nick does hockey

Hey, didn’t I used to play hockey?

July 9, 2013 by Nicko Place 3 Comments

So, not much hockey being reported on here at nickdoeshockey. I’m thinking of changing the title to nickusedtodohockey.

Actually, things aren’t quite that bad. Yes, we’re between terms at Icehouse dev league, so that’s Wednesday nights briefly cleared out. And summer league is still a long way away and I’m not even sure which team I’m lining up with, so training feels remote.

Mostly, I’m trying to get my body back together. The long-suffering knee has been an issue. At the last night of dev league for the previous term, a couple of weeks ago, I finally had to pull out of playing because the knee was so sore. “You ain’t gonna be playing no more, til you fix me some, bitch” said the knee, midway through the first hour of scrimmage. Actually pretty much in warm-up. Why my knee talks like a poor man’s version of the Gimp’s owner in Pulp Fiction remains unclear, but this is how things are.

I had to sit out the second hour, which hurt a lot because the teams were playing for the Charles Srour Cup, a little dev league tribute to our mate Charlie, who had passed away almost exactly six months before.

The teams for the Charles Srour Cup. 10 pm Dev League, Icehouse. Red team won.

Knee throbbing, I played music and worked the scoreboard and missed out on being in the teams photo at the end, because my theory is that if you don’t play, you don’t pose. Kind of like those poor bastards I always feel for, who don’t quite make the premiership team each year in the AFL. A nightmare of hollow emptiness among jubilation. OK, my night wasn’t quite that bad. If nothing else, I laughed at Lliam Webster holding off dropping the puck at face offs because he was digging the music blaring from the Henke Rink sound system. Dev leaguers twitching over their sticks.

I’d been to see an osteo the day before (not Magic Enzo, who was away) and I think the new guy did good things by unlocking problems in my knee, but the side effect was 10 days or so of struggling to climb steps or do pretty much anything. My knee felt unstable and just ‘weak’ for the first time in this whole debacle. Mackquist and I headed to Byron for a winter break to be greeted by murky water at Julian Rocks where we peered at grey nurse sharks in the gloom and then returned to the surface to watch horizontal sheet rain drown the town. Even drowned Byron is still good, though. Our Superman 3-D glasses at the local cinema came with their own caped-pouch, which pretty much made the entire trip.

And so I’m back in freezing, sunny Melbourne, not quite hobbling the way I was, but sick to death of this knee. Having to miss Nite Owls hockey on Sunday night because I couldn’t trust the knee and basically tilting my hat and deciding it’s time to beat this bastard and get healthy, even if it means some time off the ice.

In America, the Red Wings did well in free agency and the draft, so the team is coming together well for next season. The camp for rookies and try-outs is happening tomorrow, so already the Detroit machine is winding back up, seemingly moments after the last season finished. I’m hoping Darren Helm is having more luck getting over his nagging back injury than I am this knee, so he can regain his rightful place in the thick of the Wings action from Game One. He’s taking part in this week’s camp to start the long road back. Fingers crossed, Helmster.

Closer to home, Melbourne Ice has been having all kinds of shenanigans, with Joey Hughes and Vinnie Hughes retiring unexpectedly mid-season. There must be a story there – it’s a big thing to walk away from your team-mates mid-campaign in any sport. You’d want to have a bloody good reason. But I haven’t been around hockey people much so I don’t know what’s what and maybe I don’t want to.

I’ll just bunker in, huddle against the cold winter and try to get my legs moving again. Summer will be here and I need to be ready.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: byron bay, charles srour, charlie, darren helm, detroit, dev league, gimp, knee, mac, mack, mackquist, nick place, nicko, place, pulp fiction, red wings, srour

The Stavro Mueller edition

June 24, 2013 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

Mostly Harmless. Book five of the trilogy.

* Warning: there are blatant Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy spoilers in this post. But really, if you haven’t read it by now, then you only have yourself to blame. I mean, seriously? That includes you, Geoff Carstairs.

In that most brilliant collection of books, Douglas Adams’ ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ – well, specifically, in book five of the trilogy, ‘Mostly Harmless’, Arthur Dent finds himself on a random moon or whatever and comes across a shrine to himself. This is a strange development among the books’ many, many strange developments, and is made even stranger because this is not a nice shrine. The enormous idol at the centre of the shrine is a particularly hideous rendering of Arthur. It turns out that the shrine has been created by a creature called Agrajag, who, over the course of many, many reincarnations, had come to the enlightenment that every single time it was killed, Arthur Dent was somehow involved, either directly or indirectly.

We first met Agrajag as a bowl of petunia flowers who, when killed, have a last thought: ‘Oh no, not again,’ which doesn’t resonate at the time but only now, in the shrine, makes sense.

Other ways Arthur manages to kill Agrajag over the course of Agrajag’s many lives include swatting flies (including Agrajag); a newt Arthur stepped on; ants Arthur stepped on (included Agrajag); fleas Arthur picked out of his hair (including Agrajag); a fish Arthur caught but then decided he wasn’t really hungry for so left on the side of his plate; (possibly my personal favourite) as Arthur Philip Deodat, a man who had a heart attack at a cricket match when Arthur and Ford Prefect materialised on the pitch with a sofa; an oyster that Arthur ate live … and so on.

Oh, and as Stavro Mueller, the owner of the Beta nightclub who, as a brooding lurking now-aware version of Agrajag, tries to kill Arthur but gets accidentally fatally shot by somebody else also shooting at Arthur and missing.

Have I become Arthur Dent to Charlie Jiang’s Agrajag?

The point of all this is because I’m worried.

Charlie Jiang might, even now, be fashioning a horrible Nick Place shrine in his garage, only waiting for me to turn up so he can attempt to revenge many lifetimes of wrongs.

Well, two weeks’ worth.

You might remember that last Sunday night, in Nite Owls play, I had an Everyday Ninja moment, but only after giving away a blatantly obvious penalty by taking out an opponent’s legs with my sticks. He went down like a sack of spuds, hit the ice hard, face first, and I apologized and served my two minutes.

Turns out he was Charlie Jiang, the brother of one of my teammates, DeCheng (Johnny) Jiang. We all had a laugh. Charlie was good about it. These things happen.

So last night, in the crowd-pleasing 11.15 pm time slot at the Icehouse (running, inevitably 15 minutes late so that we hit the ice around 11.30 pm), the same Nite Owls teams went at it again.

Given the hour, numbers were down, and so the other side had loaded up with some C-grade players from the game before and so we got duly smashed, 9-1 or 10-1, I lost count. But with three minutes to go, just like last week … on the wrong side of 12.25 am Monday morning, having skated hard, shift-on, shift-off, for an hour, I stuck a weary stick out, hoping to steal a puck and instead completely hooked the legs of an opponent charging out of defence.

Down he went, like two sacks of spuds. Yes, you guessed it. Charlie Jiang.

Sensible advice for galactic hitchhikers.

And so, for all I know, Charlie starts to join the dots. Over lifetimes. When he was a bee. Or a huntsman spider. Or that guy that time, in that incident we don’t talk about. The shrine begins to take shape.

I’m leaving the state for next week’s third meeting between the teams. No, really. You don’t mess with Douglas Adams’ universe.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: agrajag, arthur dent, charlie jiang, douglas adams, hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, Icehouse, johnny jiang, mostly harmless, nick, nick place, nicko, nite owls, place, stavro mueller

Learning from Calvin & Hobbes

June 20, 2013 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

Spaceman Spiff about to get a minor penalty.

I don’t usually cross-promote my ‘Nicko the author‘ blog and my nickdoeshockey blog, but I recently came across an article detailing a Kenyon commencement speech by Bill Watterson, the creator of the Calvin & Hobbes cartoon strip, and I think a lot of what he says resonates with hockey.

No, really. Everything he says about the journey, and not actually knowing where you’ll end up, or what detours and struggles and hurdles you’ll face along the way, can be more or less directly applied to our collective battle to become hockey players, at who knows what level.

Well, I know it certainly resonates with my hockey and my occasional pondering of how far I can go, how long I can play for, and whether I’ll ever actually perform an unconscious, flawless clockwise crossover?

If you’re interested, or just want to enjoy some awesome cartoon strips, the blog is here:

http://nickplace.me/2013/06/20/bill-wattersons-guide-to-life-for-creatives/

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: author, bill watterson, calvin and hobbes, nick, nick place author, place

Ninja moves.

June 18, 2013 by Nicko Place 2 Comments

A close friend of mine, Simon Coronel, is an illusionist (no really: go see his show at the looming Melbourne Magic Festival – he’s world class). We get together for coffee or possibly something more alcoholic whenever we can, and swap stories, brainwaves, concepts, crazy plans, angst, moments, the germ of a good idea … you get the picture.

Button available here.

Once, during one of these sessions, at the Black Cat on Brunswick Street, we got to talking about moments where you somehow accidentally pulled off something pretty much impossible in everyday life, for no great reward. Let me explain: in movies, this happens all the time. An action Hero will catch a spear out of mid-air and throw it back, killing the original thrower. Or will leap out of a skyscraper and one-handed-catch the foot-rail of a helicopter to be carried to safety, or maybe kill everybody in the helicopter and then jump off, rolling neatly off a café umbrella, breaking his fall, to land on his feet next to Halle Berry, who will take him straight to a hotel room to celebrate. That kind of thing. They never miss that spear, or that catch, or that leap, or that umbrella. Usually, these actions save the world.

In real life, you don’t save the world. And rarely in real life can you pull off such feats of physical skill, timing and sheer chutzpah anyway.

Especially while managing to look like you totally meant it.

But sometimes it can happen. OK, I’ll give you a lesser example. I am the world’s worst soccer player. That, and basketball, are the two ball sports I simply cannot play. I’ve tried. I’ve failed.

So years ago, when a newspaper I was working for organized a social game of soccer against another paper, I groaned, laced up my footy boots and volunteered to be a substitute, rather than a player. Deep in the second half, the coach decided it was time for me to have a run and so I reluctantly jogged onto the dodgy suburban pitch, with its uneven grassy surface, to be humiliated in front of all my friends and workmates. With no real idea about soccer, I kind of wandered into the middle of the field and that was when one of our defenders, no doubt English and expert, having seen off an opposition attack, spotted Nick Place, all alone in the centre, and punted the ball in a long looping arc.

I had no clue what to do, but the ball was coming in fast, dying in its trajectory, and so I kind of stuck out my left foot and the ball cannoned off my boot and went straight up in the air.

I had no idea where it had gone. Just lost sight of it and sort of turned around, 180 degrees, looking for it.

At which time, the ball having neatly risen over my head and looped past me, landed perfectly at my feet, but this time facing our goal. I saw one of our forwards running past, kicked it to him and pretty much retired from soccer on the spot. I could never look that good again. Anybody watching this flawless, casual over-the-head flick pass to myself must have been wondering how I had never made it to the English Premier League.

Of course, later, when it was mentioned, I shrugged and said: ‘Oh yeah, whatever’; like that was the kind of thing I pulled off all the time.

So that, my friends, is an Everyday Ninja moment. You’re privately thinking: Whoa, how the Hell did I even do that?

Anybody watching would be thinking: That was incredible. That guy/girl is basically Neo from The Matrix.

It was Coronel and I, laughing about such moments, who came up with the term Everyday Ninja and have lived for the rare moments they occur ever since. (Simon has a great one about catching his mobile phone on an escalator in a split-second reflex action, as the phone was about to plummet several stories of Melbourne Central to its certain death.)

Be a ninja, get the chicks. Actually this guy (askaninja.com) is hilarious, if you’ve never checked him out. And has a great opening tune.

Hockey is built for this stuff. Each game is full of so many tiny moments within the wider picture, and often they’re personal. None of your teammates might even spot it, good or bad, but you either curse yourself blue for an error (that happens a lot – and not just me. Teammates arrive back at the bench, earnestly apologizing for that crap pass or this failed shot, and you honestly have no idea what they’re talking about) or you get to enjoy a private oh-yeah moment of pure satisfaction.

Usually, it’s blind luck or barely-controlled skating/stick-handling that somehow comes off. I had a pass come to behind my feet as I had momentum surging forward on Sunday night, in a 10 pm Nite Owls game, and somehow reached back with my stick and perfectly deflected the puck 90 degrees so that it was now in front of me, bouncing off the boards. Sure, a D-man for the opposition beat me to it, but almost. Almost. I reckon I could pull that move off maybe once in every 20 attempts.

And then, weirdly, I had a true Everyday Ninja moment, with only three minutes to go in the game, moments after getting my first penalty in a long time. I’d been dicing for the puck on our defensive blue line and somehow managed to get my stick totally tangled in the legs of my opponent. Worse, when I yanked my stick, I completely took his legs and he fell hard, face first. It basically should have been videoed as a textbook example of the most blatant tripping foul possible.

My tripping penalty was basically one degree of blatancy behind this one.

Because the Nite Owls play by proper hockey rules, there was no whistle, just a delayed penalty. I just saw the referee’s arm shoot into the air, meaning I was going to the box as soon as our opponents lost possession. In the meantime, play continued (a delayed penalty, for those new to hockey, is when you sometimes see a team pull their goalie, because only the non-penalty team is allowed to touch the puck in this situation. As soon as one of my team gets the puck, play stops and I get sent off. But in the meantime, the infringed opponent has an advantage, and can bring on an extra skater if they’ve got their wits about them.)

So now I’m skating, knowing I’m facing a delayed penalty, and their defender has the puck and is looking to set something up. I skate to centre ice just as he attempts a “saucer pass” – as in looping the puck through the air – past me, and here’s where I pull off my Everyday Ninja move.

I see the puck coming, raise my stick and somehow – who knows how? – use The Force to knock the puck clean out of the air, dead to the ice at my feet. If this doesn’t sound impressive, try standing on thin strips of metal on impossibly slippery ice sometime, peering through the cage of a helmet and wave a long hockey stick maybe four centimetres wide to intercept a flying block of circular rubber traveling at speed.

I manage it. Just this once.

The whistle blows. I pat the killed puck with my stick, to make sure it’s stopped, and nonchalantly skate straight to the penalty box, without waiting for the referee to come and point at me and escort me off the ice.

“Number 17. Goon Place,” I announce to the scorers, who laugh, and then I allow myself to smile, even though incarcerated in hockey’s Naughty Corner. Big Cat Place, watching the game, grins from the other side of the ice and I enjoy how badass that whole moment must have looked.

Or didn’t.

Who cares? I saw it. I lived it.

Everyday Ninja, and a nice two-minute breather. Yeah!

Do YOU have an Everyday Ninja moment? Either in hockey or elsewhere?

Simon and I have set up a WordPress page, just to share these epic moments of pointless heroics. Why? Meh, why not? We Everyday Ninjas need to celebrate our awesomeness! Click here.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: everyday ninja, hockey, illusion, magic, melbourne magic festival, neo, nick place, nicko, nicko place, ninja, nite owls, simon coronel, The Matrix

Miracle-free on ice, at Hisense Arena

June 16, 2013 by Nicko Place 14 Comments

USA v Canada from the cheap seats, at Hisense Arena. … Meh. Pic: Nicko

So, Melbourne just hosted its long-awaited two-night extravaganza of USA v Canada playing hockey for something called the Douglas Webber Cup, at Hisense Arena.

Big Cat got along to both games – Friday night’s 11-9 win to Canada, and tonight’s 10-9 (OT) victory to America.

Mackquist and I joined him and a bunch of our hockey friends for the Saturday night game and I think it’s fair to say we were as underwhelmed by a shoot-out victory, after a 9-9 full-time score, no less, as it’s possible for hockey fans to be.

Don’t get me wrong. This blog is not about to kick the shit out of the USA v Canada concept, or the organisers. We got pretty much what I’d expected for the $88 per ticket or whatever it was. The temporary rink was dubious but held together. It was a game featuring a handful of NHL players (including Canadian captain Kyle Quincey, a genuine Red Wing) and there was some pretty skating, and beautiful passes, and lots of goals with little puffs of artificial fire behind the goals after each score.

But as a stage to show Melbourne just how awesome my sport is, I think it fell short, although for a reason that it couldn’t really help: the game was an exhibition, played like an exhibition. And usually, in any sport, that means it’s going to suck for people who actually know and love the real thing.

I’d spent the afternoon at the MCG, watching my beloved Tigers put in a solid four quarters to see off the dangerous Adelaide Crows by more than six goals. Chloe heroically came along, and it cost me $31 for her ticket, less than half a ticket for USA v Canada. We watched more than 100 minutes of hard, tough, relentless football. Fully committed teams throwing themselves at the ball, and into one another, in pursuit of four premiership points that really mattered for each side. In the last term, with the game pretty much safe, several Tigers were clearly hobbling, carrying ankles or calf injuries, but they refused to come off, chasing and harassing and tackling and pushing, pushing, pushing until the siren mercifully blew and Richmond was in the Eight.

We sang the song long and loud.

Richmond’s captain Trent Cotchin leads his team down the race. Pic: Nicko

A quick change of Tiger scarf for signed Lidstrom Red Wings jersey later, I was on my pushbike, riding to the London Tavern where a truly surreal scene greeted me. Awash with happy Richmond fans, in their traditional post-match haunt, the Tavern also found itself home to a large number of hockey jerseys. Winnipeg Jets, Red Wings, Calgary Flames, Boston Bruins, Penguins, Melbourne Jets, Rookies, and so many more. A rainbow splash of hockey colour among the more traditional Saturday evening yellow and black.

We walked in an ever-growing tide of different jerseys past Richmond station, across Punt Road and on to Hisense Arena, with every NHL team and many teams not at that level represented in the largest hockey crowd I’ve seen in Australia.

So things looked promising, right up until the players took the ice.

I’ve long held a theory that you know how good a sporting event is going to be by how desperate the organisers are, and whether anybody talks over the actual event. Tonight’s event failed both my tests. The on-site commentators were annoying and shrill and increasingly, obviously concerned by the lack of crowd atmosphere. It reminded me a lot of some boxing and mixed martial arts event I covered as a journo, with ramped-up hoopla trying to artificially raise the roof because nobody watching a mediocre event from the bleachers was about to. Interviewing some TV actor mid-game, only mercifully ended by the crowd – gasp – cheering a goal, was a major mis-step and told me that the people behind tonight’s event didn’t trust their own product. If the hockey was excellent, just let the paying customers enjoy it … right?

There is nothing better than the intense silence of a major sporting event being contested: the opening minutes of an AFL grand final when everybody is watching, desperately, for a sign of strength or weakness between the combatants. The opening salvos of a Test match in cricket. The moment in a tennis match when you know a few crucial points are going to decide a Grand Slam title and history. It can be strangely quiet but it’s because it is so gripping, so focused.

The USA-Canada game instead had huge explosive fireworks as a kind of defribulator to try and get hearts pumping. If in doubt, more flames behind the goals, and talking over the action, including increasingly desperate pleas to ‘Let’s hear some noise!’

Flames behind the goalie can only mean one thing. Canada scores at Hisense. Pic: Nicko

The reason there wasn’t any noise was because the game was mildly interesting, and nothing more. Yes there were a lot of goals. Wowee. Yes, there were some fights – tellingly between the same two fighters as at the Friday night game. Melbourne fans know their sport. Even more so, Melbourne hockey fans – or Canadian Melburnians coming along out of a sense of homesickness – know their hockey.

Nineteen goals each game tells you something about the standard, at least of the defence. Plus, the refs appeared to be under orders not to call off-side or icing, which helped the attacking players no end. Sitting where we were, up in the nosebleeds, I was really struck by how claustrophobically small a NHL-sized rink is. With a genuine NHL-standard defence guarding the goal, plus an elite goalie, the miracle is that anybody can score at all.

In fact, you know what? Earlier this week, the Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins went at it in Game One of the Stanley Cup finals. This was a match that mattered, big time. This was when hockey players cared.

After the teams were 3-3 at the final buzzer, they went for the best part of three overtime periods without managing to score a goal. Almost an entire game, on top of the game already played; exhausted, out on their feet, and out of fresh attacking ideas. Yet never conceding, not giving anything up. The winner, when it came, was a cruel deflection of several legs, to beat the keeper.

It would be fair to say that at Hisense Arena, we saw nothing like that.

Which is fine. It’s an exhibition. Guys like Quincey would be under stern orders from head office not to risk their multi-million contracts with a genuine injury playing such a novelty event in Melbourne, Australia. I get that.

Watching a golf-cart or something dragging a wet net impersonating a Zamboni, I would have been nervous about my players too, if I was a NHL or AHL manager. As it was, former Melbourne Ice coach ‘Jaffa’ Wilson was among the American coaches, urging on players who were probably more interested in how the overpriced merchandise was selling than whether the Canadians had gotten one back. Plus, you know, one player handed a female friend of mine a puck with his name, jersey number and mobile number on it. Which impressed her a lot until she realised he had a box of the pucks and was using them for some kind of shotgun pellet pick-up-chicks approach. While applauding such brazen chutzpah, it would suggest to me that the Australian trip is a lot closer to an end-of-season trip for such players than a driven quest for Douglas Webber glory.

In the end, feeling extremely unmoved by the whole spectacle, I came to a realization that actually pleased me. I realized that what makes great sport is not just the rules of a game, or the location, or the shape of the ball or puck or bat or stick or mallet or whatever. Whether tennis or boxing or footy or cricket or rugby or European handball or hockey, there is one truth: what makes great sport is passion. It’s the participants’ commitment and courage and complete dedication to the task at hand. That is what can elevate sport to something magical and worthy. This is what I love.

Moreso, when that is missing, it cannot be faked. In a game like tonight’s – ostensibly, on paper, a rematch of the last Olympic gold medal match (LOL) – when it is an exhibition, and nothing more, it cannot rise to great heights. Defenders will hold off, sometimes very deliberately and at some effort, on finishing their checks. Players who in a NHL game would find depths of effort to skate when exhausted, to reach a puck that they really shouldn’t be able to fight for, won’t.

And so the level drops, and becomes pedestrian.

It’s okay. It is what it is.

But nothing more.

No amount of shrieking commentators demanding we yell and scream and stand up or get wildly fakely excited about a shoot-out (that they didn’t actually know how to run, and then couldn’t count to realize that America had won) … none of this will make an exhibition game find heights.

And so our money was spent on exactly that, and we wandered into the night, having enjoyed seeing some actual NHL stars, even if they were just doodling around. And enjoying seeing so many hockey fans and Canadians and Americans and Australian hockey fans in the one place, even if we were tepidly excited for the evening. And so we decided against spending $30 for a souvenir puck. And so we headed off, wishing Melbourne Ice was in town so we could drift to the Icehouse tomorrow and watch some real hockey. Watch players who cared.

Luckily I’m on the ice at 10 pm tomorrow, in Night Owl action. And that’s a good thing.

It’s just like porn versus sex: why watch people faking it, when you can do it for real? Amen.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: big cat, canada, chloe, Douglas Webber Cup, hisense arena, London Tavern, mackquist, Melbourne hockey, nick, nick place, nicko place, place, Richmond, USA, USA v Canada

Miracle on ice … at drop-in

June 14, 2013 by Nicko Place 1 Comment

Detroit d-man Kyle Quincey

So on Wednesday, there was no Development League at the Icehouse. The scale of this catastrophe can really only be understood by those who base their entire week around the fact that they’ll be playing one or two hours of hard, competitive, non-official scrimmage on hump day, being yelled at and taunted by Melbourne Ice stars Tommy, Army and The Beard (Lliam Webster last week as I skated for the puck: ‘Watch out for the angry pensioner!’) to kick them towards the weekend.

Because Dev League wasn’t on, other plans had to be made. There was a stick-and-puck practice session at 1.30 pm that quite a few of my fellow Rookies planned to skate, and then there was a drop-in (unofficial scrimmage – whoever shows up can play) after that.

I was stuck at work, in meetings, and then had to truck across to Fitzroy to meet a friend, so I regretfully bowed to my reality and cursed, conceding that I couldn’t do either of those sessions and would be off the ice for the entire Wednesday. The friend I was meeting was one of those guys who doesn’t like it when you don’t show up or plans go awry. Really doesn’t like it. Needs order in his life, including plans happening as they should.

Geoff’s pic of the whiteboard. Note the 5 pm slot.

All of which is fine, except that a hockey mate, Geoff Carstairs, turning up for the stick-n-puck, took a snapshot of the whiteboard that tells groups which change-rooms to use at the Henke Rink, at the Icehouse that day. It all looked normal except for the 5 pm slot, which read ‘USA/Canada practise’. Say, what?

Actually, a bunch of big-time professional players from the USA and Canada are in town, to play exhibition matches at the Hisense Arena tonight and tomorrow. (I’m going along on Saturday, straight after Richmond v Adelaide at the MCG, which promises to be one of the more epic days.)

Most of the internationals competing are AHL players, as far as I can tell – the level below NHL – but there is genuine NHL experience in there. In fact, one name has leapt out at Big Cat, Macquist and I from the moment we heard about this event: Canadian captain Kyle Quincey.

A current Detroit Red Wing D-man, fresh from the play-offs where Detroit lost that agonising Game 7 Over-Time heartbreaker to the Blackhawks (who are now one game up in the Stanley Cup finals, having prevailed in an astonishing triple-overtime slugfest against the Bruins yesterday).

So, Kyle Quincey was going to be training at the Icehouse? And I wasn’t there?

It gets worse, hockey fans. So much worse.

Because the next photo to hit Facebook was from the drop-in session. There are a hard-core bunch of drop-in players who turn up often. There are occasional players. Sometimes Melbourne Ice players show up, taking it easy against dev leaguers pushing themselves.

On Wednesday, a bunch of USA and Canada international stars saw that drop-in was on and signed up.

And yes, the bottom line of all of this is that I could have actually shared a bench, played alongside or against Quincey. An actual Red Wing. In the flesh.

Kyle Quincey on the bench at an Icehouse drop-in. Pic: Wayne McBride

Kyle Quincey on the bench at an Icehouse drop-in. (Pic: posted by Wayne McBride but I’m not sure who took it.)

When instead I was hacking through traffic, walking in the rain to the Newry Hotel, and then realising that my friend wasn’t showing up because somehow we had gotten our plans screwed after all. Meaning my loyalty, avoiding drop-in, was completely unrewarded. So I went to the gym, gave my dodgy knee and my neglected upper-body a decent thrashing. Had a sauna. Got home. Logged into Facebook and saw the picture of Quincey grinning on the drop-in bench.

Cut to overhead camera POV as I look to the Heavens and scream: Noooooooooooo.

How cool is that, though? How cool is my sport that NHL players and dev leaguers can share the ice like that. What an awesome experience for those who were there. It’s like Kelly Slater paddling out to the Lorne Point to surf with the locals. Or a Test cricketer joining a pub cricket game. Occasionally an active AFL player will show up at the Bang and have a kick with the geriatric bunch that we are, which is fun, but Quincey is so out of context that having him at an Icehouse drop-in really feels like a one-in-a-lifetime event.

That I missed. To be clear. That I could have been at but wasn’t. Just so there’s no mistaking the reality, here.

Oh well.

The sauna was nice.

Kyle Quincey in a Melbourne nightclub this week? Actually it’s from a mag called ‘The Fourth Period’, a ‘hockey lifestyle magazine’.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: adelaide, Big Cat Place, canada, drop-in, fitzroy, geoff carstairs, hisense arena, Icehouse, kyle quincey, Richmond, stick and puck, USA, Wayne McBride

The running man

June 3, 2013 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

A few years ago I bumped into a guy who I had last seen when he was a super-heavyweight weightlifter for Australia. He was one of the big boy lifters. I worked for a while as a reporter, covering weightlifting for newspapers, so had been there, notebook in hand, as this bloke waddled out in competition to try and lift a couple of fridges.

But that was then and this was now. This time, long retired, he was a shadow of his former self. Thin face, lanky and lean. In fact, no meat at all under the clothes that were hanging off him.

What I’m trying to avoid.

I was reminded instantly of one of my favourite Damon Runyon stories, ‘A Piece of Pie’, about an eating contest. Do you know it? Runyon was a brilliant, brilliant New York writer, who made his name writing short comedies about the cons and babes who worked rackets and angles and hustles on Broadway, back in the 1930s. Yep, the musical, ‘Guys & Dolls’, is based on his work.

(Runyon was also a newspaper man, I discovered later. Before he started writing about the wiseguys, Runyon was one of the better boxing reporters I ever read. As somebody who made a less notable career in that field for a while, I was in awe of his ability to take you to big prize fights of the time, and through the streets of New York.)

Anyway, in ‘A Piece of Pie’, our narrator hero and a friend, Horsey, engage with some Boston hoods to hold an eating contest, with the champion eater of their choice to battle it out for high stakes, and so they seek to track down the universally-agreed greatest eater of the New York area, a guy called Quentin ‘Nicely-Nicely’ Jones, who they haven’t seen for a while.

The narrator (possibly one of the greatest narrators in fictional history, IMHO) takes up the story as they are led by a woman (‘so skinny that we had to look twice to see her’) through the front door.

‘So we step into an apartment, and as we do so a thin, sickly-looking character gets up out of a chair by the window, and in a weak voice says good evening. It is a good evening, at that, so Horsey and I say good evening right back at him, very polite, and then we stand there waiting for Nicely-Nicely to appear, when the beautiful skinny young Judy says:

“Well,” she says, “this is Mr. Quentin Jones.”

Then Horsey and I take another swivel at the thin character, and we can see that it is nobody but Nicely-Nicely, at that, but the way he changes since we last observe him is practically shocking to us both, because he is undoubtedly all shrunk up. In fact, he looks as if he is about half what he is in his prime, and his face is pale and thin, and his eyes are away back in his head, and while we both shake hands with him it is some time before either of us is able to speak.’

It turns out that Nicely-Nicely is not dying from some terrible illness, as they fear, but has been enthusiastically dieting, encouraged by his new love. Lean and happy, he can no longer attempt the massive eating contest required and so the story continues without him. (Read it here. Oh, it’s good. – In fact, even better, go to your local bookshop, wander over to the Classics section, and buy some Runyon. You won’t regret it. I usually try to read his stories before I travel to New York, to carry his voice with me when I’m on Broadway. For real. He’s that good.)

Dusk at the Brunswick Street Oval as I ran.

So, anyway, on this day in Melbourne, a long way from Mindy’s Restaurant on Broadway, I bump into the gangly shadow of a former weightlifter and, much like Horsey and the narrator, ask delicately about his health? Turns out that once he stopped weightlifting, he no longer needed to do things like eat six eggs and seven loaves of bread and 900 Weetbix and whatever else your standard super-heavy eats for breakfast to make sure he stays huge. And the weight started to come off.

Plus he took up running. In fact, he told me that the day he decided he needed to run, instead of lift fridges on barbells, he staggered down to the local athletics track. Weighing upward of 120 kg and most of it blubber, with giant squat-happy legs.

He said he started to jog and made it half a lap. Thought he was genuinely going to have a heart attack right there. He’d made it maybe 200 metres. And he was done.

But the next time, he made it 250 or 300 metres and so it went. Now he was a gazelle, running half marathons or whatever.

The point of all this? Last week, in a beautiful, cold dusk, a hockey player called Nicko Place self-consciously walked laps of the Brunswick Street Oval, as the Fitzroy Reds trained noisily and enthusiastically on the oval itself. In a beanie and my Melbourne Ice hoodie, plus skins, with headphones playing my French language classes, I walked briskly for four minutes at a time, mumbling phrases that must have startled dog-walkers, and then ran, actually lifted the pace, and pumped my legs and ran! For one whole minute. Then walked for four minutes, and ran for another one. And did that five times.

Finally cleared by the physio to begin baby-steps running, and there I was, running for the first time since early-to-mid-December last year.

It was glorious, even for one minute bursts. Next, after a few tries at one minute, I can step it up to three minutes of walking and two minutes of running, then maybe three minutes of running and so on. As well as doing a bunch of daily squat exercises, to make the muscles around the knee work hard, plus leg-work at the gym, which I’d held off until now because of the knee. And finally I’ll get into some zig-zagging, changing direction while running, and after that, maybe, just maybe I can finally join my brothers at The Bang to kick a Sherrin once more.

I can’t believe it’s now six months since I hurt my knee and I’m only just starting to run for one minute at a time. I may as well have had a full knee reconstruction. It’s crazy. But at least I am running. I actually ran. And it didn’t hurt, which is a first – every other attempt to run has hurt almost immediately. Repair is happening. I can feel it. And it feels good.

Darren Helm in full flight. Hopefully he’ll be back to that from Day One, next season.

In the meantime, I just have to keep working hard not to eat as much pumpkin pie as Nicely-Nicely in his prime. When you can’t run off the food, at my age, it can be lethal. And I have enough trouble skating fast now, without letting my weight balloon.

I’m taking rehab inspiration from poor Darren Helm, at the Wings. One of our fastest, best young talents, but completely dismantled in the lock-out shortened season just gone by a mysterious pulled muscle in his back. Now putting everything he has into being ready for the start of 2013-14 training camp in a few months – the Wings, alas, having fallen in Overtime of Game Seven to the Blackhawks last week.

I’ll do the same. Do the work. Do my exercises. Hit the gym. Run gently then more, then with purpose. Hopefully leave the pain behind. And be kicking a footy with the Bang boys by September, and ready to skate like a motherfucker come the next summer league of hockey, which is my first real deadline to be pain free and strong-legged.

It’s a good plan. See me run.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: Broadway, brunswick street oval, Damon Runyon, darren helm, Guys & Dolls, Mindy's restaurant, New York, nick place, nicko, nicko place, place, running, the bang, weightlifting

Are we having fun yet?

May 27, 2013 by Nicko Place 2 Comments

It’s kind of a strange time at the moment. The fact is that hockey is not front and centre in my life right now; hence the long break between blogs. An unexpected twist is that, as I write, the Detroit Red Wings are waking up on the other side of the world, preparing for a huge play-off game, just like last time I wrote more than a week ago.

The Red Wings’ underdog run continues …

This time it’s against the Chicago Blackhawks, at the Joe – Detroit having not only seen off the Ducks, as per the moment of truth looming in my last post, but then proceeding to play astonishingly great hockey to snatch an unexpected and spectacular 3-1 lead over the President’s Cup winning Hawks. ‘Detroit is like a rash that just won’t go away, boys,’ said one commentator. ‘The Chicago Blackhawks just can’t get rid of it.’

This Red Wings team of kids in rebuild mode is within a win of pushing out the No. 1 seeds and going to the Western Conference Final. And, shit, if you make it that far, having beaten the No. 1 and 2 ranked teams, why not go all the way?

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

In Game 5, the Hawks came back hard, as you knew they would, in front of a hometown crowd, so now the series is 3-2, and this second chance to put it away at the Joe is fraught. Some of the highly-rated Hawks started to wake up after a shocking series so far. There is still a real chance that Chicago could become the 21^st team in something like 220 series to come back with three straight wins to steal it.

But I’m going to be honest: I reckon my Wings will win. Played such brilliant, tough, play-off hockey to take those three wins – especially the last one at the Joe when Chicago threw everything at them. It’s definitely possible to triumph. LGRW, LG! Wish I was in Detroit to be there. The old Joe will be rocking.

(Tuesday update: Well, the Wings got edged, 4-3 at the Joe, after some rookie errors, which leads to a sudden-death Game 7 on Wednesday, Motown time. See below for Mike Babcock’s take on that.)

And all of this points to my conundrum. The Red Wings are on a prolonged and unlikely and thrilling play-off run. I’m playing hockey for two hours very Wednesday (although the last two have been kind of tense, grumpy sessions, unlike our usual laughfests) and supposedly every Sunday – although I’ve had trouble getting to a few of those nights. The Melbourne Ice men’s season is well underway, but I’ve only seen their first game.

There is hockey everywhere but I’m on the fringes and this is made more noticeable by the foaming-at-the-mouth enthusiasm a lot of my fellow rookies have been displaying, mostly all over Facebook.

‘OMG training tonight!’ is a pretty standard post. Or arranging seats, hours early at the Ice game. Or heading down for Sunday night general skating at the Icehouse. Or doing boot camp to train hockey muscles. Some seem to be training or playing at least five nights a week. And these aren’t Melbourne Ice players that I’m talking about.

It’s intense and impressive.

And then there’s me. Driving down to Bairnsdale for a weekend, listening to music, watching the amazing light as storm clouds hit the lower alps to the north, staring at the Yallourn power stations, en route to take part in a panel discussion with a bunch of other authors, discussing writing fact and fiction. Then heading to Sydney, wearing my Giants hat (as against a Giant hat, to be clear), to drink too much coffee with clients and friends, and to walk the streets and stare at the view from the 66^th floor of a hotel. Then coming back, now carrying the lurgy everybody seems to have had – I blame Chloe, or Mackquist – and sleeping all day Wednesday instead of working. Then playing dev legue that night to ‘sweat it out’ and feeling awesome about that, despite a mediocre night on the ice. Then throwing up maybe 15 times in the six hours after I got off the ice. Maybe ‘sweating it out’ not such a great idea after all. Bed ridden for two days, then staggering back into the world over the weekend, but with no energy and feeling crap. Meanwhile work and family bushfires, or at least spotfires, spark in different directions, and there’s that next novel sitting there, just waiting for some love – or at least some headspace. So much for catching up with friends, or quality time with anybody in particular. I spread thinner and thinner … Nite Owls play suspended because of illness, bad knee stopping running …

In author mode, in deep dark Gippsland. Look how excited fellow writers Anne Crawford and Kate Forster are by my pearls of wisdom.

The tension builds.

But you know what? There’s another important life lesson from the Red Wings that I didn’t mention in the last post and it’s one of my favourites.

When under pressure, when facing elimination or a similarly huge game, coach Mike Babcock, captain Henrik Zetterberg and other leading Wings have a habit of saying one thing: “This is fun.”

Such a simple statement, but so powerful.

Take these quotes from Babs last week before the crucial third game against the Blackhawks: “It’s fun, it’s the most fun I’ve had coaching in a couple of years, by far.”

“At the start of the year, we weren’t a good team, but we understand that. We buckled down and we got better. The coaching staff is fun, the players are fun, it’s been a fun year for us.”

It’s something you hear a lot from the Wings. Intimidated? Nope. Season on the brink? Well, that’s what you play for – the fun of those moments.

Sure, it’s sport. Sure, these guys get paid millions, win tomorrow or not. Sure, they’ve already pretty much over-achieved this season so the pressure is off.

But I really like this take on the world. (Tuesday update) In fact, watch his presser after today’s loss. The “fun stuff” kicks in about midway through.

Same as before. The reporters are all gloomy that Detroit didn’t close it out. Babs is already anticipating how awesome Game 7 will be.

Life gets difficult, stakes get high, shit gets real … it’s okay. That’s fun. That’s the fun of living. To perform under pressure. Or at least have a crack. We’re not here for all the boring moments where nothing much is happening, are we?

Mambo’s magnificent ‘Not With That Clown (great songs of sexual jealousy)’

And so hockey can float for me, for a while, while I have fun dealing with the things that need dealing with right now. Yes, I’ll probably embarrass myself in my office tomorrow, screeching if the Wings get a big goal, as I sneakily watch Gamecenter on my iPad. Then I’ll be off to see the physio yet again tomorrow afternoon, about my knee and maybe my shoulder. I’ll wade through mud professionally. I’ll battle sinus pain.

But I’ll smile because life is about the challenges, and those changes of gear.

I just rediscovered one of my favourite CDs: Mambo Surfwear’s “Not with that clown. (Great songs of sexual jealousy)” (circa 1997, when Mambo was cool) and so ‘I was checkin’ out, she was checkin’ in’ by Don Covay can once again become my soundtrack as I travel around Melbourne, doing what needs to be done. Maybe occasionally even managing to tune back into my hockey world.

I’ll just try not to think about the future games where I’m going to find myself hunkering over my stick to face all the rookies who are currently training five nights a week to get better, better, better, while I’m not.

That’s going to be a tough game when that happens. It will be fun.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: bairnsdale, blackhawks, detroit, Don Covay, great songs of sexual jealousy, I was checkin in, Mambo, Not with that clown, red wings, she was checkin out

Learning from the Wings: never surrender

May 10, 2013 by Nicko Place 3 Comments

The Red Wings: down but not beaten. Pic: Detroit Free Press

With an Over Time loss yesterday, Detroit suddenly sits in a 2-3 series hole in the first round of play-offs against Anaheim, facing a sudden-death potential exit game at the Joe on Friday, American time.

With such jeopardy facing the Wings, I want to say right now that I’m very proud of my team.

All season, coach Mike Babcock has been trying to find the magic; putting this player with that, introducing defenders (one who literally arrived at the club on the morning of an early-season game, a guy Babs admitted he barely knew anything about), just holding things together. Helm’s been out all shortened season with his mysterious back, Bertuzzi for almost the entire season … it’s just been one of those seasons of pure struggle.

I was really pleased that the team found cohesion and form to roar into the play-offs for the 22^nd straight year, when that could so easily not have happened. And now, against the more highly-rated Ducks, they’ve been dogged and determined and about a goal-a-game short of where they need to be.

In Game 4, it was the Wings that kept falling behind; somehow hanging on by their fingernails to take the game to OT, where Brunner and the rookies combined to steal it. But today was the other way. The Wings got the first goal, then allowed the Ducks one. Detroit got the go-ahead goal but couldn’t hang on to the advantage. The third OT of the series, and it was Anaheim that scored.

Another day, another desperate struggle. Which is how it’s been since the lock-out ended.

I’m not giving up on this Western Conference quarter-final. Game 6 is at the Joe and the Wings have shown that on their day, they can score and score heavily. Which is what they need to do to make Game 7. But they could just as easily be strangled; not be able to find the net. Hank Zetterberg, who has been brilliant all season as our new captain, has yet to score in the play-offs, and Filp has gone cold again. We’re pushing it, to rack up enough goals to overwhelm the experienced, confident Ducks.

This absorbing battle has mostly been what’s kept me going over the past week or so. My life has been a rollercoaster (although it’s actually fine: all minor bushfires, not major scares).

Like Detroit, I just don’t seem to be able to find the goal often enough; can’t score wins lately in many areas of my life. I’ve taken the Wings’ lesson and kept pushing and persevering, but it can be hard. You want life to be one way and it’s another; you have ambitions and dreams and they drift tantalizingly out of reach. All you can do is breathe, and tell yourself that the buzzer hasn’t gone. Keep your head up. Chase the puck.

On Sunday night, I played for the Nite Owls, where I can feel out of my depth. Many of my teammates have played for 40 years or more and skate without effort or thought. My skating has come along in the last few months – no longer endlessly camped on my inside edges… yes! – but I’m pretty wobbly compared to these old gliders. They notice every hole in my game, in a good way; telling me to skate with both hands on my stick (a bad habit) and to stay high on the blue line in D, things like that. I don’t mind. I respect their experience and game sense and I’m still up for learning everything I can. Even better, I managed to find my way to my usual place in the slot, to jam home the first goal of the night, which gave me a feeling of belonging. I even almost managed to Holmstrom-deflect another goal, which hopefully made my teammates realize the 48-year-old they call “lad” isn’t a total muppet.

Dan Cleary hits the deck, versus the Ducks. You know he’s getting up. Pic: Detroit News.

But by Wednesday, another few life kicks had me really struggling to ward off a general feeling of emotional flatness. Mackquist was sick with a cold and I thought about missing hockey, mostly to look after him, but also because I just didn’t know if I had it in me to compete in the occasionally wild and willing dev league games.

How sad sack are you to baulk at the idea of playing hockey? Even I couldn’t stomach that … I’m definitely unable to make Sunday’s Nite Owls play, so decided I really wanted to get in some skating this week, and should go. I checked Mack was alive enough for me to head to the Icehouse after all.

Of course, it was a brilliant night. The hockey was fast, furious and good-natured.

Before the game, I’d joked to another player, Todd Harbour, that I was going to kill someone. ‘And if I kill early, I plan to hunt again.’ I was deadpan and he looked worried but then smiled. Minutes in, battling for a loose puck on the blue line, I met an opponent head-on and they went flying backward, landing flat. Yes, it was Todd. I swear, Mr Harbour, I didn’t know it was you. And I was joking beforehand.

Later in that game, Big Cat and I combined for one of my favourite goals ever; me winning a battle on the defensive blue line and sneaking a short pass to his stick, then following his charge down the ice to be there when his shot rebounded off the top crossbar and between goalie Chris Lourey’s pads. I poked home the goal, for an epic one-two-one-two Place combination. Sometimes you have to remember why you got into something in the first place, and playing alongside my boy(s) was a prime motivation for my dive into this crazy world. Playing alongside Big Cat and having that kind of understanding on the ice remains awesome.

Usually I’m pretty buggered by the end of the 10 pm game, staggering into the night, knowing I won’t sleep before 1 am or more and have to wake to a 6.30 am alarm. Last night, I just wanted to keep skating, to keep chasing the puck; all the worries and annoyances of the real world blown away as I felt my legs burn and my chest gasp for air, and laughed with my hockey mates, bantered and sledged the coaches Lliam, Army and Tommy, and couldn’t wait for my next shift, and then the next shift, and then the next shift.

Damn, I love hockey when it’s like that.

And now, that hockey momentum has carried into the real world so that a few of the disappointments dogging me all week seem to be not quite so black. Maybe I’m not out of the game after all? Just like the Wings, I’m definitely 2-3 down in a seven-game series, but that just means I need to keep winning, right?

I have no idea, after watching yesterday’s game, which way the Wings-Duck series will go, but I’m proud of my Detroit team either way.

They just never ever stop trying, pushing forward, believing. It’s the Red Wing mantra, a non-negotiable, and I wish I could explain it to my AFL team, Richmond, which is building and building but does not yet believe. Something I can be guilty of as well.

I need to hang on to the Red Wings’ sense of self-confidence and excellence, no matter the scoreline; refusing to concede until the buzzer says it’s over …

And it ain’t, Anaheim Ducks. It ain’t over at all.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: anaheim ducks, big cat, detroit, lliam webster, matt armstrong, nick, nick place, nicko place, place, red wings, todd harbour, tommy powell

Channeling the Geebung

May 2, 2013 by Nicko Place 2 Comments

One of my favourite Australian writers ever is Andrew ‘Banjo’ Paterson, and probably my favourite of his poems is ‘The Geebung Polo Club ‘. I used to be able to recite it by heart and even now I can get chunks of it. The first stanza goes a little something like this:

It was somewhere up the country in a land of rock and scrub,
That they formed an institution called the Geebung Polo Club.
They were long and wiry natives of the rugged mountainside,
And the horse was never saddled that the Geebungs couldn’t ride;
But their style of playing polo was irregular and rash
– They had mighty little science, but a mighty lot of dash:
And they played on mountain ponies that were muscular and strong,
Though their coats were quite unpolished, and their manes and tails were long.
And they used to train those ponies wheeling cattle in the scrub:
They were demons, were the members of the Geebung Polo Club.

It’s sounding familiar already, if you’ve watched Wednesday night dev league this term, especially the lawless 10 pm session.

The poem goes on to recount what happens when the wild Geebung bush boys and the gentile Cuff and Collar team from the city finally go at it in a landmark polo match:

Now my readers can imagine how the contest ebbed and flowed,
When the Geebung boys got going it was time to clear the road;
And the game was so terrific that ere half the time was gone
A spectator’s leg was broken – just from merely looking on.
For they waddied one another till the plain was strewn with dead,
While the score was kept so even that they neither got ahead.
And the Cuff and Collar captain, when he tumbled off to die,
Was the last surviving player – so the game was called a tie.

Artist FJ (John) Beeman’s depiction of the Geebung v Cuff & Collar showdown.

Yep, there can be no doubt. The Banjo, way back in 1893, was channeling the Icehouse on a Wednesday night. You only have to look at me, hobbling a little as I go about my desk job today, the shameful opposite of Clancy of the Overflow. Last night, I got a nasty whack to my good knee (yes, I now think of my right knee as my ‘good’ knee, which is a worry in itself), and my right arm and lower back and neck are all sore.

I’m not complaining; not at all. But man, dev league has stepped up this term, with regard to intensity and danger.

The knee got bruised in Game 1, when an opponent lost an edge and crashed into me, just as I was pulling up after a whistle and therefore was relaxed, unprotected. Thank the Gods of hockey for armour. I was suddenly taken out and hit the boards, a metre or so away, in an uncontrolled fall, which is how I have seen fellow students break collarbones. So I accepted a sore knee, gladly, and kept skating. The guy who had accidentally taken me out was genuinely apologetic, too, which was nice.

But as I said, it’s second dev league (the 10 pm class) that has become really willing. Pretty much everybody out there has done quite a few rounds of dev, and played summer or winter hockey, so we all know what we’re doing enough that the coaches don’t really bother to coach us much. I’ve suggested to Matt Armstrong that he should stop calling it development league and instead call it: ‘Army’s Happy Scrimmage Club’.

Lliam Webster and Tommy Powell turned up last night, as bench coaches, back from the world championships in Croatia, and yelled constructive abuse as we battled up and down the rink, but there were still far too many hits than there should be in a learning game, not to mention blatant tripping and other atrocities. Nobody was playing dirty hockey; just intense – and I was as guilty as anybody, accidentally tripping someone, and also forcing a huge front-on collision while skating fast to defend, when my opponent didn’t veer as I’d expected. A game of chicken on ice gone wrong. We both went down hard and my chin is still sore where my helmet dug in on impact. Thank the Gods of hockey for armour.

Welcome to your home ice, Mustangs … (see below)

So I’m creaking around today but feeling alive. Had a shot somehow hit both posts and not go in. Screwed up a penalty shot, to Lliam’s well-vocalised dismay. Inexplicably skated like somebody who hadn’t been on skates for three months, although I’d played for the Nite Owls on Sunday in a 5-0 win that had one of my veteran teammates shake hands with me afterwards, saying: ‘Well done, lad.’ Lad! Another Owl giving me skating advice that, while completely well intentioned, might have resulted in last night’s proppiness, as I found myself doubting my stride, how I move. Or maybe I just shouldn’t eat a large burrito before playing? Something wasn’t right. I wish I had time for a general skate between now and Sunday night’s game to regain my legs. Ah well. The learning curve continues. Endlessly continues.

And, as a final note, I did have a win last night which means I’m travelling better than my beloved Wings who suffered a probably inevitable emotional letdown, after such a brilliant run to sneak into the play-offs, and lost Game 1 to Anaheim yesterday. Gotta bounce back in Game 2 tomorrow, or it could be over as fast as it began.

And I’m also going better than the poor Melbourne Mustangs, who have training tonight at the Henke Rink and will be greeted by giant, larger-than-life posters of every Melbourne Ice player, lining the rink. Having the three massive scrolls celebrating the Ice’s three-peat AIHL triumphs wasn’t enough, apparently. The Ice player posters look seriously impressive, but I’d hate to be a Mustang skating onto the rink tonight. All the Icehouse needs is a tiny sign, to the right of the last poster, saying in small letters: ‘The Mustangs play here too.”

It’s lucky the gee-gees have such a cool horsey mascot. They’ll be fine.

Life-size Lliam Webster with a larger than life Lliam Webster, and friends.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: AB 'Banjo' Paterson, AB Paterson, Army. Melbourne Ice, banjo paterson, Clancy, Clancy of the Overflow, development league, Geebung, Geebung Polo Club, ice, lliam webster, matt armstrong, melbourne mustangs, mustangs, nick, nick place, nicko place, place, tommy powell