a tennis writer, in another life a long time ago. In a hotel bar, I found myself drinking with a long-time member of the Indian Davis Cup team who should remain nameless for this story, and mentioned that I had covered a tie a couple of years before, where the lightly-regarded Indian team had somehow upset Australia on grass. (These days, when a team from Liechtenstein would test Australia, such an event doesn’t seem remarkable. Back then, there was a national outcry.)

Anyway, the Indian player smiled at the memory and stared into the middle distance. Then said, “Ah yes. Most fun I’ve had in Australia … with my pants on.”

That’s kind of how my first hockey game felt.

We had suited up, full of expectation. One of my great learnings of the past 10 weeks (apart from : there is no easy way to get to Docklands at peak hour) is that I had forgotten the joy of a locker-room. Most Sundays I play in The Bang, a loose-knit collective of guys who are mostly old enough to know better but train hard as a footy team without a competition, devoted to the pure pursuit of marking a footy in your hands in front of your face, and delivering a perfect pass on the run. The banter and camaraderie there is every bit as important to me as the actual fitness and skill of playing.

Hockey has emphasised again what I love about team sports. All learning, brothers and sisters in L-Plate skating and hockey, we’ve really bonded, and so there was sadness as we gathered for the last time. We’ll see each other around at the Icehouse, I’m sure. Melbourne Ice or Mustangs games, we’ll be crossing paths between or in classes – beginner repeaters like me, or intermediate classes – or just glide past one another in general skating sessions.

But this was our last stand as a group, and we knew it. So we went and beat the shit out of each other in competition.

I’m proud and happy to record that Place N (Dark team) and Place W (Light team) stood in opposition at the very first Face-Off – hockey’s equivalent of the centre bounce. “Look at this,” crowed Lliam the coach. “Bring it!”

Army dropped the puck, Will’s reflexes were, of course, faster but not fast enough and he swished at air as the puck bounced over his stick. And so history will record that I won our first-ever father-son face-off with a controlled push to the grandstand boards where a Dark wing was waiting. Oh yeah!

We were away. Unlike last week’s five minutes of scrimmaging, where there were 10 players all hacking away in the same ice, chasing the puck like dogs after a ball, this time people tried to play position and there was more room to move.

Plenty of falling, plenty of collisions. I found myself against two opponents who were threatening a breakaway and, with such limited skill to call on, basically cannoned into both of them, taking their legs. Ten pin defence.

I won’t bore you with a play-by-play of the hour. I played mostly as a centre, only clearly lost one face-off,  ended up personally +3, and our team won in a Shoot Out, 5-4, after leading 4-2 at one stage.

Having said that, my skating clearly isn’t up to the real thing and, while I had a crack, I am still too uncertain in turning and stopping to play for an actual team. Repeating beginner course, underlining the skating skills, will only be good for me.

Will controls the puck.

My friends Rich and Stavros, who had heroically turned up to watch, judged that Will was the better skater but I was more willing to get down and dirty in the clinches – “chase the bone”, as Rich eloquently put it, being a highly decorated sports journo and all.

My best shot at goal was a nifty backhand push around my left hip, shooting almost behind my back. The puck glided to the goal and was pushed in by a teammate. Technically an assist to me. I reckon it would have gone anyway but Will retains his record as the only Place yet to have scored a goal (he was unlucky last night, missing by a bee’s dick at least twice).

Lliam says he never tires of teaching the newbie class, because of this game at the end. People who could barely stand on skates 10 weeks ago now flying in all directions, colliding, slamming into boards, scoring goals while sliding on their butt (hello, Morgan).

Never has a beer felt so earned. In the happy post-game chatter in the locker-room, we marvelled at how much more exhausting actual play was, compared to drills and training. Several players had to sit out shifts towards the end because they were spent. And we were all sweating like you wouldn’t believe.

Between shifts.

Damn, it was fun. I didn’t feel 46 years old last night and today I am not sore at all.

“You addicted now?” Lliam asked, knowing the answer.

Next week, I go back to Week One, Beginner course. “This is a skate. It goes on your foot.” Should be fun. I’m going to pay full attention. I want to learn to skate better than well. I want to be a hockey player. For real.

More pics: here.

Nicko, mid-drill. Pic: Stavros.

Christmas came early to the Icehouse yesterday. Well, ok, not Christmas. That would be December 25, and it was only April 13, so it’s a ridiculous analogy.

What did happen is that our hockey coaches admitted they’d stuffed up the dates and this was only our second last week of training. Say, huh?

We’d all turned up, sad it was our final week, pumped for scrimmages (actual hockey game play) but found ourselves with an extra week. Coolness!

We instead spent the majority of the session on gameplay drills, which I actually love, so no complaints.

We did the off-side drill, where two skaters take off together, passing the puck. The one nearest the boards then keeps going, while the other peels off to the left. This is happening at both ends of the ice so you end up with a player skating hard along the boards from both ends, looking for those players peeling into the centre from the opposite end, right near the blue line nearest each goal. (Don’t worry: we get confused and we’re on the ice, watching it.)

It all ends up with the board-side player either passing to the peeling player, if they haven’t crossed the line and therefore are not offside. Or carrying the puck over the line and then passing towards goal.

Another drill was simple passing, with one player doing figure eights between two stationary players who alternate long passes to one another and shorter passes to the moving skater between them.

This drill was hilarious only in how many ways apparently intelligent skaters can screw it up. Before you get to errant passes spraying past sticks, or dodgy traps not capturing the pucks, you had the stationary players heading to the centre, or both doubling back to the same end or … it was chaos.

We also did our first one-on-one drill, where a defender had to skate backwards as a forward tried to get past them, to have a free run at the goal. Really tricky. As Michael, one of the coaches, pointed out, this drill emphasised how important backward skating is in hockey. Not many of us are genuinely good enough at backward skating to pull off the defender role flawlessly. Lots of defenders left flailing as the forward made one feint and then was home free.

Me? In a miracle, I was barely moving backwards at the moment I totally committed to stealing the puck off my opponent’s stick and somehow pulled it off. Wham! As a commentator recently called it in an NHL game: “A magic wand steal”.

Lliam was observing as I did it, pumped my fist and yelled “Kronwall!” (a slightly obscure Wings defender) and so he had a laugh … then gave us a lecture about the need to actually be moving backwards while defending. Sigh. Bloody world champions … think they know it all.

Finally, with about five minutes to go, we broke into light shirt and dark shirt teams and played our first game of hockey. I was a defender for the first shift of the whites (Medicine Hat Tigers home jersey) and got a couple of touches. I also had a stick hook my legs out from under me, at the same moment I got one of my touches, so that went well.

So much fun though. Another player went down much harder than me and, back on the bench, I said to our crew of whites: “Nice collision.”

“That was me,” admitted Morgan, not looking as sorry as he probably should have. “I cross-checked him … like, I totally cross-checked him.”

We all chuckled.

Will in flight. I love this pic. (Nice one, Photographer Stavros)

Hockey as a non-contact sport doesn’t really work.

Will was playing for the dark shirts in the second shift (Medicine Hat Tigers away jersey) and of course scored a goal. The term “Teenage Strut” really doesn’t cover the aftermath of that event. Ever supportive, I said in a stage whisper to our friend, Stavros, who’d come to watch and take pics: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you send a gentle pass to Will, completely unmarked and a metre out from goal, and he’ll sink it several times out of 10.”

Will grinned the f-you smug grin of a goal-scorer.

And so we reeled away from hockey, with the promise of another week of pure game play ahead, and raced into the city to see Simon Coronel’s “Manipulations” show of illusions and comedy (awesome show – part of the Comedy Festival. Go see it!). I had a gaggle of friends from different parts of my life there, so we had a few drinks then a bunch of us, including Simon and the magic crowd, went out to the Italian Waiter’s Club for dinner. Doesn’t get much better.

I’m on the ice, talking to Tommy Powell, still glowing as a member of Australia’s World Champion (Division 2) hockey team, as of Saturday night when Australia beat Serbia, 4-2.

I’ve never met Tommy before, although I am on nodding terms with Shona Green, his girl, who cannot be described as a WAG because she’s a fully-fledged kick-ass member of the Ice’s women’s team. Maybe Tommy is her WAB? BAG? HAB? Whatever he is, he’s a world champ.

Shona Green in action.

So it seemed only reasonable to say congrats. Tommy was gracious, pleased, looking forward to the next step up, Australia having won through to Division 1, where teams like England, Poland or the Netherlands await. Big European countries that take hockey more seriously than Mexico or New Zealand (no offence to either – and no, I didn’t get me a Mexican jersey, dammnit).

“What happens if you guys win Division 1?” I ask Tommy. “What’s next?”

“Elite,” he says, barely daring to say it. USA, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Germany  … too heady to even consider.

As we have this conversation, Tommy is surrounded by 10 year olds, wobbling past, holding hockey sticks. It’s school holidays and a foam-suit Homer Simpson is gliding around on the adjacent Bradbury Rink. I idly wonder which member of the reigning Australian champion Melbourne Ice team is drowning in stinky sweat inside that suit, peering through Homer’s eyes and getting taunted by holiday skaters? Our professional hockey players don’t get much glamour. For every moment, like Saturday’s triumph, there are so many hours supervising the Icehouse crowds.

Tommy has just been digging pucks out of the goals on the Henke Rink, the home rink for Melbourne Ice and my training ground every Wednesday. For the school holidays, the Icehouse is hosting “Come & Try Hockey” sessions on the Henke, which gives us long-suffering never-enough-ice-time wannabe warriors a chance to actually hit the ice with sticks and practice puck control.

This horrifies the Icehouse staff, who picture hardcore hockey types carving viciously through teetering pre-teens, sticks and pucks flying, kids broken and screaming. As I arrive and pay, I am asked not to wear my full hockey kit, as I might scare those having a go for the first time. “Right up until they see me skate,” I point out. But head to the locker-room sniggering at the idea that I could terrify newbies by the sheer fearsomeness of my padding. In the end, I wore my knee guards, gloves and helmet. None of the first-timers fainted in fear, so I guess I got the balance right.

There was a guy in a Rangers jersey who really knew how to skate. I stopped for a while and leaned on the wall, watching his crossovers with a critical eye. Minimalist, easy, not massively over-stepping as I tend to. When I have my full padding, and can therefore more easily bite ice, I’ll have to try that.

I was sore from footy on Sunday – how can a couple of hours of footy hurt my legs so much more than any skating I’ve done so far? Must be the jarring of running … (Will, ever tactful, shrugs that it’s because I don’t work very hard on the ice) – and the gym. You don’t get a body like mine* without putting in, pretty much every day. But I’d been slack with weights, then decided to make myself hurt upon my return, and so I was.

Surrounded by kids and rookies now, I was able to see how far I’ve come; how I’m maybe halfway to actually being a skater who can play hockey. Which was not the case in January. Nothing like watching first-timers to see your own journey.

I didn’t feel a need to be heroic or impress anybody.  I just cruised around, feeling the skates under my legs, controlling the puck, practicing snow plough stops on lines, staying out of the 30 or so try-outs’ way. There were some nasty splatterings among the newbies, but everybody got back up. I’m not sure about giving them sticks before they can skate. It’s surprisingly hard to swing at a puck, even once you’re halfway steady on your skates.

All of a sudden, hockey life has hit the business end of things. Tomorrow, the Red Wings play their first game of the NHL Play-Offs, against the Coyotes at the Joe. The Wings are in worryingly patchy form and my boy, Hank Zetterberg, is still out with a “lower body” injury; read, he’s done his knee. I’m nervous about their chances.

Tonight is my last hockey class for the 10 week Intro course. I’m repeating, starting in a fortnight, but tonight is the climax … scrimmages, which is hockey-speak for game time. We’re going to actually play, actually compete, even if not in a slam-one-another-into-the-boards kind of way. Unless feisty Mel turns up. Then I’ll have to watch myself. Should be fun.

* flabby, creaky, ageing fast, falling apart

Australia v Mexico, Icehouse, April 4, 2011.

Quite the week.  Not only did I have to psychologically recover from the news that I had to repeat Hockey Intro, but the Red Wings lost 10-3 the next day – an off-the-wall terrible loss – and my even greater love, Richmond, was totally robbed against last year’s AFL runner-up, St Kilda. Sport, huh? Hang in there, Tigers.

For a change of headspace, Will, his mate, Jay, and I went to see comedian Jason Byrne, and promptly all got dragged up on stage; me to skip rope, Will and Jay to climb, with Byrne, into women’s underwear. As you do.

Will, Jay and Jason Byrne share underwear, on stage at the Athaneum.

Undaunted, I battled on, trying to show Melbourne and Victoria to Tarn, a Thai exchange student, including kangaroos at Anglesea golf course, koalas at an increasingly-less secret spot out the back of Kennett River, the myriad of awesome birds living along the Great Ocean Road, and a whole different kind of wildlife at Chadstone shopping centre.

Of course, I think she loved Chadstone the most, which says a lot about today’s youth, but as long as she is enjoying herself, who cares? Will was claiming to have never been to Chadstone, which I think is now the biggest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere or something like that (might not be … what? I was going to research it?) so he tagged along and 15 minutes later, we’d seen enough. A sea of consumers, endless formula shops, so many checked shirts. I was impressed that Will took a kind of Bear Grylls approach to the adventure, which culminated in him trying to Facebook status update: “Lost in Chadstone food court: better drink my own piss”. Laughing, we ran back into the open air and freedom.

Because we’d had a brainwave and, like all good brainwaves, it was expensive. A musical drive to Hawthorn (Will crafting his ultimate pre-and-post-Zombie Apocalypse playlist), some even more musical cursing that the Glenferrie Road Fiesta was blocking all traffic, but then success! We made it to Bladeworx, a skater shop, and spent a shitload of cash on two full sets of inline kit. I got some second-hand blades that were allegedly $750 new, but I picked up for under $300. They seem awesome and Bill, the guy who helped us out, seemed straight-up. He even threatened to go look for my novels … so that’s 70 cents after tax I might get back, if he follows through. Win-win!

So now we’re out in the middle of my Fitzroy North street, on inlines, trying crossovers while watching for traffic, Mack, Tarn and Fly Dog idly wondering if we’ll die. Taking bets among themselves. And Will and I are realising hockey inline skates, as against traditional rollerblades (which is all I’d ever tried before, years ago …. Before The Incident*) don’t have a heel brake. In fact, hockey inlines don’t have any brakes. And you can’t snowplough like on the ice. So Will and I have no idea, at this stage, how to stop, apart from falling over, hitting a car or fence, or maybe slowly dropping our speed with some fancy toe-dragging. We need advice from Sam, my dive buddy, who is a big time inliner, or Hotcakes Gillespie, a northern skater, as previously mentioned.

Our theory is that once we work out stopping, we’ll be able to practice pivots, crossovers, backwards, all that tricky stuff, without having to drive across the city to the Icehouse every time. I’m always going to much prefer ice-time, I can tell that already, but this could be good once we get going.

So that was Sunday, and Monday was my birthday (thank you: I have no idea how I remain so handsome and attractive and physically vital at this age, either) so naturally, we took Tarn, Mack and my old schoolmate Stavros to Australia v Mexico at the Icehouse. (Tarn was keen, explained her dad used to play hockey. Of course, he did, there being so much ice in Bangkok. Turns out he studied in the US.)

The IIHF World Titles, Division 2, are on in Melbourne at the moment (Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, Belgium and Mexico are fighting it out for a place in Division 1 – North Korea pulled out late for financial reasons, or possibly because the soccer World Cup didn’t go so well for them last year). My birthday night corresponded with Australia’s first game, featuring our coach, Lliam Webster, of Melbourne Ice fame, so we perched in standing room down the unfashionable (away from the bar) end of the rink.

Goal mouth scramble: Australia and Mexico players get up close and personal.

The game was a lot of fun – Australia won 11-1 and was a lot more physical than the poor Mexican team. Then again, they totally win when it comes to team names back home (Aztec Eagle Warriors, Priests, Totems, all sorts of cool names) and certainly have one of the coolest jerseys I’ve ever seen – I’m trying to work out how to buy one at the end of the tourney. Be awesome to wear to training.

Mexico reportedly has 18 ice rinks and 2200 registered players, including 1800 juniors. According to Wikipedia, the Mexican team’s biggest ever win was 48-0 over Armenia – that number again: 48 – on March 11, 2005, but that was never going to happen against Australia. The sombrero-types were worn down by the Aussies, 1-0 at the end of the first period becoming 5-0 by the end of the second and then goals raining in the third.

Lliam scored a couple of goals, Australia racked up a lot of penalty minutes including one guy getting thrown out of the game for a perceived head shot. If I was the coach, I’d be telling them to wind it back, just a notch, but what do I know?

More importantly, their skating made me want to weep. The international players are so light on their feet; backward crossovers are as easy as breathing, and the way they stop, in an instant, even while controlling the puck, took my breath away. Looks like I have some practice to do. A lot of practice. A lifetime.

(* The Incident: years ago, rollerblading along the Yarra with my oldest friend, Shonko. I gain far too much speed around a long right-hander at the Collingwood Children’s Farm. I go down, hard. All I hear is the collective “Oh GOD!” gasp/wince of an entire tour group crossing a bridge above as I splatter. I wait for the bruise to come out on my butt. I wait days. It finally emerges … at the front of my hip. Went right through. Nasty. Back then, I was so discouraged I gave up rollerblading. Now? I’m a hockey player. I need to go play hockey. Thank you, Brendan Witt.)

The verdict: hockey school grades are in ...

I knew what was coming, before I had done the walk of shame along the corridor, past the smelly rental gear.

“We’re recommending you repeat the Intro course,” said Army, perched behind a card table.

“But, but – what about my blog?” I stammered. “How can I keep this thing interesting if I don’t proceed to Intermediate, you bastards?”

“We’re sorry. This is hockey,” said Michael.

“What about Will?”

“He’s going to Intermediate.”

“So now you’re breaking up my relationship with my son. Goddamn it,” I snarled, dropping my gloves and shaping up to them both. Time for a Gordon Howe Hattrick.

… OK, that’s not quite how it went down. Actually, I turned up for last night’s class, after a fortnight’s break, knowing we were going to be handed letters recommending we either repeat the course, or move up to the next level, depending on our skating proficiency.

It hadn’t seriously occurred to me that I wouldn’t have to repeat, even before I found out that we were being specifically tested on our skating tonight. After spending the fortnight fighting sickness, doing intense scuba diving, hanging out with friends from interstate and overseas, such as the renowned northern skater Hotcakes Gillespie, doing some boxing training, trying to entertain a 16-year-old Thai exchange student, remain on first-name terms with my neglected pooch, oh, and that full-time work thing, I hadn’t exactly been tuned into preparing for the test.

I’d managed exactly one skate, on Sunday, but the usual Sunday arvo carnage session was every bit as horrific as usual; in fact, maybe more so. I only lasted about 15 minutes on the ice before I had to give it up. Yes, I was skating laps confidently, with only hockey gloves for protection – looking ultra-cool in a Swiss Mammut peaked-beanie to hold my brains in if things went wrong. I had my legs, no problem. Bring on Wednesday.

And then on Wednesday, as in last night, when I needed to be good, I was crap. Well, actually, I did okay in the test – apart from a rookie error, which was to be at what I thought was the tail end of the line, but turned out to be the front. I led off, which meant Melbourne Ice player and our assistant coach Matt “Army” Armstrong was watching me like a hawk through the whole thing; watching every snow-plough stop, watching my hesitant crossovers, watching my wobbly but improving backward skating, watching my lurching pivot and my final stop.

For me, it was a pretty good effort. But I knew he wasn’t about to be impressed enough to suggest I leap into the Intermediate classes, where players can actually skate, and move fast, and turn, and handle a stick at the same time, and therefore start to concentrate on the game of hockey, and teamwork and other things where my still P-plate skating would leave me in their dust.

I had tried some orthodics in my skates and they were killing me so I jumped the barrier and sat on the bench, taking off my skates to remove them. “I thought you must have done so badly in the test they’d ordered you off the ice,” Will said helpfully afterwards. I was most impressed I didn’t fall as I came back on, swinging my skated feet back over the fence and landing on the ice; the first time I’ve tried a standard change-of-shift move.

I watched Will’s test and he did really well, so into Intermediate he goes, which sucks, because doing this together every Wednesday has been fantastic; one of the main reasons for the adventure. He started making noises like he might repeat with me anyway, to improve his skating voluntarily, which was above and beyond loyal. I took a deep breath, set my jaw and said: “No, Will, you can’t let me hold you back from your destiny. The list of things I’m better at than you is getting shorter but that’s life. You must move forward.”

“Okay,” he said a little too quickly and with a suspicious hint of pure relief.  By this stage, we were at our new local pool table, at Palookaville on Brunswick Street (the Tramway Hotel has been spruiced up to Yuppie-Grade and no longer has green felt, damn them), and my boy celebrated by taking the first game off me.  “The list gets shorter!” he crowed. Cocky bastard. I was forced to (just) beat him 2-1.

After our test, we had the rules of hockey explained to us for the first time, which was kind of funny in Week 9 of 10. We were all impatient to hit some pucks but it was good to have ‘icing’ explained – and how it’s different in the NHL, which is privately owned apparently and decided on its own rule, compared to all the other world leagues – as well as various penalties and hockey’s version of offside and even delayed offside.

Finally, we were skating, and passing, either charging down the ice, looking to pass to another player without them skating offside as they waited for the pass, or passing to a player and then peeling off to look for that pass. I was suddenly nothing but a fumbling idiot, despite a couple of goals at the end of the drill; one from a tough angle. My legs were everywhere and I even actually fell at one stage, trying to dig a puck out from my feet with my stick. Turns out that doesn’t work at speed.

The longer we went, the more unco I was. I need to put in more sessions between classes; especially as we have another fortnight’s break because of the World Championships, B-division, about to invade the Icehouse. Australia plays Mexico (yes, Mexico) on my birthday and we’ll be there. Tickets are selling fast if you want in.

And so I got my letter to stay down, to repeat; told Army and Michael I was fine with it and absolutely knew I needed to go again, to really try to pick my general skating skills up a level or two. I meant it too. I’ve come an amazing way in 12 weeks but I want to be a gun skater now, and I’d be demoralised in Intermediate, a point they’d made repeatedly while warning us not to take a request to repeat personally. (Apparently at the juniors class before ours, the “repeat” verdict had been greeted, umm, badly, with tears and wailing and self-flagellation. In contrast, I hardly cried at all and was adult and heroic.)

The Red Wings hear that Nicko failed to make Intermediate.

I walked back into the locker room and everybody looked up, wondering what the verdict was. “I’m going straight to the NHL!” I said, holding the paper aloft. “It turns out there was a third letter!”

Everybody laughed and knew the truth. One classmate, Amy, gave me a consolation choc chip cookie, which got me thinking about some, umm, space cookies in my freezer. That could be what I need, I thought, to help my fragile ego cope with the rejection, especially as I realised how many of the class had been given the thumbs up to move on from Intro.

No, screw you, ego. Down boy! Nicko, suck it up and learn to skate.

And so what does this mean for the blog? Who can tell? This was always going to be an adventure into the unknown, remember? I never said it wasn’t. Hopefully it will remain entertaining.

(And what does it mean for my hockey ambitions? Well, the Red Wings’ captain, Nik Lidstrom, just became the first 40-year-old ever to score 60 points in a season in the NHL, driving a thunderous shot home against the Blackhawks a couple of days ago. There’s time for me yet to make it to The Show.)

Bob Probert (left) doing his fisticuff thing.

OK, we need to talk about violence.

Almost every time I mention hockey, non-hockey people have the same reaction: “Whoa, you’re going to be beating heads??? / getting your head punched in???”

The answer is, in the short term at least, no.

When I’m good enough – which could take months yet – I plan to play Rec Hockey, which equates to recreational leagues where the wild violence associated with hockey is somewhat frowned upon. In fact, there are mixed male/female leagues, so I’m assuming it’s considered bad form to bodyslam a chick into the boards, or drop gloves and helmets and go toe-to-toe. Then again, maybe I assume too much …

If you don’t know much about the hockey violence I’m discussing, either watch the pretty funny Paul Newman film, “Slap Shot”, which is frighteningly based on a true story and stars the actual hockey players it’s about, or crank up the volume for AC DC and watch this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCZEMSsGWYU

It stars Bob Probert, one of the great (read: most habitual, vicious) fighters of NHL history – and yes, he was, at times, a Red Wing. You’ll notice that in NHL, unlike most civilised sports, the referees don’t do a thing while a fight is happening. You can knock helmets off, drop gloves, and KO a guy, knock him clean out, but nobody lifts a finger until somebody hits the ice. As soon as somebody’s horizontal, even if they slip, the refs jump in. Crazy, no?

The Red Wings even have a much-celebrated achievement called a Gordie Howe Hattrick, named after the greatest ever Wing. It means a modern-day Wing managed a goal, an assist and a fight, all in the one game. Nobody frowns. Everybody cheers.

So I’m a little conflicted about the violence in hockey. Truth is I’ve always had a secret, and occasionally not so secret, relationship with violence. I was a boxing writer for newspapers and magazines for years, and loved it. As a sports reporter, I covered Wimbledon and the French Open, AFL Grand Finals, all sorts of highlight events, but the boxing round was my favourite. (OK, covering the French Open might shade it, for sheer wow factor, but let’s move on, past the rows of French wine in the media canteen at Roland Garros, the simple fact of Paris (!) and French female ushers in designer clothes that fitted them very well. It was a long time ago.)

Boxing was full of such wild characters, many of whom – in these post-Melbourne gang war days – I now realize were criminals (for any of the hard-men, tough-guy criminals from boxing back-then reading this, I’m clearly not talking about you. You were great.) One trainer said to me, when I asked how his fighter, Tony “Mad Dog” Miller would go: “Tony’s gonna do to this guy what Marc Antony did to Cleopatra while Julius Caesar was out.” Gold. And between these dodgy types, these street-smart men leaning on the outside of the ropes, were super fit athletes facing genuine danger; somebody could get hurt. Fighters occasionally die. I watched and got to know these fighters who had to step alone into that ring, facing down genuine fear, finding courage, skill in a split second, mixing defence and attack, digging deep deep deep into reserves you and I don’t necessarily know if we have.

The glamour of the Fitzroy Stars: Scotty Brouwer spars with Jim Bakolias way back when.

I even trained for a while at the Fitzroy Stars Aboriginal youth club and gymnasium on Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, and still miss it. In fact, I might go back. I never planned to fight, obviously. Just wanted to keep fit and be among fighters. It was run by Jock Austin, and is now run by his daughter. Trainers there included Dana Goodsen, a former world heavyweight kickboxing contender (RIP) and it was the least racist place I’ve ever found. It was rightly assumed that if you chose to be there – even a white boy like me – surrounded by Kooris, Africans, Italian, Turks, you name it, then the chances were you probably didn’t have a problem with skin colour. I fucking loved the place.

Dana Goodsen in his prime. Greatly missed in the Melbourne boxing scene.

It was Dana, then in the corner of Lester Ellis and other locals, devoted to saving lost Koori youth in my hood, who taught me how to hit the bags, and used to make me laugh with his life lessons. This massive Hawaiian African-American showing me how to pose, where my left foot should be, how to swivel my knee on the hook as against the jab, where to hold my non-punching fist to protect the ear and jaw.

Me saying: “Heavy bags don’t hit back, Dana.”

Him saying, “Draw a line at your feet, Nicko. If they cross that line, you go to work!”

Me: “Nobody is crossing lines, Dana. I just want to hit bags for fitness.”

Dana, as though I hadn’t spoken: “Look, your hands are open and in front of you, hey, hey, we got no problem here, buddy … but you only have to close your fists and, shit, you actually already in your fighting stance. Your left is inches from their face and you got a jab. They don’t even know it til you go left-right, bam. You go to work. They cross that line, you’re ready.”

Me: “Nobody’s going to work, Dana.”

I think I have twice since found myself holding that pose, heart thumping, hands open but ready to close my fists if this prick takes one more step. Happily, the prick didn’t but thank you, Dana.

So I, for a brief time, covered murder scenes as a police roundsman. I covered boxing. I thrilled to the inherent violence of AFL. Still do. I’ve taken some hard, usually accidental shots to the head in my Sunday Footy adventure, The Bang!, and got a strange thrill from it; kind of liking the knowledge that I can still take a big shot and stand up. The hardest head shot I ever took was when I once almost KOed myself with a tree branch, collecting firewood in the Grampians (a whole other story; never said I was smart.)

And now I’m learning to play one of the most notoriously violent sports there is (recently a European cable network ran a series where hockey players would skate out in full playing kit, one-on-one, no sticks, to simply fight. The winner got something like 500 bucks.)

It’s a mystery. I don’t plan on going toe-to-toe with anybody – especially while I’m so unsteady on my skates.

But does the violence of my new sport bother me? No, not at all.

Yet I regard myself absolutely to be a pacifist.

Riddle me that.

(POSTSCRIPT: Just like the post, “Hockey Player v Car”, where I managed to hurt myself right after publishing that post about hockey players hurting themselves, today I went to my gym, a few hours after publishing this one and ended up having my most intense boxing session for a while. The major reason, in fact a deal-breaker reason, for being a member of the Artist Formerly Known As Hunt’s Gym (now Goodlife, Johnston St) is that it has a decent boxing set-up. A converted squash court with a floor-to-ceiling bag, two heavy bags, speedballs, etc. I usually take my gloves and try to whack the bags around, post-weights, as a warm-down/up before I leave. Today, one of the personal trainers, Ben, saw me arrive and said: “Want to do that boxing work we’ve been talking about?” I said sure, and he put me through 30 minutes or so of hitting the pads, kickboxing, punching combinations, bag work, the lot. Was awesome and sweet timing after everything I’d just written, above. Gonna be sore at hockey training tomorrow but hey ho. After my endless viral lurgy, was good for me to be pushed.)

Between the nasty virus (which I was wildly optimistic to have thought I’d beat inside of three days), to an intense scuba course, the small matter of work, the real world and other such inconveniences, I haven’t been on the ice since last Wednesday’s class.

It’s a shocking confession and actually feels strange; as in, for something like 12 weeks now, I’ve forced myself onto skates at least twice a week – often lately to genuinely skate – so the absence of quality Icehouse time has been noticed. Last night, when I normally would have been suited up and controlling pucks (well, trying to), I was in a sunny backyard 800 km north, holding a 10 month-old Half-French baby and listening to him laugh so hard he got hiccups as I poked my fingers at moths on a tree and they flew away. There goes “tough guy hockey player of the year”.

I drank straight single-malt whisky afterwards, to reclaim some tough guy ground. Then again, I do that most days, whether trying to be tough or not.

Mostly, since last week’s dream class, I’ve been crook, and busy. Stress & Rescue diving turned out to be pleasingly full-on. Try duck-diving three metres down, in a seven-mill wetsuit (think having large helium-filled balloons attached to you)  and no mask, searching increasingly desperately for an air-source regulator that you know has been tossed into the deep end of the pool. It’s challenging, trust me. The good news is that nobody “drowned” on my watch, but I did end the weekend with a shocking sunburn and skinned knuckles.

And this endless virus. And a mountain of Giants work. Hey ho.

Happily, while I’ve been temporarily dormant in my hockey adventure, the Detroit Red Wings haven’t.

With less than 10 games left until the play-offs, my team is in good shape, points-wise, but battling injuries and facing a bunch of top teams down the home stretch. The Wings had an entertaining win over the Washington Capitals, ending the Caps’ nine-game winning streak and seeing my boy, Hank Zetterberg, rediscover his goal-scoring with two. Then they fell 4-0 behind fierce rivals, Pittsburgh, as goalkeeper Jimmy Howard had a howler. Somehow the Wings got it back to 4-4 to force a shoot-out, which they lost, but snagged a point.

By far, the funniest moment of recent Wings’ play was painful for Patrick Eaves. Against the Predators a week or so ago, he stopped a hard shot with the unprotected inside thigh of his left leg. Nasty. So nasty he couldn’t use the leg. Which teammate Nik Kronwall pragmatically viewed as leaving the Wings’ defene one man down. So Kronwall used his stick to shove Eaves off the ice. See it here.

Next week, the big questions: Can I still skate after a week off? And should I grow a “play-off beard”?

I’ve got a very good friend who, during a bleak time I was enduring not so long ago, gave me some great advice. She said that at the end of each day, she writes down at least one cool/good/great thing that happened that day. It’s so easy to get lost in misery, to only think about the shit. She forced herself to recognise the glimmers of good and write them down, no matter how tenuous.

This post has the opposite problem: I had so much fun tonight, I’m struggling to think of anything negative at all.

Nice problem to have, huh?

It started when I marched into the Icehouse pro shop and demanded my face mask. I bought my helmet something like eight weeks ago, and the facemask has been on order ever since. This has been well annoying because it means I’ve had to wear a rental helmet, which never fit as well as your own carefully-chosen lid. In the photos Mack took of last week’s session, every second shot had me desperately trying to yank the rental helmet out of my eyes (see below).

Rental helmet issues ... now solved

But confronting the pro shop staff about this issue, no matter how much right was on my side, was tricky. I may have mentioned that team members from Melbourne Ice, our local Australian-League team, man the pro shop, so you have to think carefully about getting too huffy in there. Hockey players are known for being handy with their fists. Not a place to pick a fight, right? So today I picked my moment and waited until the guy behind the counter was the smallest on the staff (or, in the words of comedian Jon Bennett: “He’s not short, he’s just always in the distance.”) and a guy who isn’t training with or playing for the Ice because, as well as being a freakishly good hockey player, he plays in a band which is now going so well he’s touring and getting ready to record an album.

So anyway, I worked myself into a self-righteous frenzy, and being much bigger and assertive and all, I stormed in there and said: “Hey, um, sorry … I was just wondering if my facemask has arrived yet? … no biggie. you know. Whatever.”

And he took pity on me and gave me a perspex face mask that has been waiting for some woman’s helmet to arrive. (He also warned me that everybody would laugh at me because wearing a full-face plastic mask is “very European”, whatever that means. Nobody did … to my perspex face anyway.)

Anyway, I could care less: I am now an outside chance to come out of this nutso adventure with my teeth intact. So I walked out of there with a cool plastic full-face visor, ready to wear my own lid for hockey school at last.

And twinning it up with Will as we both wore our Medicine Hat Tigers jerseys on the same night for the first time (mine is the white Home jersey, he wears the black Away top) and nobody said a word. We’re accepted now as hockey players.

And then the ice time was simply awesome. Nothing but sticks and pucks tonight and yes, I missed a few shots and a few passes and a few puck traps, but hey, it’s second week with the little discs skipping across the ice. At one stage I was paired with Barbara, who sounds Canadian, and she kicked my arse at cross court passes. I had a nicer perspex face visor though, so I called it square.

We had a fun game where coaches Lliam,  Army and Shona put a basketball-sized blue rubber ball in the middle of the ice between two lines of players and we had to fire pucks at it, and trap the pucks coming from the other way. Good trapping and passing practice. Then at the end, we would fire a pass to somebody rounding a glove on the ice, so they could shoot at goal, then we’d take off, round the glove, accept a pass and have a shot. I was 2 for 2. Go, leftie! (Sure, I fell over celebrating my second goal, but who hasn’t done that?)

Too much fun.

Meanwhile, Lliam, esteemed captain of Melbourne Ice, our spiritual leader and somebody to look up to, while teaching us the finer points of puck control, quoted freely from the Mighty Ducks movie, and then Happy Gilmore – classic moment right here (for a bonus point: which NHL team does Gilmore barrack for? answer here … for a second bonus point, why doesn’t Sandler make films like that anymore? Why did he make so few good ones among the crocks? Sorry, I digress).

And now I’m at home, eating chicken and red pumpkin curry from Bala’s, drinking whisky and smiling. I may, just may, have fought off a nasty lurgy that was stalking me for the last few days too (touch wood). I hope I have. On the weekend, I’m due to attempt the prac part of a Stress & Rescue scuba course, where the instructor Paul cheerfully told us: “You pay us to torture you!”

The final assessment is where we sit on the beach, and watch a “stricken diver” disappear near the end of St Leonard’s Pier (a long jetty). That “stricken diver” is instructed to swim away from where they went under. We have to put our fins on, swim out there, go underwater, complete an underwater search, find the stricken diver, check that they are genuinely unconscious – as against not moving because they’re taking a photo or something – get their dead weight to the surface, get their weight-belt and other scuba gear off them, get ours off too, give them CPR in the water – very tricky apparently – and then swim them to shore, giving one CPR breathe on every eighth second. Then carry them onto the beach. If we screw up any single component of that – like, CPR on the ninth second, for example – they don’t tell us until we’re finished … and we have to do the whole thing again.(If you feel like being entertained, you could do worse than be at St Leonard’s pier on Sunday arvo. Seven or eight of us will be crying/wailing/despairing.)

And this is only the final thing. There’s an entire weekend of in-pool hands-on stress torture they won’t even tell us about before that.

No wonder I’m thinking of being a hockey player.

If there are no blog entries next week, it means I didn’t survive the weekend. Or, then again, to use one of my company Media Giants‘ favourite mottos: “Hey, what could go wrong?”

(Oh yeah, and I’m in Sydney next week and was bummed I was going to miss a class … turns out, there is no class. Am I on a roll, or what?)

Nicko on an open-ice breakaway

Week 6 of 10 in Hockey School. Finally, we carry sticks onto the ice. For the last 15 minutes, we even got to hit pucks – practising cross-checking puck-control, or the faster breakaway-friendly open ice control, where you use the backhand of your stick’s curve to bunt the puck ahead of you as you fly, fast as you can, away from opponents. Fair to say, most NHL players would catch me pretty quickly.

Most of the lesson was skating theory and prac: including the backward crossover, which is challenging the Pivot for the title of “The Bastard That Is … ” I can kind of feel how the reverse crossover is meant to happen; that one day my legs might have muscle-memory to pull it off. But I can also see a long, ice-filled road ahead… then again, I never thought I’d be backward skating or doing the pivot, and both are now sort of in my skill set.

One thing we also learned was some hockey lingo, as the term: “Heads up!” comes into play once everybody is trying to skate backwards and crossover and not necessarily look where they’re going. Or watching a puck instead of where they’re going. I should have known something was up when the coaches were all in helmets for the first time, instead of Icehouse beanies.

Who? Me? ... Not guilty, Your Honour.

So “Heads up!” means just that. (See photo to the right for what happens if you don’t … actually, the camera lies. I didn’t kill anybody. Honest.)
We also did standard crossovers, Supermans, and pivots … Lliam, head coach, had fun whacking us with sticks if we were slow off the mark. We have padding, he has a stick … hard to argue, really.

In other news, I finally wore my prized Henrik Zetterberg jersey onto the ice (I hadn’t previously because I felt my dodgy skating was a travesty to Zee’s reputation, but now we have sticks? Why not?) and my teenage non-hockey-playing son, Mack, came along to take photos of sticks and pucks making their debut.

Rather than me write a thousand words, check the shots, if you feel so inclined.

http://akanicko.phanfare.com/5040412

Fun night. I’m looking forward to the next phase, where the pucks really start flying. Better remember to wear my protective box. And keep my head up.