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Down with the Hockey Temperance League!

April 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Look, I don’t see it as my job to be socially responsible. I never asked to be a role model, as other maligned celebrities such as footballers, Natalie Portman and Jessica Rabbit have long maintained.

So here’s the thing: I want all you Melbourne hockey players to drink more on a Saturday night.

I want you guys who can really play to spend more time getting maggoted of a Saturday evening, truly donning those beer goggles, so that you’re in absolutely no fit state to, say, as a completely random example, attend an 8.30 am Stick & Puck session on a Sunday morning.

Is that too much to ask? I’ll even buy the first beer … before slipping away like smoke into a flame, as Paul Kelly sang (“Jundamarra“), to ensure I get a good night’s sleep, ready for, say, as a random idea, a Sunday morning Stick & Puck session.

How the rink was supposed to look when we arrived on Sunday morning.

As you may have guessed by now, my Sunday didn’t go according to plan. Showing admirable dedication to the sport, my puck buddy (yes, that was a ‘p’) Alex McNab vowed she was attending the 8.30 am Stick & Puck, pre-starting Intermediate tomorrow night. Her sister, Scarlett, declared that she was also in and, damn it, so was I. (Big Cat Place’s reply: “You’ve got to be kidding?”)

What the McNabs and I hadn’t counted on was turning up to find the Henke Rink logjam full of players, many of whom were clearly advanced players using the session for intense one-on-one defending/attacking drills, end-to-end skating and other high-standard drills; stuff that left us Rookies with very little clear ice on which to practice passes or, in my case, fall over. (Right-foot front-foot outside-edge turn getting ever closer.)

I’d gotten home at about 1.30 am the night before, after making the ill-advised decision that riding my pushbike to a party in Reservoir wouldn’t be much of a ride from my place. Ten mostly uphill kilometres later, I was ready for a drink and several whiskies later, I made the excellent decision to escape before the karaoke machine in the front room claimed my soul, or at least my dignity.

The ride home contained a whole bevy of adventures not related to a hockey blog, but the bottom line is that the alarm sounding at 7.30 am was a shock. Undaunted, I vaulted out of bed. The dream of clear ice, of an empty training session where I could skate free, the breeze in my helmeted hair, was too inviting.

How hockey players should spend Saturday nights ...

Right up until we walked in and saw the ice was packed.

So, I mean, really, hockey players. Get it together. Do I need to spell this out to you?

Hockey is a working class, blue-collar, hard-drinking, fighting, cussing, rough-and-ready sport. There is no place in the game for disciplined trainers who are clear-eyed and ready to skate just after dawn on a Sunday. OK?

Glad we’re clear on that. Enjoy your Sunday sleep-in. Or else.

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The saucy burlesque edition

April 12, 2012 by 2 Comments

Burlesque diva Radha Leigh and a fellow burlesquee pretending to be a lion. To the best of my knowledge, neither of these women are hockey players.

“So, Will”, I said to Will Ong, usually of my Wednesday night development league crew but notably absent on Wednesday this week, for the final night of scrimmaging. “Are you hurt?”

Being a highly trained investigative journalist, I miss nothing, and on this occasion the give-away clue was leaning next to Will in the LuWow tiki bar on Johnston Street in the form of a pair of crutches. Turns out he did his medial ligament in last week’s late shift scrimmage and is off the ice for three months, a disaster I’d caught hints of in snatches of conversation this week, between games on Wednesday, without ever quite hearing the full story.

Will said he had a reasonably innocuous fall while playing, limped off at the end of his shift and thought he was fine right up until he jumped the boards, from the bench, to start his next shift and his right knee said: “Um, no.”

Then the knee cooled down and really screamed. Ouch. This is on top of a broken leg for Dan, another local player, stitches for a skate-slashed arm for goalie Mark Stone and other assorted ailments eating into our Rookie crew. Anybody would think hockey is a potentially dangerous sport, I thought as Will discussed his physio regime and knee brace.

As is standard for hockey players, Will and I had this conversation at a tiki bar between sets of burlesque dancers stripping down to undies and pasties over their nipples to such songs as The Lion Sleeps Tonight*, and Jungle Boogie.

The kind of company your average Icehouse Rookie keeps on a non-hockey evening ...

Fellow Icehouse Rookie Brendan Parsons, Melbourne’s recognized pimp of burlesque – I’m sorry, I meant to say costume co-ordinator and producer to burlesque – had invited us along for opening night of Amazon Cabaret, knowing that any Melbourne International Comedy Festival show is going to struggle unless it can claim to have at least three leading Melbourne ice hockey players in attendance.

A burlesque show was more or less the perfect end to a packed week for me, not least because I’m a big fan of hot women dressed as lions or Tahiti Princesses stripping down until they’re swinging their tits in pasties, but because I was destroyed from a threatening lurgy as well as a huge hockey week and just needed to rest, drink tiki cocktails, listen to music and well, watch hot women dressed as lions or Tahiti Princesses stripping down until they’re swinging their tits in pasties.

On Monday, Big Cat (the artist formerly known as Kittens), Mack and I had come back from a beautiful easter break at Lorne in time for Big Cat and I to hit a Come & Try session at the Icehouse. This was amusing because a joyless easter staff at the Icehouse decided it was wrong and horrific and disastrous that a bunch of Icehouse Rookies should dare to show up and pay honest money to attend the session. “This is supposed to be for learners, for first timers,” we were lectured. “You shouldn’t be skating or wearing your armour.”

I pointed out that I was only wearing armour because I really wanted to work on a front-foot outside-edge turn that my coach, Army, had workshopped with me last week, and I knew I would be hitting the ice repeatedly, if practising this move was to happen. Anyway, there were about three people for the actual L-Plate part of the session, so … what? It was worse to have 10 or so ice hockey students practicing moves at one end of the Henke Rink than to only have $75 worth of newbies (3) stinking up the ice?

The bottom line was that shock, horror, nobody died, we Rookies all had enough sense not to barrel through a seven-year-old kid holding a hockey stick for the first time, or to hit head high slapshots into the intro crowd (3).

Instead, it was a lot of fun. There were a bunch of Rookies there, including Big Cat, the Hough gals, Wayne, Happy Feet and Alex (sicker than eight dogs but heroically present – even if snot did fly through her face grill after a hard landing on her butt). We all practiced tricky moves, passed pucks around, and played a spirited game of half-rink hockey (the terrified, intimidated newbies having cleared the ice for the last 10 minutes of the session). I scored the game winner, when Big Cat somehow hit a shot over everybody’s heads, including the goal, so that it bounced off the glass and landed at my feet, as I happened to be standing next to the goal. Fun.

Intro Rookies dive into scrimmage action on Wednesday night.

But not as much fun as Wednesday. It was end-of-term night, which means scrimmages. We arrived early, to watch the 7.30 Intro class actually play a scrimmage for the first time. Then revealed to Army and Martin, a new import for the Melbourne Ice who coaches at Oakleigh, that the Rookies were sponsoring them this year. Then suited up and played two furious hours of hockey – Intermediate class scrimmage and then the usual 10 pm dev league.

Hockey heaven. In fact, put it this way: at the start of my last shift of the night, I jumped the boards, found myself next to Army, who was refereeing, grinned and spontaneously said: “Army, how much fun is hockey?” to which he smiled, laughed and replied: “Oh, it’s outstanding!”

And it simply is. I’ve finally hit a level where I feel I can mostly compete, and so I enjoy hitting the ice, trying to carry the puck to the goal, actually having shots, battling for it against the boards, standing my ground in defence, competing. Sure, I can be beaten badly by better players, and the puck can bounce the wrong way to leave me stranded, but I don’t care. Every week gets more fun as I get better. Increments of improvement, sure, but improvement and I have definitely crossed a line from newbie wobbling around to dev league journeyman.

On Wednesday night, I had a break-away where I hit my shot cleanly and in the air, even if the goalie gloved it to deny a goal. I had another moment where I controlled the puck from the defence blue line to a shot on goal, holding all opponents at bay for the duration. I had a genuine assist where I won the puck in defence, in a “stone cold steal”, and passed it along the boards to a teammate who scored.

OK,  sure … I also got beaten pointless by Morgan, one-on-one and watched him goal as he left me in his wake. I fell over repeatedly. I got out of position as a defender more than once. And, most memorably, I tried to change direction at pace near my own goal, lost it, cannoned into the goal with my stomach, landed hard on my back, taking out the goalie, and took seemingly minutes to flail and roll and climb back to my skates. Everybody got a laugh out of that one. Including me. As stated: even when you fuck up, hockey is outstanding.

Tragically, Wednesday night’s action was the end of term.

Miraculously, a whole new term of 8.45 pm Intermediate class and 10 pm Dev League starts next Wednesday.

Amen. I can’t wait.

* Pro Karaoke Tip: Never attempt this song at karaoke. Slightly drunk, in the mood for a sing, flicking through the song catalogue, it’s easy to only think of the easy “a-whim-a-way, a-whim-a-way” part of it, and completely forget all the super-high almost-yodelling bits. A friend of mine, Katey, once fell into this trap and has never recovered. In fact, she left the country not long after to try and establish a new non-karaoke-haunted life in France. Stay safe out there, kids.

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Celebrating the uncelebratable*

April 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Not sure the snake as goalie is a smart play by the coach. And my money is on the lion to beat the pig, one-on-one.

I’m not a birthday hater. I usually like birthday celebrations. I like that kind of excited feeling you still get, a ghost of kid-dom, even if you’re just heading to work, drinking coffee, doing what you normally do.

But now I’ve passed the turn towards 50, what is there to celebrate? Wisdom? Oh, please. Still waiting for that bus. Maturity? Next. Financial security? Potential 2013 Winter Classic costs blow that out. A chance to reflect on a full life well lived? OK, I might have to hurt you now …

In fact, don’t even attempt to answer. (A big hello to Brendan Parsons who recently called me “an active senior”. Yeouch! – but well played, Brendan)

I’ll be locked in my study with the single malt and loud music.

Well, actually, I won’t. Here’s how my actual birthday diary is shaping up:

7.30ish: Wake up, probably happily sore from the after-shocks of tonight’s 5.30 pm Dev League. Maybe even nursing a mild hangover from pre-birthday dining shenanigans.

Grab Fly Dog The Magnificent and hit Brunswick Street for breakfast and novel-writing, or the New Yorker/Wired mag on the iPad.

Eventually, turn up at Giants HQ; mostly cartooning all day, which rocks, because it’s fun. And writing articles for our fake sport website, The Bladder. Just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Even more fun.

Celebratory lunch with workmates and other buddies in the East Richmond hood.

Post-work. Harbourside Hotel. See if excellent eightball lessons with reigning Australian nine-ball champion Robbie Foldvari work on a pub table. (Robbie said I was a natural, and a “freak”, hitting the ball brilliantly despite a completely wrong, unworkable bridge, among other sins. Then offered to play me for money … what?)

7 pm: Still at Harbourside, meeting to discuss forming a potential summer league hockey team. Yes, a real team. For competition. Excitement.

8.15 pm: Head to the Icehouse; start strapping on the armour.

8.45 pm: Intermediate class for one hour. Second last class … should be puck-handling, game-play heavy. I hope so.

10 pm: Intermediate level, intense but fun Dev League for one hour.

11.30ish: Get home. Say hi to Fly Dog The Magnificent, and Macklin the Younger. Fail to sleep before about 3 am.

Perfect.

Isn’t that how everybody turning 47 (yes, the horrible truth … fuck!) spends their birthday?

Well, whatever. As of now, I’m 37. Prove I’m not.

Or even better, do like I do and try to ignore the artificial human concept of ‘years’ by allowing yourself to be distracted by a selection of the finest hockey-themed cakes I could find in a scandalously fast and un-thorough Google search. Enjoy.

My understanding is that the cake under the beer, and the hockey skate, are edible. I really hope I'm not wrong on the hockey skate. That would be awkward.

Can't work out if this guy is an astronaut, about to plant the flag on a planet, or that's a hockey stick.

OK, this skate is definitely edible. Red Wings backing colours too. Nice.

One for the Canucks... Hello, Alex. Pretty good cake, despite the dodgy team branding.

Sensing a theme here. What is it with hockey players and eating boots?

Full respect. A cake with mood lighting.

OK, it came up under "ice hockey birthday cake". He appears to be wearing a helmet. But seriously? Is that a walking stick or a hockey stick? Richmond FC colours just saves it.

Before biting into puck, see previous comments re hockey skates that may or may not be made of cake.

All round impressive. Players appear to be attempting to hold their positions, although it's obviously a violent cake: down to two-on-two. The Penalty Box cake must be overflowing with players.

* Is “uncelebratable” a word? Hey, I’m a frickin’ novelist. I say it is, as of now. Sweethouse.

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The Quadrella, Part III

March 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Dev League, Tuesday night, in full flight. Pic: by me, on iPhone, on the bench. Cool or dweeb? Such a fine line.

The Third Leg, Tuesday: 5 pm and we’re in the Icehouse change-rooms and it’s silent. Everybody’s lost in thought, shifting gears from work, uni, relationships and whatever else is swirling in real life, as they strap on armour, tape socks, yank skate laces and move into a hockey head space.

We hit the ice and I snowplough hard on my right leg and my quadriceps in that limb aren’t even close to happy. I have a half-hearted shot at the empty net and skate straight to the centre circle for some serious stretching. Oh, that’s right … it’s less than 24 hours since all that skipping and moving and boxing with Mischa. Something is rebelling deep under my left shoulder blade too. Two legs of the quadrella to go and the pain is rising. But I’m a hockey player, right? And I’m loving being back on the ice after almost a week. It’s time to play hockey. I snarl and grin and head to the bench, resplendent in my Slap Slot “Chiefs” jersey (Hanson 17).

Bring it.

And the game is a cracker. This is Intro Dev League and I’m starting to be able to keep up, even if there is one uy, on the other team, who is about three levels above us. Luckily he is generous and doesn’t totally dominate, looking to pass off, reather than just charge the net every time.

The rest of us scramble and try to hold our positions and work on clean passing, battling for the puck against the boards and finding teammates in space. I feel like I’m skating okay.

In fact, after several shifts, a miracle happens. Brendan is near the boards and we’re in attack. He passes in-board to another teammate who swipes towards goal. It beats everybody but skims across the front of the goal and guess who is right there, miraculously all alone and in the perfect spot to trap and tap the puck through the vacant bottom hole in the imitation goalie’s defence?

Uh huh. You know it. IN YOUR FACE, IMITATION GOALIE!

N. Place scores his first ever genuine matchplay goal in Dev League. Oh yeah.

And while we’re on miracles on ice (good film, btw) … in the very next shift, I’m mid-ice as two or three white team opponents move forward. One loses control of the puck for a moment, I snipe it and suddenly I’m clear on a breakaway.

And I don’t even panic and close to within 6-8 metres and shoot and score! Iin the same slot.

Truth be told, this shot may have grazed the imitation goalie fabric (Big Cat Place, The Artist Formerly Known As Kittens*, ever supportive, remains adamant it wasn’t a goal), but Army as ref signalled goal, and Tommy Powell, the other ref, congratulated me later on the snipe and counter attack goal. I grudgingly admitted I thought it might not have been clean but he said it looked fine to him.

“So you reckon it was good, and Army signalled goal. Good enough for me,” I said. “I’m claiming it.”

Ice star Tommy Powell is all-business, reffing our game.

Two goals in two shifts.Wow.

In Tuesday Dev League, it’s shift on, shift off (1 min, 15 sec each time) so I had more than a minute to patiently explain to my teammates on the bench how brilliant each goal was before the next shift. Which was awesome for them.

In fact, on the shift after my second goal, I was designated for D (defence) and jumped the wall, saying loudly: “Well, I am the premier goalscorer but for the good of the team, I guess I’ll shore up the defence as well.” … all of which I thought was funny until I saw Tommy’s face as he overheard this. “Jokes, Tommy, jokes,” I gasped, hustling to pick up some pace, the puck already in play.

All in all, had a blast. By now, as you can imagine, any aches and pains were a distant memory. I was floating. I went over a couple of times, as you do, but was reasonably solid on my skates and my puck-handling is definitely improving every game.

The best thing about finishing a game at 6.30 pm is that you’re home, with take-away food, at a decent time to watch the highlights of the Red Wings’ 7-2 smashing of Columbus (Oh yeah! Found our mojo right before the play-offs – Mack, Will and I are more in man-love with the rookie, Nyquist, than ever), plus Robot Chicken and Sherlock before bed … still arguing with your oldest son over whether fabric moving matters if two Melbourne Ice stars have agreed it’s a goal.

Bloody kids.

(* Big Cat scored two goals as well. And, because I’m a lot more fucking gracious than he is, it should be recorded that one was a sizzling shot from near the boards. Zetterberg, eat your heart out.)

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Rookies on film …

March 9, 2012 by 1 Comment

So, on Wednesday night, one of the Icehouse Rookies, Daniel Mellios (looking resplendent in a black Red Wings hoodie), turned up with a camera, and quietly shot the lights out of our entire Dev League session. Then produced a music clip the next day.

In the interests of as many eyeballs as possible seeing his excellent work, I thought I’d link to it here.

It really captures arriving at the Icehouse, getting ready, camaraderie, and where we’re at in terms of game play and skills of various levels We remain such a small cult of hockey diehards, within a larger, mostly-disinterested city, so far from the NHL action … I love this video for celebrating our world.

Kittens and I were both on the Red team and therefore got to wear our Wings jerseys. I’m in the #40 Zetterberg with a red helmet and red socks. Will aka Kittens, who features more in this clip, including landing on his butt, is in the #44 Bertuzzi jersey, with black helmet and white socks.

Nice work, Mr Mellios. Nice work …

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Stepping it up

March 8, 2012 by 2 Comments

When I was a boy, I fell off a cliff. Like, really. Fell close to 20 metres, although I bounced most of it.

It was a strange experience. The actual feeling of falling is so unusual and horrifying it’s indescribable, and I clearly remember (a) seeing the rock break off in my hand and having time to think: “Oh, that’s not good” before the plummet gathered momentum, and (b) a washed-up detergent bottle on the rocks at the bottom rushing up to meet me.

As I lay at the foot of the drop, covered in blood and red dirt, my brain did an unusual thing: a physical inventory. I shit you not. Semi-dazed, I went mentally checked every body part, as in: “Left arm, bleeding but ok. Right arm, same. Left leg … OH JESUS! Broken ankle? Right leg, seems okay …” and so on.

Who needs rest? Let me out there! Dev League last night. Pic: Ben Weisser.

I woke up this morning and went through a similar routine. Legs? Surprisingly not sore. Right arm, fine. Left shoulder … hmmm, tender but functional. Back, good.

I’m not about to equate signing up for Tuesday Dev League, on top of two hours of dedicated hockey on a Wednesday night as the equivalent of falling 20 metres onto rocks, but it was definitely a work out. I’ve been concerned that I’ve been skating more than running over summer, as running gives me a better cardio workout. Those fears are now behind me, for at least the next month while I go back-to-back on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

My footy crew, the mighty Bang, had also reconvened on Sunday so I ran hard and kicked a Sherrin for the first time in two months or so, leading to creaky legs on Monday. Then on Tuesday, 5.30 pm Dev League began. This is technically a level below Wednesday Dev League, open to people who have completed Intro, but a lot of the usual suspects turned up, who can skate better than well and even play for low-level teams. Being at an awkward time-slot for anybody with a real job (thankfully, that doesn’t include me), numbers were thinner than usual, so our teams only had eight or nine, meaning play was shift-on, shift-off, and sometimes a double-shift. Good way to sort out your fitness, right there.

I felt great and loved it, even if I did have to bolt off the ice with 10 minutes to go so I could catch a plane to Brisbane. (Amen for complimentary showers in the Virgin lounge. My fellow passengers were grateful without even realising it.)

I miraculously got into my Brisbane hotel at about 10.30 pm*, was up in time to be at an interactiveminds.com.au event by 7.30 am, to check slides and video links were working, delivered a talk about online video at 9 am, hailed a cab, made it back to the airport, flew out at 1 pm and landed in Melbourne around 4, just in time to dump my stuff, grab my hockey kit and head straight back to the Icehouse.

As Danny Glover said repeatedly in Lethal Weapon, “I’m too old for this shit.”

And yet, I got home last night, blood pumping, unable to sleep before maybe 2 am, in love with life. Which was yet another surprise, given the first 40 minutes or so of Intermediate, when my legs were like lead. I barely made it through the warm-up laps. It was pathetic, and I was seriously wondering if I should limp off the ice, especially after a drill to practice keeping an opponent behind you away from the puck, using a carefully-positioned arse. Kittens brushed me aside repeatedly. During all the technical skating drills, I struggled, but then, a miracle occurred.

The final drill was a straight out killer, known as a “bag skate”. Two lines of skaters. Lliam tosses pucks onto the ice at random and pairs of skaters, one from each line, fly after it, in a one-on-one length-of-the-ice duel to try and score a goal – actual goalies at each end. It’s a lot of fun; battling for the puck, plus full ice breakaways, or back-checking chases from goal to goal. Death to tired legs … well, should have been. Instead, somehow, I kicked back in. After 15 minutes, when certain junior members of my household confessed later, they were worried they were going to vomit, I unexpectedly found my legs. And was belting up and down the rink.

Army watches, unmoved, as I fail to successfully bad-ass trash-talk, post collision. Pic: Ben Weisser

Which led directly to Intermediate Dev League and me feeling stronger and stronger with every shift. Which was lucky, because (a) a bunch of Will’s posse had turned up, lightly and rowdily drunk, and were yelling for us every time we went near the puck, and (b) it was an intense game. The sides were pretty evenly matched (every week, they divide us into “red’ or “black” jerseys, so the teams are never the same twice) and after three weeks off the ice because of the skating titles, a lot of the players were in a, um, willing mood. There were more full body collisions than I’ve previously seen in any of my classes or games.

I was involved in several but only lost my feet once, which has me wondering if I’m harder to shift on my skates than I would have thought. I was surprised and kind of thrilled when I smashed head on into a pretty good skater from the other team, at pace, and he went flying backwards, landing on his arse, dropping his stick, like he’d hit a brick wall, while I stood above him, unmoved. Who knows how that happened? My skate must have been on just the right angle or something.

I screwed up though, asking if he was okay before it occurred to me how bad-ass I must be looking right now and yelled: “Take that, motha-fucka!” The photo shows what Army thought of me getting the insult and safety-check out of order. Look at his body language.

There was another spectacular pile-up in front of me later in the game, where opponent spilled and I almost got the puck through, nothing but clear ice and a goalie beyond, before my legs got tangled in the humanity. Rats.

Will (in red) collides with an opponent. On the bench, Jay said Kittens is turning into a Big Cat. (Update: Todd is claiming this original line. Well played. 'Big Cat' has stuck) Pic: Ben Weisser.

Fun night, and oh boy, am I going to be fitter after a month or more of scrimmages two nights in a row. Too old for this shit? Never!

* “Miraculous” because I got in a taxi at Brisbane airport, and the conversation went like this:

Me: Sofitel, please.

Cabbie: The Sofitel? You mean the Novetel?

Me: No, the Sofitel. Next to Central Station.

Cabbie: Central Station? Oh, I think I know where that is.

Me: Um, you think? It’s right in the city centre. Turbot Street.

Cabbie: …. Turbot Street?

Me: You been driving a cab for long.

Cabbie: Yeah, seven years. But mostly around Rockcliffe. Don’t worry, I bought a GPS thing today, second hand, and I’m learning how to use it.

Hooooo boy.

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Amen. Class warfare starts again.

February 2, 2012 by 2 Comments

Me (in red) winning a breakaway in my Dev League debut. A very rare photo. Pic: Ben Weisser

OK, I need you to imagine drinking three straight litres of water without a break. Then sitting in a locked room for nine hours. A room with no, um, facilities. Now you’re allowed out of the room but only to jog up and down on the spot for one hour, all while continuing to sip water at regular intervals.

You are then placed in a car and sit in the back seat for four hours as the car travels over bumpy roads, all while listening to a CD: “The magnificent sounds of a trickling stream”.

Finally the car stops at the world’s largest waterfall and you watch the water cascading, streaming down the rocks. You are made to drink another three large glasses of soda water.

Your fingers and toes are placed in warm water.

Get the idea …

Well, now replace the need for a toilet at this time with the need to play ice hockey, and that was me last night. Intermediate, Week One, could not come around quickly enough and there was nothing I could do to fast forward the day leading to 8.45 pm. Sure, Will (aka Kittens) and I got a little excited and turned up at the Icehouse at 6 pm, but it turned out that didn’t make 8.45 pm come any faster. We played pool at the Harbourside (modesty prevents me offering the scoreline [I kicked his arse]) and I ate pizza and drank dry ginger ale because the ice was beckoning, beating out even the desire for alcohol.

Kittens, in classic pose. Of course, he scored a goal. Uppity kid. Pic: Ben Weisser

And finally it was time. Greeting the other rookies, meeting a few I only knew by facebook profile; strapping into full armour and looking like a sumo on skates as my Grand Rapids Griffins jersey, on Australian debut, ballooned over my gear. And, ready!

Of course, our coaches Army, Lliam and Michael welcomed us back with hardcore skating tests and obligingly sent my group of skaters to outside edge drills as the opening gambit. One of my worst skills. And of course the other three guys I was bracketed with are in the running for Outside Edge Rookies of the Year while I managed not to fall.

Until the second drill when Michael had us attempting to transition at speed from forwards to backwards skating, around a cone. And I found out fast that my new helmet, bought in Chicago, has excellent impact-absorption in the back of the lid when your head smacks hard against the ice during a backward plank.

Then we were doing crossovers and I didn’t suffer any mortal injuries – Army even raised an eyebrow at my improvement – before Lliam gave me some tips at inside edge skating that worked all the way until the fourth cone at which point I tested the ice impact capabilities of my new gloves and my ageing elbow pads, falling heavily while fully committed to one foot inside edge around a cone. At least I was fully committed, right?

All that was left to start the term was a game of two-on-two where my partner and I played the Washington Generals to the other pair’s Harlem Globetrotters, and a bizarre tapdancing crossover drill where the miracle was I didn’t fall.

It was actually an awesome class, finished with four rounds of straight-up tearaway fast sprints up and down the ice. That’s when I’m at my happiest, even if I’m not the fastest rookie out there. I just love seeing how fast I can go, getting that cardio-hit, and then morbidly wondering if I can stop in time as the boards approach. The answer was universally yes last night, which shows my summer of toil wasn’t totally wasted.

This was always going to happen in my Dev League debut. Pic: Ben Weisser

But the best was yet to come, because a quick Zamboni run later, I was back on the ice, now in my Zetterberg Wings jersey, as part of the red team in my Development League debut.

I’m not sure I can hope to convey how awesome Dev League was. I could try poetry but after rhyming “ice” with “nice” I start to struggle. “Dice”? “Mice”? “Concise”? “Condoleezza Rice”?

One thing I know: I’m glad I didn’t do Dev League last term, as Will did. I wouldn’t have been ready. But with a summer of skating practice under my belt, and so many supportive, friendly rookie classmates urging me on, it was brilliant, truly brilliant.

For the first time, I felt like a real hockey player, playing an hour of scrimmage, deciding when to end my shifts, powering up and down the ice (mown down on two attempted breakaways, first to the puck on one – shot went wide, dammnit) and just generally deciding that ok, I won’t suck embarrassingly among these players, even if there are clearly superior skaters out there.

Condoleezza Rice: not relevant here.

The game had one casualty – Ken went down with a nasty split lip and was lucky not to lose teeth – and I had a couple of spills but nothing fatal. On my first shift, I failed to trap a puck along the boards which ended up in a goal at the other end, which had me doing some old fashioned cussing, but I got progressively more comfortable with every following shift and didn’t panic, didn’t just flail, kept an eye on staying onside, didn’t lose my position most of the time and generally felt like the beginnings of an idea of a genuine hockey player in a team.

It felt very good.

The other rookies were awesome in welcoming me to the game and this level. Benched between shifts, Jay and I marvelled at how far some of the skaters who started with us a year ago in Intro have come. Morgan Squires was dominating but then (and don’t take this the wrong way, Morgan) it was just as heartening for me to see him and others occasionally screw up. They’re not all bulletproof and error-free as I blunder along. We’re all still in class, training, getting better, striving. And I can see how this term is going to make me blossom, trying to keep up.

A very very very good night, back on the ice, even if I was home at midnight, accidentally drinking off-milk and unable to consider sleep until much later.

Today, my groin, hips and legs were hurting in the second best way they can and I loved every second of feeling the aches. Next Wednesday, please oh please come around without delay.

I wouldn’t have thought it was possible but hockey just became a whole lot more fun.

Jack, a committed Penguins fan, in a Washington jersey, so he could play Dev League in the red team. These are the lengths people will go to. Pic: Ben Weisser

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Strange times

January 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It’s always darkest before the dawn, right?

Maybe it’s equally true that it’s always craziest in the days before hockey classes start again, to provide order and release?

Because, believe me, these are strange times, my friends. Oh, what strange times we live in that blue jelly balls can fall as hail from the English sky, and a Lego man can be sent clear into space by a couple of teenage nerds or, while we’re on Lego, that shit, a giant Lego man can wash ashore in Florida and the local police don’t have any better ideas than to arrest him.

Super Kane. Pic: espn

What strange times are these that an NHL star can wear a Superman cape and Clark Kent glasses on the ice, or that the bass player for The Stone Roses can try to withdraw cash to buy milk from an autobank and find two million pounds he wasn’t expecting in the account balance?

Is it any wonder that last Thursday, having decided to spend the Australia Day holiday working on my new novel (Hereby known as “Let It Slide” – thanks for the working title, Mack), I wrote exactly 155 words before realising strange flashes of light were still in my peripheral vision, as they had been the night before. Five hours later, at the Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital, a doctor and I were discussing when I had last eaten, because he was planning an emergency operation, if theatre was set up on the public holiday, and a surgeon was in the house. We discussed the likelihood of my losing the sight in my right eye if the retina fully tore away. As it was, a small retina tear was corralled by “lasers” (Dr Evil air-quote marks there) on the spot and I was sent back into the day, reeling, but allegedly ok.

But not totally ok. It means I am still seeing the world through what looks like a dirty car windscreen and it forced an exercise-free weekend – no running, no boxing last night – when I really needed to bust some stress. It should also mean no hockey tomorrow night but, hey, I’m a hockey player and with some of the stuff that’s been going on in my life, I really need to go play hockey.

Blue jelly rain. Pic: The Guardian

It’s a strange world when you can be bodysurfing at Lorne at 3.30 pm, then ice skating (gently, protecting eye) at the Icehouse by 6 pm. And even stranger when you can sit with your parents, making important decisions about whether they will leave your spiritual home or not, and the decision starts to lean to ‘not’, and you start to breathe again and you look out the window and right then, at that exact moment, no less than five yellow-tailed black cockatoos, your totem bird, do a fly-by, all but winking as they pass, a few metres away. And yet a few hours later, in the remorseless heat of a Melbourne summer night that forgets to cool down, and in the wake of the parts of life that are difficult to understand and after an airport run to collect your teenage son who has wild stories of elephants and being the first westerner in a village for four years, meaning the littlest kids had never seen a white person, you find you cannot sleep because of the way everything is swirling and sneaking up on your brain and conspiring to stop you sleeping. And yet you can’t open your eyes because the flashes are there, hinting that your retina may yet blow a fuse and release your secret fear of blindness, not to mention ending your hockey career right there.

So you lie sweating in the pre-dawn, idly listing all the things you need two eyes to achieve, and trying not to think about much better reasons to be sweaty in the pre-dawn and how far away the prospect of exploring that ever again feels, and whether Jimmy Howard and Pavel Datsyuk will star in the NHL All-Star game later that day (they did pretty well) and eventually you surf Facebook and smile at how stir-crazy the hockey group’s posts are becoming as we all wait for action, sweet action, and you spend the dawn trading emails with a friend just in from skiing in the French Alps, rugged up in a beanie and gloves and scarf as the heat smashes you in your bed.

A strange world in need of another friend, a magician, who is wise beyond his years and sips his cider 12 hours later as a cool breeze finally blows through your town and tells you: “I’ve learned that what people say doesn’t mean what they said and even what people do doesn’t mean that’s what they did.” Or something like that. It doesn’t make sense to me either, now, but magic is about misdirection, I suppose, or maybe I was distracted, as I always am at the Black Cat, by the giant framed tarantulas on the wall, hammered into a wooden vertical map of my suburb; wondering if the people on the corner of Gore and Napier streets realize an arachnid bigger than two houses is right there, hovering over them?

Giant Lego man, before he was locked up. Pic: LA Times

A strange, uncertain world but starting to right itself, if I let it. If I remain open to the fact that the future is full of possibility and adventures, if danger and sadness. But then, isn’t that always the case? Yet again, I repeat the mantra of a wise woman I met, who told me that when heaviness weighed down her world, she reminds herself: “Levity, punk!”

Lightness. As any hockey player knows, all you can do is put one skate in front of the other and try to skate to where the puck will be, not where the puck is. One more sleep, heat permitting, until I don my shoulder armour, my padded shorts, my knee guards, elbow guards and gloves, pull my Australian-first Grand Rapids Griffins jersey over my bulky armour and lace up my gorgeous Reeboks. I’ll buckle my helmet (full visor to protect my eye), grab my Crosby stick, watch the Zamboni finish its run, banter with my fellow rookies, feel my heartbeat start to race and finally make my way onto the smooth Icehouse ice.

Let the new term begin. I think you can believe me when I say I can honestly hardly wait.

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Playtime is over

January 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

The crowd thins out, late in Stick & Puck last night.

Life has been something of an existential struggle lately (which will have my friends asking: what’s new?) and it always amazes me how often what’s going on off the ice is mirrored in my hockey.

But the good news is that, generally, life on the ice is simpler. While the Universe and I may currently disagree on realistic expectations and ambitions in my wider life, the Hockey Gods and I are thankfully on the same page: it’s time for me to lace-up my skates and get back to work.

Thanks to the wild and fun ride of my Detroit News article last week (SEE BELOW) – and the Warhol 15 minutes is officially over, according to this blog’s stats spike that has now returned to normal – as well as a hockey feature still (endlessly) waiting for take-off at The Sunday Age, and the angst over Icehouse ice time, plus other hockey-themed correspondence, there’s been a lot of talking about hockey, writing about hockey and even thinking about hockey recently. There’s even been plenty of general skating.

But playtime is over, as of now.

Last night, I killed myself in the gym then headed to the Icehouse at 8 pm, had a brief general skate and finally donned my armour for the first time in what felt like forever, probably since September. Chest armour, padded shorts, helmet, gloves, shinguards, elbows: the full kit. Which was the whole point.

The occasion was a humble 9.15 pm Stick & Puck session, the ice loaded with mostly intense, serious players working on their stick handling or goal shooting. And me. Hardly anybody wears full armour for these sessions – the people who can really skate often just wear T-shirts, helmets and gloves, but I deliberately waddled onto the ice, wearing everything.

I just wanted to get a feel again for being armoured-up, and for wielding a stick, before official classes start in a week, with me back among the students.

I’m safely signed up for Intermediate, second time around, and my Development League debut, back to back, so Wednesday nights are going to be brutal, physically, but fun.

However, after my self-imposed summer of skating, I feel very rusty when it comes to being a hockey player, to actually playing.

I never did get around to those private skating lessons, even though I have a friend who is a champion figure skater set to give me some tips on Sunday evening, and I’m still talking to Mikey, a musician/ex-pro hockey player about private tutoring. But regardless, the summer has been worthwhile. I feel that I am a lot more solid on my skates, compared to six months ago.

Last night, in full padding, I was pivoting and hockey stopping better than I have all summer. Still not exactly NHL Hall of Fame stuff but a huge improvement on when I last attempted Intermediate. I really hope this translates into a better performance in the new classes. I’m ready to step up from being a wobbly rookie to being a contender for a team by the end of winter. That’s the goal.

As I waited to get onto the ice, a game of drop-in was finishing, and I appraised it, wondering if I’d be killed if I attempted to join one of these at this stage. There has been ongoing debate with the Icehouse folk about this, because as we’ve complained about hockey getting less and less classes and time, they’ve replied that they’ve loaded up the number of drop-in games available. But my point is that for a lot of us, still at Intro or Intermediate level, drop-in as it stands is too frightening and too dangerous, because there might be semi-pro Melbourne Ice players or other established, experienced, highly-skilled players from the various Victorian leagues hurtling around. I’m not about to wobble backwards into a shooting lane while an Ice player is at full pace, getting ready for the season. We’ve been arguing for some time that drop-in games specifically for Intro/Intermediate players, are required, but nothing has happened as yet.

Or maybe this is all a case of slipping on my “Harden the fuck up” bracelet? Maybe I should just get in there and die or not?

As I watched and wondered, a player on the ice gave me a big grin and slammed the glass in front of my face with his stick; a traditional hockey welcome. It was Ray, who started Intro with me a year ago and has rocketed into teams and serious play. After the drop-in finished, he hung around last night for stick & puck, and we spent a while firing passes at one another. Another player, Pete, who I hadn’t met before, gave me some great tips on better pivot technique so the move would hold up at high speed. I told him I understand the theory but really I was just still trying to train my brain not to lurch and have to go through a mental approval process when I try to pivot to the right, as against the more instinctive left. Good tips though.

After an hour, I peeled off my dripping armour and marveled at how time on the ice clears your head of everything – all the way to the car park anyway. And savoured how good it felt to be back in a hockey changing room, with my bulging bag of kit, and needing new tape on my stick because it had finally had a work-out. I’m ready to be a hockey player again. The new round of classes can’t come quickly enough.

Jimmy Howard takes on pretty much the entire St Louis team yesterday. (Pic: Detroit News)

POSTSCRIPT: The Red Wings won again at home yesterday – the streak is now up to 17, wiping records. Pavel Datsyuk scored on a very Datsyukesque deke and backhand, and our goaltender, Jimmy Howard, stopped almost everything and took on four Blues players who he felt had cannoned into him once too often (it happens to him pretty much every game, without any referee action). Go those Wings.

 

 

THE DETROIT NEWS ARTICLE (Now off line)

Wednesday, January 18

(Tuesday, Detroit time)

Just call me Mr Streak …

By Nick Place

Melbourne, Australia

Red Wings fans marvelling at the astonishing, historic home winning streak currently being enjoyed by their team are probably wondering who to thank. Jimmy? Lids? Pav? Babcock?

Well, no. Actually, you have to thank me.

You’re welcome. But I should probably explain.

As the Wings set the home streak record today against the Sabres, I was unable to ignore the fact that every one of those wins has come since my two sons and I left Detroit.

Seriously. Since the day that we left Detroit.

But it’s worse than that. You see, I live in Melbourne, Australia. Almost exactly half a world away; about as close to Antarctica as Detroit is to the Arctic. Right now, we’re enduring 100 degree-plus days in the height of summer, as Detroit shivers through winter. In other words, I am a long way from Motor City.

Which is great for Detroit because when my sons and I travelled to Hockeytown to achieve a life-list ambition of watching our beloved Red Wings in action, the team went straight to Hell.

Don’t believe me? Get this. Our first ever Wings game was on Saturday, October 22, in Washington against the Caps. We’d been in America for a month, on a trip of a lifetime that was carefully orchestrated to ensure we hit Washington at the same time as that game.

Reading this in America’s hockey homeland, you probably can’t imagine what it’s like being a Wings fan half a world away. For the small but passionate hockey community here in Australia, seeing an actual NHL game live is a distant dream, so picture our excitement as we made our way into the Verizon Centre, surprised by how many other Wings fans were also in the capital. I’d paid a fortune for decent seats, wanting to make our Wings debut memorable. The Wings were 6-0 coming into the game and the Capitals were 7-0. We were there to salute Nick Lidstrom’s milestone 1500th regular season game. Everything was perfect.

Until the Capitals beat us, 7-1.

Hey ho. We travelled to Detroit for an even bigger life-highlight: our first visit to the Joe Louis Arena, as the Sharks skated onto the ice on October 28. I met Gordie Howe, which had me floating, and we drank in being among the Wings family of fans, at the historic Joe, having walked the decaying but magnificent beauty of Detroit downtown.

And lost, 4-2.

Then read about the Wings failing to even score in losing 1-0 to the Wild away, and then we were back at the Joe for that OT daylight robbery against the Wild on October 29.

We had one more game to see before we had to fly back around the globe to the real world. The Flames at the Joe. By now the media was obsessed by the Red Wings’ complete inability to score more than one goal per game. Zee, Pav, everybody in attack was not so much off the boil as frozen. Jimmy was being heroic but didn’t have enough goals stacking at the other end to ward off the losses.

I was resplendent in my new Lidstrom jersey, Will was now in Bert’s #44 and Macklin, my 16-year-old, had celebrated Nyquist’s Wings debut by having his jersey made up – surely the only Nyquist-flavoured winged wheel going around in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Red Wings organization generously acknowledged our trek by giving us a tour of the Joe, watching the warm-ups from the zamboni race, and we sat right on the glass for the Calgary game.

And lost 4-1; the worst Wings performance of our trip.

The good news for all of you is that we finally had to leave. We flew to LA for a connecting flight, just as the Ducks passed us in the air, and got belted at the Joe, 5-0, the day after we’d left town.

Which, of course, was the start of The Streak, including an avalanche of goals, outscoring opponents 68-21 at the Joe, including today’s game, since being pathologically unable to hit the back of the net the entire time we were in residence. Commentators now get all nostalgic about the October days when the Wings couldn’t score. I laugh bitterly.

But you know what? The good news is that despite the remorseless scoreboards, my boys and I had the time of our lives in Detroit and at the Joe. The welcome of the Wings fans, who universally embraced three Australian wannabe hockey players from Down Under (yes, we play – that’s another story) plus the warmth of the Wings staff, and the wider people of Detroit was unforgettable. Hockeytown rocks.

All the losses? They just mean I still have to see a Wings win at the Joe, which means I’m going to have to find my way to Midwest winter at least one more time.

I promise it won’t be during the 2012 play-offs. I want us to win the Cup as well.

Nick Place is an Australian author, former sports writer, mid-40s hockey rookie and passionate Wings fan. (nickdoeshockey.com)

 

 

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Dangling by a thread …

January 18, 2012 by 15 Comments

My hockey career ...

As I sit here, typing this, my hockey career, such as it is, is dangling by the proverbial thread.

Since 9 am, I have only left my desk for one daring coffee run. Otherwise, I have been hitting refresh on Firefox over and over and over again: the target being the Ice Hockey enrolment page on the Icehouse website.

In fact, let’s call it by its full name for once: The Medibank Icehouse, because our home of hockey is performing in such an underwhelming manner right now that its sponsor should know about it.

The tension started a week or so ago when an email went out, alerting Melbourne’s ever-growing army of hockey players in training that the number of classes for Term One of this year had been slashed. No more Tuesday or Saturday classes. Huh? What?

Only one Intro for Adults on Wednesday night, plus one Intermediate, and then a couple of development league hours (the last of which starts at the helpful time of 11.15 pm, running until 12.15 am).

So basically, the several hundred hockey students are now fighting for one of maybe 30 spots in each of one Intro and one Intermediate class, and then one worknight-friendly Dev league timeslot.

Nice work, Medibank Icehouse. Way to try and kill the sport just as it gains momentum.

But now it gets better, because Monday (as in two days ago) was enrolment day, then that got pushed to yesterday and then to today. Which meant I, and most of my Hockey Rookie friends (going by the very entertaining and robust Facebook discussion that has been occurring for the past two hours) were at our desks or poised over other mobile devices, ready to hit ENROL at 9.00 am and one second.

Except that the Icehouse site didn’t change.

And then a message went up saying please don’t refresh the Hockey School page until after 10 am because of technical issues. And so we all bantered and sweated and hit Refresh endlessly until a new message went up at 10.30 am, saying please don’t hit refresh for 30 minutes.

And that was 10 minutes ago, and now I’m considering re-starting nail-biting, or taking up smoking, or sniffing glue or whatever else I need to do to ease this tension.

What if I’m not one of the 30 to hit ENROL in time to make it into Intermediate, or Dev League?

What if all my Rookie mates, in Intro and higher levels, are frozen out of the classes by this Icehouse dickheadness?

Why is it harder for us to pay good money to the Icehouse – allegedly the home of Australia’s winter Olympic sports – to keep learning our sport than it is to get falls Festival tickets?

We’ve all noticed for a while that hockey is taking a pounding by unsubtle must-try-to-make-money Icehouse initiatives. Something is clearly going on in the finance department there that has nothing to do with a commitment to the sport or the students who have swollen the Icehouse hockey classes over the last 12 months.

The word on the street is that Government funding has been withdrawn and the Icehouse owners (a Grollo company) are all-systems-go to raise revenue, not grow ice-based sports. Hence broomball, and ice tubing, and other novelty ice events, ahead of ice time for serious athletes (Yes, I’m including us in that category. Bite me.)

And so in half an hour, because of this crap management and decision-making at the venue, I might be frozen out of classes (pun intended). Or headed to Melbourne’s only other rink, at Oakleigh, to train with Melbourne Ice player Joey Hughes. Or charging Grollo HQ, covered in chicken blood and armed with a butter knife.

Anything is possible at this point.

I’m writing this post now, before I either get in, or don’t get in, to remember how freaked out everybody, including me, was as the wait continued (and a working day evaporated … and yes, I do actually have a lot to do. Thanks, Icehouse.)

The good news in all this? The Facebook banter between the brotherhood and sisterhood has been golden.

The bad news? The people in charge of providing rinks and education for us seem hell bent on ensuring we can’t take that bond onto the ice, where it belongs.

OK. Back to the Refresh …

 

The Red Wings hear that Kittens and I got into our chosen classes ...

LATE BREAKING NEWS: Finally got into the Icehouse system and booked my spots, and Will’s (aka Kittens). Intermediate and Dev League (unless somebody misses out and needs a spot). Crazy morning. Stupid Icehouse. But huzzah, we’re in! This blog will definitely benefit from not having me sitting on the sidelines, with no hockey.

 

 

 

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