joey hughes – nick does hockey

Guest writer: Liam Patrick on the Newcastle adventure

September 7, 2012 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

WORLD EXCLUSIVE

Vinnie Hughes brings the Cup to the Rookies. Newcastle, 2012. Pic: Jessica Hough

A roadtrip chasing the Goodall Cup.

By Liam Patrick

What a weekend!

It was the weekend the Ice put the fairy tale finish on their documentary by sealing the 3peat in dramatic fashion in the industrial city of Newcastle.

It was weekend that a motley band of Melbourne Rookies travelled up to support our boys in their quest for a third round of glory.

I offered to blog the experience of following the boys into enemy territory and the finals for Nicko. He asked for not merely a diary of the weekend but ‘an adventure that ultimately ends in glory’. So here goes…

The now fabled weekend began early. Very early. So early in fact, that a certain Rookie managed to throw away his boarding pass before getting through security. Whoops! The players had flown up on the Friday but the first flight out of Melbourne to Newcastle Saturday morning was jam packed with Ice fans, the South Pole crew, the Women’s team and the MI players’ partners and families. There was a genuine excitement in the air before quite a few people took advantage of the 90 minute flight to recharge their batteries.

Newcastle is, somewhat amazingly, a hockey hotbed. This weekend was to be the North Stars’ ninth Grand Final in 10 years. In this time they also have secured four Goodall cups, dominated junior hockey in the region and have a successful involvement in a women’s team. They’ve accomplished all this in a town with only 190,000 residents. I had never been to Newcastle before. While driving the 40 minutes from the airport to Warners Bay where the rink is located, I was struck by how just much the houses we saw resembled those in places such as Broadmeadows and other tough, working class suburbs. From where I sat, I saw a town that was built on the blood, sweat and tears of “hard” men and women. A tough, fibro city. Perhaps this is an indication of why hockey is successful. The people are bred with hard work and physical strength in their blood. Combine this with a hockey friendly rink, an intelligent and talented management team and perhaps a lack of competition from other sports or pastimes and I began to form my own opinions as to why the team was so successful for so long. I chatted about it to a few of my fellow Rookies and while we agreed the North Stars are no doubt a power club of the AIHL, maybe my reasoning wasn’t the full answer.

The Rookies underpoooosh their way onto the Novastrian ice, pre-finals. Pic: Jess Hough

The Hunter Ice Skating Stadium was somewhat disappointing for me. If this is the second best rink in the country then we are further behind that I thought. Now to be clear, this isn’t a knock on the rink. It had a beautiful ice surface for general skating and Joey Hughes later remarked it was “perfect” come game time. It was clean. It was safe. It was easy to access. We could tailgate (translation for non-hockey readers: impromptu drinking and socialising, centralised around the boot of a car) in the car park! My view, however, is that the finals are the marquee product each season and need to be built to attract lucrative sponsorship dollars, global interest and mainstream coverage. Furthermore, it should be accessible to fans, in a location that’s attractive for travelling fans and capable of providing modern day comforts such as video replays and quality live streaming. I felt that this wasn’t achieved at the HISS, but conversely, could have been achieved at the Icehouse. Yes, I know. I am somewhat biased being an Ice fan. But at the same time, I LOVED being able to go away with my friends and cheer for our boys (next year we may go global and head to NZ for TTCL!). I just wish the HISS could have the same facilities and benefits to help build the growing momentum of our sport.

Like many questions facing Ice Hockey’s Aussie family – what is the solution? Is it good practice or sustainable to always use the Icehouse? Will the Gold Coast get their rumored stadium that could do the job just as well? Will a couple of other rinks be up for a facelift soon? Is this where the dollars need to be directed as the league grows or are there other factors to consider (such as beginning to pay the best players)? I’m not sure. What I can say with complete certainty is that HISS had made the most of everything they had and helped put on a fantastic show, all while providing great hospitality.

All this being said, I’ll give you an account of our experience on the weekend and leave you to form your own opinions on the big questions above.

Having arrived in Newcastle before most people were even awake on a Saturday morning in Melbourne, our general skate at the HISS was fun. The rink wasn’t as packed as the Bradbury – but the weather was a sunny 20 degree so why would you freeze yourself unless you were a true hockey tragic like those of us who pulled on our skates. Martin Kutek (Lord of the Underpoosh and Rookies sponsee) was unable to play under the “four imports rule” and had been unable to make it up with us. It was Dan D’s lucky weekend when he got to wear Martin’s actual playing jersey for the weekend instead. Proudly displaying the number 13, Dan (playing the part of ‘Kutek’ magnificently) did quite well in an on-ice limbo competition narrowly missing out on a pseudo-Czech victory to an unnaturally bendy six-year-old before stacking it, superman-style, on his final crack at the limbo pole. The marauding, erm I mean travelling, band of Rookies also took the chance to have a little bit of fun at our coach’s expense, staging a few interesting shots in a series known as “Kutek does….”. For legal reasons and the fact that Martin can make us bag skate several times per week, these probably need to be locked away in a concrete bunker deep underground, or alternatively, posted to Facebook.

For those of us who made the trek, what was most interesting to observe was the mixture of emotions which played themselves out like silent movies across our faces over the course of the weekend. Personally, I had been very busy moving houses and starting a new job so I hadn’t given much thought or considerations to the weekend other than “thank fuck I have a holiday coming up.” Even while general skating, I was more worried about my “hockey hangover” (11:30pm finish to NLHA the previous night-30 min drive home-washing to be done so my housemate didn’t kick me out over the stench had meant I was running on three hours of sleep and very dead legs), rather than shift my focus to Finals and the main event. Others, such as MasterChef Rach, a 10-year supporter of Melbourne Ice, were beginning to show outward signs of nerves on behalf of our boys who were about to put it ALL on the line. This was sudden death playoff hockey – nothing was assured and the best team on the day would take the spoils. Unlike the NHL and AHL, there was to be no coming back from an off night this weekend.

The general consensus was that the Ice boys should progress to the final. We had the Sydney Ice Dogs to get past and they would be a Scoobie Snack for us (see what I did there?!). The dogs are a team we had embarrassed 9-1 at the ‘house and then won another 4-3 in a spiteful away game which saw Joey Hughes (one of the Rookies favourites, coach and arguably the best player in the country), having a “brief” 5 game holiday after finding himself on the wrong side of the opposing bench. Needless to say, the Rookies did not care for the puppies. The other semi was definitely going to be more interesting. The local North Stars who had finished one point clear of the ice for the minor premiership, were taking on the Adelaide Adrenaline. As a Victorian, I found myself torn. The North Stars were probably the best team all year (marginally ahead of the Ice who slowed a little in the final month as fatigue, injuries, suspension, pressure and other factors seemingly took their toll.) We wanted to play the Croweaters whom we had beaten 3 times during the year and had smashed in last year’s semi. But could I really cheer for a South Australian team in the semis? Don’t they have “Kick a Vic” on their license plates? We at least knew our $70 tournament pass was going to give us three great games of hockey seated fairly close to the glass.

The nerves finally kicked in while downing the first beverage of the weekend as we tailgated prior to the Stars game. A brick suddenly dropped in my stomach. I knew the boys weren’t in great form. Two losses to Perth before a hard fought win, followed by a tough game against Gold Coast. There had been so many hurdles for the club this season. From Vinny having a controversial holiday, Tommy Powell injuring his knee and seemingly not quite having his killer edge (even if his Chemistry with the Bearded one is always exciting to watch), Baxxxy nearly losing his finger/hand/arm (he later admitted it wasn’t back to 100% but even now, still can handle a puck like its glued to his stick, bastard), Joey’s aforementioned battle, Szalinski getting poleaxed during a shattering 4-0 shutout, a taxing Trans-Tasman triumph, Todd Graham having to return to college, 10 year celebrations, the pressure of the 3Peat, a documentary being shot (which I am hanging out for) and I’m sure all the other pitfalls of a team environment. From my perspective, our last month had been well below what our boys were capable of…

I comforted myself by looking for the positives. After a slow start, the Bearded one (i.e. Lliam Webster) had been a beast of late. Averaging over 2 points per game, using his size to keep opponents off the puck while slick and dangerous in his own puck-handling. Marcus Wong had the pace and skill to be thorn in anybody’s side – and he hits anything that moves. Hard. Coach Jaffa looked like a hardened warrior who wouldn’t let his boys be anything other than perfectly prepared and enabled to use their skills and flair. Army was up and about. Sturrock was a rock in defense on the veteran pairing with Vinnie. And Godammit! The Rookies would yell ourselves hoarse for our boys no matter what was to happen!

Despite the mounting anxiety I was feeling, it was easy to get swept up in the atmosphere. An excited bunch of mainly twenty-somethings, sun, alcohol, hockey. Not a bad way to spend a weekend. The first game began. What idiot chose our seats? We were surrounded by Novacastrians, (thanks to Brenda Parsons for ensuring I used the correct term there), our own little island refuge of navy blue, wedged between the bright superman-esque colours of the Northstars fans. We were about two metres from the glass and sitting below the ice. The players looked like giants. Warriors speeding along smoothly then smashing each other without warning since we couldn’t see the puck while sitting that close to the boards. The game was a fast, tight affair. Every time the heavily supported locals drew away, the boys from Adelaide pegged one back. They weren’t lying down. It was not just a warm-up game. It got to the last period. 5-4 Newcastle. Ray Sheffield (Newcastle captain and one of my favorite non-Ice players) laid a check. From our vantage point we couldn’t see it but Kittens Place described it as “Not great” and pretty deserving of the five minute penalty and an early shower. This was it. At least one goal should be scored. Maybe two. Even as a neutral supporter I was edge of my seat. The logic kicked in: “Let’s hope they go to OT, tire each other out”. The next five minutes were all about a tight, desperate defense from the offensive juggernaut of Newcastle. They held on. Just. And that meant they were off to the big show. Two teams worth of tired hockey gods hit the showers. One could look forward to the biggest day of the year. The other, the biggest night of the year and the worst morning after.

It was sometime shortly after that when my nerves ramped up. Reality hit home. This is finals. Anything can happen. Our boys are good, no doubting it. But talent counts for nothing when you look at the scoreboard. Goals marked up there are what entitles you to claim the win over anyone else.

The boys were out kicking the soccer ball around for a warm up. Joey gave the group an almost shy smile and wave. Most of us were somewhat well lubricated by now and gave him a big cheer along with any other man clad in a navy blue t-shirt. The Rookies are very ‘equal opportunity’ when it comes to our boys.

We took our seats. We had survived being accosted by (the aptly or ironically named) Bruiser, the Ice Dogs mascot, on the way in to the HISS, and now the bay next to us was full of Dogs fans in full voice. My gut twisted tight. I couldn’t imagine how the boys must be feeling right now. Maybe they are old hands at this? Many of the Ice guns have played high level hockey around the world, many already having two championships under their belts. It may be finals, but at the end of the day it’s still hockey. Skate hard, put that rubber disk past the guy in the leg mattresses. Should I have been worried?

Fuck no! Exactly 14 seconds after the first drop of the puck, a Rookies favorite and another sponsee Matt Armstrong, being criminally left unmarked by the puppies defensemen in the slot, put a sexy snipe past the Goalie after some nice passing from Joey and Baxxxy. BOOM! The Ice were up and about. Then another. And another. The knot was gone. Thank fuck! The overgrown puppies mascot was nowhere to be seen (humping a fire hydrant maybe?). As expected, the Ice Dogs turned physical, having decided that since they couldn’t beat them, they would beat them for it but, despite a few penalties, our boys heroically held it together. No doubt they targeted Joey who did well to only take a few penalties. At one point I remarked: “I just want to go over to the box, tap him on the arse and tell him to get back into it. Don’t worry about those bastards and put a few more in the net”.

The final score for the game read 6-2. It was almost flattering to the Dogs and our boys never really looked troubled after the magnificent start. The third line (which was really 5 different forwards who had all had their own moments in the sun during the year) played some minutes giving our powerful top 2 lines some respite. Marcus Wong looked a metre taller than he really was, smashing anybody silly enough to go near him. Todd Graham (freshly back from the US for the weekend) was solid as a rock, Dylan Moore looked like he had the decision making to match his skills and was making life really hard in our zone for anybody without the ice logo on the front of their jersey. The old firm of Vinnie and Sturrock looked formidable. Our D was set. Our forwards were rockin’; ‘Bring on the locals!’ we cried.

It had been a long day. But still, despite the early start, it was Saturday so the group met a few other Ice fans in the hotel bar and settled in for a few cold beverages. We were all obviously very happy with how the day had gone. No injuries or suspensions to our boys. The North Stars had played a tough game. And the bar had something other than Toohey’s on tap!

The next day dawned. We hoped our boys’ heads weren’t as sore as our own. Over the next three or four hours, all of the Rookies filtered through a local café who apologized for the slow service (45 minutes for that Hot Chocolate, Da Costa?) as they had never been this busy. Their three tables were clearly a rush.

The noble hockey art of ‘tailgating’. Pic: Jess Hough

Another general skate was forgone in favour of more beers before some good ole’ fashioned tailgating. Something I had never done before and loved. The banter with the other fans – friends and enemy. More “Kutek does…” photography which may or may not have received many likes on facebook. It’s certainly a culture I think many Aussies would enjoy. I have always been kept aghast by the soccer community (thankfully to a lesser extent here in Australia) who need to be physically separated before the start of a game. Having Glaswegian blood I have heard many stories about the vicious rivalries and wondered how the hell that happens when I manage to sit next to an Essendon fan on ANZAC Day or an Ice Dogs fan in a semi? It was the same type of vibe in the carpark at the HISS. Both sets of fans knew they were in for an epic battle between the two best teams and some of the best players across the entire league. Taylor, Bales, Sheffield and co for the North Stars put up the points while superstar goalie Oliver Martin stood in the pipes to shut-down the mighty Ice warriors.

After a few more slightly warmed beverages (including pre-mixed shots which included a tad too much cream for my nervously churning tummy). The rink was quickly filling. The tiny skaters of the North Stars ice crew cleared the warmup pucks from the rink like ball boys and girls at the tennis, much to the moans of the travelling Rookies “aww man, that kid shits all over my skating… Sigh…”. The team assembled for the national anthem. The Ice standing like zen masters in their white traveling uniform towered above the plebs in the crowd. The teams crowded their nets, final words before battle. By this point I was in real trouble. Stomach churning, sweat pouring off me, edge of my seat. Drop that damn puck!

The two power lines faced off. I later saw a photo of Baxxxy taking this face off. He was grinning ear to ear. It’s very endearing to see an athlete having the time of their life. Then that black rubber disc hit the ice.

It was on.

Like the day before, the puck was quickly into the Ice zone and Baxxxy’s shot went… just wide. It was quickly followed by a penalty awarded to Joey.

Oh god.

Fuck.

No. Crap, Fuck.

This isn’t the plan right? A tough PK later and we were back… until the North Stars slotted one. The Newcastle fans surrounding us went off like frogs in socks. The eight or so Rookies in the bleachers (Kittens & co were on the glass, apparently regularly spied drinking via the livestream… in the dry venue) were dead silent with our mouths open, stock still. Our little island refuge of navy blue had been invaded and annexed by crazed North Stars fans. You could even hear our collective gasp over the commotion of the mental crowd. Then we saw the documentary camera panning onto us. Oh great, I hope they credit us as “disappointed Ice fans” at least.

Next thing we know we are 2-0 down. No!

No-no-no.

More glum silence. My stomach had dropped. Maybe it was just the nerves but I was feeling really pessimistic. Our boys were working hard but these bastards were so damn good. Crack damnit! Rookies around me muttered to themselves quietly. Our collective spirits were a little dampened, not only by the scoreboard but literally by the North Stars fans behind us who had a particular penchant for screaming (or rather spitting) ‘FORECHECK!’ over our heads for the duration of the period. But, in true Ice fashion, by the end of the first we had pegged one back. Thank god there would be no embarrassing shutout! The boys had looked good in the last five minutes of the period. The Rookies were suddenly less worried. I secretly still felt like we were gone. Usually we seem to bully teams early then coast home downhill, unassailably. Not today. We had to want it more.

That’s exactly what happened.

Many internet sites will provide a blow by blow and we all know the Ice won 4-3. But I merely want to comment on three more moments.

Firstly, the Lumberjack (aka the Bearded One, aka Little Sexy, aka Coach aka Le-Liam or aka Liliam in the official finals program) put away my favorite goal of the year in a spinning one time snapshot from near the blue line into the top corner, and beating one of the country’s best goalies dead cold. That was when I KNEW we had enough to do it. This was going to be our day. My stomach slowly began unknotting itself.

Confidence didn’t last long though. It never does in a swings-and-roundabouts game like this had been. When Lliam went to the box with about 6 to go in the third, and the North Stars scored, despair came flooding back. Oh god. A huge momentum shift. Crap. Here they come. How much DO the Ice want this? Are they hungrier than the team they beat last year, the very successful club without a Goodall cup in the last two years? What influence will the contrasting semis have in these final desperate minutes…

The final 30 seconds of the game was spent ferverishly chewing nails, sweating bullets, squeezing knees and wringing hands by the Rookies. Six on five with an empty Newcastle net. My voice was gone. Muscle and stomach aching with fear and adrenaline. Tommy Powell lies on the goal line Doug Glatt style, the puck is lost among smashing sticks and bodies. ‘Stud’ Denman freezes it or the boys dump it. The mad scramble starts again and again. I look up and see the clock roll down past 00.01.

Pure. Joy.

Pure Joy. (Liam Patrick second from left) Pic: Kittens Place

The ice is littered with discarded weapons. The glass is hammered by over-excited fans. It was one of those moments where none of the other troubles in the world matter right then to anybody who was on the winning side. The brick had become a wave of excitement washed over with a tiny bit of relief. The boys had the fairytale finish to the documentary. We were the best team in the land. No matter what the world threw at the Ice family, we would spit it back in their faces and put another puck in the net.

The presentations were made. Todd Graham was finals MVP, playing a crazy 33 minutes in his second game in as many days. Amazingly the “third line” didn’t touch the ice Sunday. Questions were asked by the Rookies, is it a possible depth issue? Probably not, we decided, as they were all very capable when the big guns were out.

The boys skated the cup around and apparently we made it onto the livestream screaming and hollering against the glass for our boys. Then Vinnie came running through the crowd holding the cup. This is probably the best moment of the weekend. This is how much our boys love the fans and include us. This is why we come to support them. Jaffa also went to lengths to include us cheering and waving during celebrations, towards us, saying hello to travelling fans the day prior and all through the celebrations. On behalf of all the Ice fans, I say this to any of the Ice players or officials: ‘Thank-you, you really are the most welcoming sporting organization I have ever had the pleasure and honour of watching’.

Christmas Angel, Aimee Hough, drinks from the Cup. Pic: Jess Hough

My pride also extended to my jersey. Sitting in my Melbourne colours watching a group of men give everything they had, playing with grit, confidence and determination, made me immensely proud to be part of the family. I have seen my equally beloved Magpies win a flag, my cricket club with two premierships but this is my favorite victory. It was won by simply wanting it more than the opposition.

The Rookies snuck onto the ice (perhaps ‘Kutek’ even made some of the official Ice team photos, but we can’t confirm or deny this and will plead the 5^th until we die) and grabbed some great photos with our coaches. The mighty Beard declaring “I’m not putting my arms down. Get around me people”. Gladly, and without hesitation, we huddled under his arms then quickly regretted our decision. We stayed long enough for a happy snap then we backed off quickly. The smell radiating from every pore of Lliam like a thermo-nuclear reaction would have choked a donkey! There’s even an awesome photo of me mid-high five with Joey. We then left the boys to their locker room and families. After some celebratory beers, a real “crash” feeling occurred as the adrenaline wore off. Tired but satisfied, we, the travelling Rookies, piled into the van and headed to a buffet dinner.

Soon the boys joined the Melburnian fans and began the celebrations,. The 103-year-old cup was being filled and ALL in attendance were called upon from Korthuis and Wilson to drink from it. It may have been Tooheys but damn that was the best beer I’ve ever had! Was truly a thrill to have the chance to feel so close to the team and, although clichéd, drink from the cup. Soon the night was moving on and it was time to allow the players their own time to celebrate together. This upset a couple of people but having played team sports all my life I knew that after such a great success the team had earned the right to lock themselves away and enjoy the moment together as these opportunities in life, not just sport, are rare.

Not to be deterred, the Rookies headed home and spent a very late night talking and drinking. Despite the best efforts of one Rookie to get some shut eye, the son of a certain older Rookie who happens to be a grizzled ex-journo writing a blog about learning to play hockey *cough* was determined to keep going much to the chagrin of the sleeping Rookie. Incidentally, that same sleeping Rookie was also confronted by two roommates in various state of undress who felt he in his unconscious state really needed a cuddle and were then keen to play upon his somewhat discomfort while flying.

The next morning a few sore heads awoke and made it home in one piece. The weekend left a very drained but happy group of hockey fans and hockey payers at the airport.

A trip away with your mates is always great fun. It’s a real adventure of sorts. Hopefully, you’re exploring somewhere new, chatting too much (always about crap) and forming inside jokes (I’m looking at you Brenda, Kutek does Newcastle and that de-fogger-mister). Throw in a Goodall Cup and what else could you ask for in really for a cracking weekend?!

True Story! The amazing highs, the stressful despair and nerves and a very Disney finish to the documentary. Thank-you again to the Ice for being a fantastic team, fantastic people, a fantastic family (who love MINGLING), the AIHL for putting on a grade A event, the HISS for providing the best environment they could muster, including a perfect ice surface for our boys to break the Newcastle Hoodoo on, and to my fellow Rookies for putting up with me and not giving me too much grief on the plane!

Bring on an Awesome Foursome!

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: 3peat, AIHL, Goodall Cup, jason baclig, joey hughes, Liam Patrick, lliam webster, martin kutek, matt armstrong, melbourne ice, Newcastle, rookies, threepeat, vinnie hughes

Monday notebook: Rookie triumph, the Jets and lockouts.

August 27, 2012 by Nicko Place 2 Comments

by Nicko

Friday night lights

A social match on a Friday night. A bunch of Rookies making up the numbers against mostly better credentialed players who share a love of IBM computers, or at least a pay cheque from IBM. Several players I would normally be with – especially Jake Adamsons – are wearing opposition jerseys. We grin at one another across the face-off line. Pre-game, Chris Janson, who organised it (and thanks for inviting me, Chris), has a DVD on the main scoreboard with pictures of us and our career highlights. Which, for most of us, is pretty short on reading.

After eight minutes, the Rookies are five goals down. It’s ugly. As captain, I call a time-out. I have no idea what to say. My team looks to me expectantly, except Jay the goalie, who is in his own quite loud self-loathing world of pain off to the side. Goalies do it hard. They can’t ever feel like the buck doesn’t stop with them.

“These guys are really good,” I say. “Forget the scoreboard. It’s a social match. Have fun, don’t panic with the puck, give Jay more support in D, challenge yourself against better players. Who cares about the score?”

In the second period, we roar back to 5-5. We’re skating, Jay has heroically held it together and then started holding his own.

Then we hit the front. My boy, Big Cat, has a couple of goals with his mum in the crowd, which is a nice B-plot. I’m concentrating on trying not to fall into my wide-legged flat-footed trap, instead skating hard off both feet, always moving. I anticipate where the puck will be and sprint end to end, and immediately back, at one point, getting it right both times and with the feeling that I haven’t skated that fast in a game ever. The new stride is working. My legs are screaming as I stagger to the bench. It’s awesome. Meanwhile, I have an assist or two, deliver some passes then get pushed hard in the back and find myself sprawled on the ice near the boards. Things are getting that tense (I received an apology later in the rooms, which was cool). Army, reffing, said he thought about calling it but didn’t. Off the next face-off, I push it to Liam Patrick, Apollo Creed to my Rocky Balboa, who buries the one-timer goal. So sweet. Army skates over to the bench a minute later: “That’s exactly how you answer stuff like that,” he says with something approaching paternal pride.

At the end of the second period, things are level.

Game winner: Aimee “Christmas Angel” Hough.

“Forget everything I said earlier,” I tell my team. “Let’s kick some arse.”

We get out to an 8-6 lead.

They peg it back. It’s level with three minutes to go. The hockey is furious. Army is grinning like an idiot. We’ve made his night; two social teams of varying degrees of ability playing like our kids are hostages and their survival depends on the result. The Rookies are intent, hoarse from screaming on the bench, skating and playing at a level that, for us, is thrilling.

Having said that, through it all, I’m aware that IBM’s very good players, such as Pete Sav, are rarely moving out of third gear, often coasting in second, which is gallant of him, of them. We’re throwing everything at them but they respect our limited skills and choose not to burn us anywhere near as much as they could. I have no illusions but, in the moment, taking it to them is so much fun.

And then we get a ninth goal, from Aimee “Christmas Angel” Hough, who has never previously scored in any kind of game. Rookies celebrate as though we just won the Goodall Cup. “Game winner! Game winner!” we yell at Aimee as she returns to the bench. Somehow we control the puck for the remaining two minutes and, while it’s unconfirmed, it might just be that Nicko Place gains a small piece of hockey history as the first player ever to captain a Rookies team to victory. (We won a game once before but didn’t have a captain.)

All of us head into the night, buzzing. The IBM team is gracious in defeat. Summer League, and actual competition, is about a month away and none of us can wait. If this was a taste, in a game that actually had nothing on the line, genuine competition is going to be epic.

Ready for take-off

It appears I am officially a Jet. The final step towards “N. Place: hockey player” is right there.

A few months ago, one of the Rookies, Theresa, called for interest in forming a summer team and a bunch of us put our hand up. Now, weeks and weeks of backroom dealing, surfing the politics of local hockey, seeing who was genuinely interested and meeting in McDonalds kid playrooms (no, really) later, we have two teams set for summer league. Under the auspices of the Jets, we will be the Spitfires – split into the Fighters and the Interceptors (I’m an Interceptor, which has pleasing Mad Max connotations).

Nicko in flight, for the Rookies.

Well played, Theresa.

I haven’t written about any of this on the blog because I wasn’t sure it would happen; as in, we’d actually be given a place in the competition, but now it’s looking likely. The chances are that Jake Adamsons will captain the Interceptors, with me as an AC, which will be a challenge. God knows how I ended up in a captain’s role, given I still spend time trying to remain vertical on the ice.

A few hockey friends are in different teams or have splintered off, which is sad. But I will be playing with a bunch of mates, which rocks. The only unsettling angle is that everything feels more serious as summer looms. Joey at Next Level has ramped up his offerings of classes, and so a heap of Rookies will be training at Oakleigh instead of at Docklands, and everything is starting to focus on competition, instead of the previous journey to simply master a bloody outside edge.

In a way, for me, this is great because I just love playing, I’m competitive now and my skating has to step up when under pressure. Then again, my coaches Lliam, Army and Joey – especially Joey – believe that playing endless dev league might not be great for me as I fall back into my bad habits instead of working on the fundamentals.

I honestly don’t think I can do another term of Intermediate at the Icehouse – if nothing else, I should clear out a space for somebody coming out of Intro, having done something like four tours of Intermediate duty.

But I simply can’t make it to Oakleigh every Friday night, despite Joey’s endless patience and generosity, so I’ll have to work out how to keep my quest for better skating skills alive around team training, dev league and then Spitfires game play once it happens. A good problem to have but I’m hoping the fun aspect of hockey remains, and my sense of being on a longer journey, once weekly VHL points are on the line.

NHL lock-out looks likely

Every day, it appears less likely that the NHL season will start on time, because of the Owners v Players dispute. The Wings players put their chances of getting onto the ice at 50-50, which isn’t a good sign. September 15 is the day that the current agreement runs out and the owners don’t seem to be particularly worried about that imposed deadline sliding by, meaning no hockey.

I had pretty much given up on being able to make it to Detroit for the Winter Classic, but now there might not even be a Winter Classic to yearn for. It all seems kind of dumb. The game is healthier than ever, lock-outs in the NFL and NBA have pretty much set the bar of where player earnings as a percentage of the game should sit … get on with it, negotiators.

Monday question: Do Wolverine claws beat harsh advice?

Potentially Earth-shattering realisations over the weekend as I pondered whether Eric Millikin is now my favourite non-hockey columnist at the Detroit Free Press? Consider this sample:

Man uses Wolverine claws to attack roommate who is dating his mom

KSL Utah says: “He is accused of using a knife and a replica of the claws associated with the Marvel Comics character Wolverine in his Aug. 8 attack on his 20-year-old roommate. … [His] mother was also stabbed in the left arm during the incident as she tried to pull him off his roommate. [His] mother is dating his roommate, the sergeant said, noting that the two men have been ‘best friends since they were younger.'”

Eric says: I don’t care how many “yo mama” jokes you’ve endured or what kind of mutant super hero you think you are, a Wolverine-claw stabbing is no way to treat your best childhood friend and/or future stepfather.

Until I discovered gems like that from Eric, I’d been loyally devoted to relationships consultant Carolyn (“Also, remember, even a ‘happily married woman’ is just a couple of turns of fate away from an emotional abyss. Puts smugness right back in the bottle.”) Hax. Technically she writes for the Washington Post and gets syndicated, so maybe there’s room for both in my life?

Hax has no hesitation telling those writing for advice if they’re an idiot, selfish, or worse. If only more relationship columnists in Australia had her frankness: Hey, dickhead, stop being a dickhead.

Check out her reply to this guy who worried his ex writing negative things online would damage his reputation:

Brought to you by the letter S, for Snap!

FINAL NOTE: Big ups to the Melbourne Ice – including Lliam, Army, Joey, Tommy Powell, Martin Kutek and Jason Baclig – as they chase their third straight Goodall Cup, skating in Newcastle this weekend. Big Cat and a bunch of hockey fans are going to watch. I couldn’t make it. But I’ll be cheering from the south. Good luck and Go Ice Go.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: Aimee Hough, army, Big Cat Place, cehouse, Chris Janson, christmas angel, fighters, interceptors, jets, joey hughes, Liam Patrick, lliam webster, matt armstrong, nick, nick place, nicko, nicko place, place, rookies, spitfires

Late on a Tuesday

August 14, 2012 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

By Nicko

The new stride. Arms swinging, skating on the left foot, heading out towards 11 o’clock, and now the right skate, in the air, touches the left skate at the ankle. Not a bounce, not a click, like Dorothy in Oz, just a gentle touch.

And with that, the right foot touches down, takes my weight and on that foot, pushing through the upper leg and the knee, I glide off to 1 o’clock, left foot trailing and now coming to meet the right ankle, underneath my body, ready for the exchange of weight right under my hockey stance.

The new stride? Hell, this should always have been my stride. Somewhere I went wrong, especially in games, and so I’m back in a General Skate, hanging laps like I was constantly last year, but not so much this year. My skates feeling strange under me, as my weight is in different places, very deliberately not camped on the inside edge, dodging the random learner skaters scattered around the Bradbury Rink, and the figure skaters working on their moves pre-class.

A bearded figure emerges from inside the skate sharpening booth, and waves, so I hop off the ice and am met by Lliam Webster, standing extremely upright and turning like Ned Kelly in full armour to face me and say hello. Or maybe like Val Kilmer as Batman, in that movie where they truly screwed up his suit so he couldn’t turn his head at all and had to twist his entire torso to look around.

Lliam Webster, today.

Turns out Lliam pulled up from the weekend with a sore neck.

I have a bandaged wrist; either from Friday night’s three hours of stick handling or an overly-ambitious Diesel Williams handball attempt gone wrong at the Bang on Sunday, I’m not sure.

Both battered from the weekend. Life’s good.

I return to the rink for the last few minutes of General Skate before the figure skaters take over, and work on my still depressingly non-existent outside edges. I creak around corners, trying to move my shoulders, even do the airplane like Martin Kutek showed me. At one stage I fall, but I’ve got knees and elbows on, as well as my gloves, so it’s okay. Eventually I get frustrated and try to skate as fast as I can, which leads to an even better stack, as I lean too far forward at high speed and end up sliding from red line beyond the blue on my knees and gloves. I resist the urge to yell: “Weeeee!”

Shouldn’t I be past incidents like that by now? I guess not. Joey Hughes told me he goes back to the absolute basics for a couple of weeks before Melbourne Ice pre-season training starts. Does everything they teach us in Intro class; swizels, C-cuts, inside and outside edges work, crossovers … if it’s good enough for him, then I can do it, to get my new stride happening, and leave wide-legged, immobile Nicko behind.

I work some more on my edges and then notice a child, flawlessly skating on her outside edge, arms spread in figure skater stance. She cuts a tight left hander and then goes into spins, completing four perfectly before stopping. She bursts into tears and heads for the boards.

Her mum explains to me that she has to get to five spins to complete the move and is frustrated she can’t get that fifth turn. This little girl who literally maybe comes up to my waist. She’s five years old, started skating two years ago.

I’d kill for her outside edges and balance.

She cries gently into the boards as her father consoles her.

I hang a few more laps until Army and Tommy wander past, on their way to the Zamboni garage. They’re heading to Perth this weekend, the Ice needing one win in the last three games to confirm top spot in their division of the AIHL. Joey’s back from suspension for the second game in Perth, giving the Ice two killer lines. Mercifully they’re not flying the plane that lands early on Saturday morning, needing to play later that night. Instead they’ll arrive on Friday and get some sleep. Lliam’s neck is in for a rough weekend.

I wish them luck. Army encourages me to keep working on the stride. Says he’ll see me at class tomorrow. Then kicks me off the ice. I unlace my skates, leave them for a sharpen, wander into the cold dusk, to my car and my dog, and let the real world swallow me whole.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: figure skating, Icehouse, joey hughes, lliam webster, martin kutek, matt armstrong, nicko place, tommy powell

You’ve got to earn your pancakes

August 13, 2012 by Nicko Place 2 Comments

By Nicko

Bavarian apple pancakes with ice cream. Chocolate Swiss Mountain malt shake. Never can these things taste as brilliant as at midnight, in a 24-hour Pancake Parlour on Warrigal Road, Chadstone, metres from the South Eastern Arterial freeway whooshing by overhead.

Bavarian apple pancakes with ice cream. Oh yeah!

Even better, Jason Bajada, goalie to the stars (well, the Blackhawks), has shouted me these pancakes, in honour of me beating him for the first time ever in a scrimmage; the only question being whether it was my one-time slapshot from the slot that genuinely beat him, after a beautiful pass off the boards from Liam Patrick, or whether Jason was simply so stunned that I didn’t fresh-air the slapshot that he was swooning as it found the net?

Certainly, my coach for this late night Next Level Hockey Game Time scrimmage, Scott Corbett, reportedly reacted to the goal with, “Shit, he one-timed it,” and head coach Joey Hughes looked equally startled. But nobody more than me. My goal followed a couple of goal assists, in a pretty serious level of hockey for me, and so I tried to overlook the moment where I’d been knocked over, lost my stick and spent what felt like 15 minutes scrambling around on the ice, trying to get myself back together as my teammates peered with amused curiosity over the boards at my sprawled frame, listening to my feeble calls of “Change! Change!”

That was the one moment where my night got the better of me, and my legs decided not to work for a minute or so, but it was fair enough. I had been skating for close to three hours by that point. I’d known it was a potential epic from the moment I’d turned up for the NLHA Intro class at 7.30 pm and Joey had asked: “Do you have plans tonight?”

How much do you love Australian hockey that a leading member of the Melbourne Ice – even one who is currently unhappily on the outer for a minor recent incident where Joey took on the entire opposition bench after some extreme aggravation and what sounded like a pretty worrying lack of referee support – will still be actively wanting you to give him your Friday night so he can do everything he can think of to make you a better hockey player? Not just me, obviously: everybody walking through those awkward double-doors into the refrigerator that is the Olympic ice rink in Oakleigh.

Next Level Hockey Australia students wait to take the ice at Oakleigh. The camera didn’t catch the fog in the air.

But such urging doesn’t mean you’re in for an easy night. In fact, I endured a really difficult Intro session, full of transitions and pivots (including leaping into the air and turning in the air, forward-to-back, back-to-forward, landing on your skates – another genuinely-surprised “Good job!” from Corbie) as well as my first experience of the infamous “under-poosh” skating technique from Martin Kutek, where you crossover in a certain way to try and drive with the backward skate. It feels extremely unnatural. Lots of backward stepping, C-cuts, all the technical skating moves that push me to the limit and that I wrestle with. Joey wasn’t happy, saying my improvement hasn’t been as great as he would like – mostly because I can only get there every other week and can’t make it to general skates at the Icehouse often enough to drive home the improvements.

But even so, he, like my other Melbourne Ice mentors, Lliam and Army on a Wednesday night, patiently persists in trying to make me into a hockey player.

By the end of the Intro hour, I was warming up. “Can I stay on for Intermediate?” I asked Joey. “Sure,” he said and once we were on the ice pulled me aside for a 10 minute one-on-one session, working on my pesky stride; giving me training drills to eradicate that feet-splayed inside-edge habit I’ve written about before. Taking Army’s mantle of trying to teach me how to click my heels together at the end of each stride, under my hockey stance. The new stride felt awesome; a tinker but an important one. We both grinned as I was clearly going faster, and all the nutso drills of Intro had shaken down to make your standard crossover seem much more achievable. Life was good.

Watching the Zamboni chug across the Olympic Rink’s surface yet again, between classes.

“Can I stay on for Game Time?” I asked Joey. “Sure,” he said, “if there’s room.” A few minutes later, he threw me a yellow jersey and I joined a bunch of my Rookie mates in a furious scrimmage, most of which was four-on-four and was also my first experience of playing short-handed with penalties in play (Liam Patrick being benched twice for questionable on-ice atrocities). Finding myself on the wrong end of a five-on-three line-up was a hockey lesson all on its own and I was patchy throughout the game. But hey, two assists and a goal on debut? I’ll take it.

By the time we’d eaten the pancakes (me saying way too late to Bajada: “Just to check, this doesn’t mean I have to buy you pancakes every time you stop a shot, right? Because that’s a bad deal for me if I do.”), everybody shaking their heads that the “old man” had survived three straight hours and still scored, and I’d made the long trek home from Oakleigh, it was 2 am, just like a Wednesday, and so on Saturday morning, as I joined my gal, Chloe, and her family, who are out from France, at a farmer’s market, I was walking in slow motion – not actually sore as much as pure bone-tired.

Three coffees down, I left there to catch up with some Rookies, before the Melbourne Ice-Newcastle game at the Icehouse.

“To be clear,” said Chloe, “You played hockey all Wednesday night, went to a Melbourne Ice game on Thursday night, played three hours of hockey last night, and are now going to drink with hockey friends, and then go to another Melbourne Ice game…”

“Um,” I said, wondering if this was a good time to mention that I planned to be at The Bang the next morning, playing footy on a wet track.

The waterlogged Wattie Oval turf, mid-Bang. My legs are still feeling it.

In fact, playing footy on a track that was a mudder’s dream; down by Elwood beach but very heavy underfoot in one forward line and across a wing. Running through ankle deep mud, chasing a heavy Sherrin, my legs were screaming and today I’m genuinely hobbling. I still find it interesting that when people say: “Doesn’t hockey knock you around/do you get injured?” the honest reply is that I pull up much better from three tough hours on the ice than I do from 90 minutes of hard running and kicking with my Banger mates.

So, fun weekend, finished off by a Richmond 70 point win while a Tiger friend and I sat and chatted about life, family and European trips, all the while clapping an expected Richmond victory (when did the world tilt, that this became possible?) and another trip to the Icehouse VIP Balcony, to watch a disappointing Melbourne Ice loss. (They won the game I didn’t go to, on Sunday, in a shoot out; Big Cat Place representing the family on that occasion.)

What’s the saying? That too much sport can never be enough? My body isn’t sure about that. Usually, French relatives not in town, I choose to spend more time with my amour. Given how I feel today, I’m starting to think that non-hockey/footy time might be saving my life.

Then again, I also plan to hit general skating at least twice this week, aside from Wednesday night icehouse training/dev league, and I’ve already booked scuba diving for this weekend …

Which leads to another saying: “Sleep when you’re dead.”

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: bavarian apple pancakes, Icehouse, jason bajada, joey hughes, Liam Patrick, lliam webster, matt armstrong, next level hockey australia, NLHA, Oakleigh, Olympic Rink, pancake parlour, Scott Corbett

I heart hockey because …

August 9, 2012 by Nicko Place 11 Comments

By Nicko

From the past few weeks, in no particular order:

1. Tonight (Thursday night) at the Icehouse. Mustangs v Ice (Mustangs home game). A few rookies somehow get hold of the “Spotlight Room”, AKA the VIP Balcony. Hilarity ensues.

The Four Horsemen of the Mustang Apocalypse. Full respect.

Mostly, we’re in awe when we look down and see four Mustangs fans wearing their jersey with the names: “War”, “Death”, “Pestilence” and “Famine”.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Rookies unite in a gasp of Whoaaaaaaaa!

A little later, I wander into the bar and chat with a Mustangs fan who is also a Red Wing. He’s impressed by my prized signed Lidstrom jersey. It’s only when I go down for a coffee later in the second period that I see him again, glass-side,and realise I had been chatting with Death.

So I chat with Death some more. He explains that they’d wanted to get “Ice Suck” as their names on the back of the jerseys but the Mustangs president had frowned and shifted in his seat and said no, we don’t want to offend the Ice. Death and I agree, in hockey parlance, that’s kind of soft.

Anyway, there were four of them wanting jerseys, somebody had the brilliant idea … the Mustangs president frowned, shifted in his seat … “I’m not sure we can put ‘Death’ as the name on a Mustangs jersey …”

Thankfully, he lost the argument and the horsemen ride. Respect.

Just then, a Mustang rush happens right in front of us, the puck beating Denman and finding the top corner.

The orange fans go wild and I learn another valuable life lesson: Never chat to Death mid-game. It can only go badly for your team.

I go back to the balcony and the Ice dominate from that moment. Lliam scores a couple of scorching goals. Army drives home a bullet. Jason Baclig is back from injury and firing. 6-1 to my team.

Death and I shake hands after the buzzer. War stops by to say hello. We head our separate ways into the night. I love Thursday evening AIHL games.

2. Oakleigh rink. A Friday night. Freezing, foggy, dilapidated, wonderful. Intermediate class in full swing, apart from me, still on the Ice from intro. Alongside me, Martin Kutek, Melbourne Ice defender, is sliding across the Oakleigh ice with both arms outstretched, pretending he’s an aeroplane … the idea being to lean your body and find an outside edge. This is my homework … I’m four years old again. I love it.

3. A Wednesday at the Icehouse. I’m skating along, in the Intermediate warm-up, tapping a puck along.

Rookies invade the balcony for the Mustangs game.

Suddenly, my puck is gone. Ice star Lliam Webster has magically appeared to my right, controlling a puck.

The following exchange takes place:
Lliam: “What happened to your puck, huh? What happened to your puck?”
Me: “What happened to your face?”

Do AFL stars coach midweek and have exchanges like that? I doubt it. I’m five years old again. I love it.

4. Dev League and I’m gliding through the defensive blue line, concentrating hard, past the opposition bench. My legs are splayed apart, camped on my inside edges: my bloody annoying bad habit when gliding.

On the opposition bench, a player who shall remain nameless goes to yell: “Hey Place, my girlfriend can’t spread her legs that wide!”

But then decides such a sledge would be uncouth, and not befitting the noble, fine game of hockey where nobody ever cusses or cracks an inappropriate joke.

Plus his girlfriend, Tamara Bird, would kill him if she found out.

We’re teenagers again. I love it.

5. Watching the film, “Goon”. Crazy violent but funny.

Goon: crude but funny.

One scene:

Film’s hero gets called into the manager’s office.
The manager: “My brother has a team up in Halifax …”

(Jump cut to:)
A hockey locker-room, post game, with a bunch of bedraggled looking hockey players sitting around. In the middle of the floor stands a manager, hands on hips. Angry.
Halifax manager: “You know why you’re losing? BECAUSE YOU’RE SHIT!”

(Jump cut back to the manager’s office.)
The manager (still talking): “…Anyway, he has this player …”

“You now why you’re losing …?” becomes an instant catchcry in the Place household, right alongside “I’m so sorry I broke your rule, giant bat.”

6. Dev League. A backhand shot of mine finds its way through a forest of sticks and legs and skates, pings off the inside of the goalpost, Nate the keeper unsighted and beaten. Stays out. So close.

Later, the puck is at my feet and the goal is half a metre away but there’s no way through the sticks and Nate’s padding. So close.

Later, Big Cat pings a hard shot at a gap, it rebounds, I’m there but my shot catches a deflection and ends in the side netting of the goal. So close.

We lose by a goal.

7. The Red Wings yet again prove themselves a team to love by officially signing draft pick Tomas Jurco to an entry level three-year contract, which means he will play in the feeder team, Grand Rapids, this season, and is a strong chance to make his debut for Detroit.

Big Cat and I have been following Jurco since he was a kid and his mad skills showed up on youTube way before he was drafted by Detroit. Big Cat was slightly deflated when he discovered there is only one day in age difference between them. Jurco, having been playing for a little longer than my boy, can do things like this:

8. A puck spills loose down the boards. Miraculously I am closest to it, defenders all going the wrong way. I turn, I skate hard, I almost get the shot at goal in before I’m mown down by faster skaters, back-checking.

How not to skate: Flatfoot Place strikes again – this is an extreme example of the bad habit I am working desperately to break. (Slowly getting there. Slowly)

I curse. It sits with me. In the rooms, a teammate says breezily: “You need to learn to skate faster.”

I take deep breaths. This is something I am aware of.

I get home by midnight and, as usual, can’t sleep before about 2 am. Something is gnawing at me but won’t quite come to front of lobe.

In the morning, I wake and it is there: In starting that breakaway, chasing the loose puck, I didn’t crossover or attempt a tight turn. No, I turned, slowly, creakily, on both feet. I didn’t put a foot forward for a fast outside edge turn, or crossover to grab speed as I turned and chased the puck. I lost metres in that lack of manoeuvring, right at the start of my attack.

In class, or general skates, I can now mostly do crossovers, and tight turns, especially anti-clockwise.

But they’re still not instinctive, and that’s a problem.

Eyes only for an escaped puck and a free run to the goalie, these moves do not happen, are not my muscle-memory way to grab the speed I need. Or short steps, or whatever else would have helped.

A good realisation. Something I can work on. Interesting. Notes to self …

9. It’s now late on a Thursday night and the hockey week isn’t even close to over. Tomorrow night is NLHA training at Oakleigh; direct, meaningful drills and maybe a little philosophy with Joey Hughes. Then an Ice game on Saturday. (And one on Sunday, but I have footy.)

And so my hockey world continues to spin in its orbit. What’s not to like?

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: death, famine, four horseman of the mustang apolcalypse, goon, Goon the movie, Icehouse, jason baclig, joey hughes, lliam webster, martin kutek, matt armstrong, melbourne ice, mustangs, nick place, nicko, nicko place, Oakleigh, pestilence, place, rookies, tomas jurco, war

Meanwhile, whatever happened to that Nicko guy?

July 24, 2012 by Nicko Place 7 Comments

By Nicko

The coldest place on Earth, certainly under an Australian flag, is reputed to be Ridge A, 14,000 metres high on the Antarctic Plateau. The average winter temperature on Ridge A is said to be minus 70 degrees, Celsius, although nobody has ever set foot there.

But I’d challenge the Australian and American scientists, who declared this finding in 2009, after exhaustive satellite probing and climate imaging. I’d say to them: Oh yeah? Try hanging out at the dilapidated Olympic ice rink, in Oakleigh South, deep in the Melburnian suburban tundra, during mid-winter.

That, my whitecoated friends, is fucking cold.

The magnificent if chilly Oakleigh rink.

Wearing four layers, a beanie and gloves, I pushed through the front door a few Fridays ago, ducking the straps of plastic presumably designed to stop some bizarre breed of Ice Age-ready mosquito, with my trusty Reebok stick in one hand, and my bag of gear over my shoulder. I was nervous. It was the second time that week I had strapped on my armour and skates and tested the Oakleigh ice. On the Wednesday night, some Rookie friends and I had hired the ice for a scrimmage, which was a blast, especially for those of us debuting on this particular rink, which is tiny – much smaller than the Henke Rink we’re used to – and has no glass, meaning to be boarded involves being jammed against a fence about waist high. Even better, down the end where an ageing Zamboni creaks out between sessions, the ice dips away and there are holes in the bottom of the boards, so that a puck might disappear in there, mid-battle.

Believe it or not, until the 2009 season, this was home to the Melbourne Ice and it is still the scene for many games of winter and summer season hockey every year. As the only surviving rink in Melbourne, outside of Docklands, there isn’t much choice. It’s actually magnificent in its decay and history and authenticity as the last of the suburban hockey rinks.

On this Friday, I was in Oakleigh to finally come face-to-face with the Cult of Joey.

A while ago, I wrote a blog about how I’d found myself in a hockey funk; feeling like I wasn’t improving, wasn’t pushing myself … basically it was a written rant to kick myself up the arse and work harder, which is what I did almost immediately after writing it.

But an unexpected result of that piece was that I was publicly “called out” on Facebook by Joey Hughes, a star of the Melbourne Ice, to let him train the funk out of me.

It was an unforeseen twist, not least because a) I hadn’t realized this blog was being read by a wider hockey community, including my coaches Lliam and Army, let alone Joey Hughes and his Ice-import coaching partner, Martin Kutek, and b) I had recently raised questions about the violence of Joey’s brother, Ice captain Vinnie’s in an Ice game.

Joey Hughes, in action for the Ice. Pic: Canberra Times

So Joey Facebooking that he challenged me to come to Oakleigh and lose my funk was a shock, yet I had to politely say thanks but no thanks, because I was on a novel deadline, travelling a lot and couldn’t find the time to commit. Joey was having none of that and so, finally, here I was, pushing through the door and watching the fog hang over the ice of this tiny rink.

A couple of hours later, after my first Intro session of Next Level hockey, I sat on the boards with Joey, for a genuine chat. It wasn’t quite so cold that your words froze in front of you so that you had to read what each other was saying, but it wasn’t far off. Put it this way, I had sat, in my armour, for an hour, during the Intermediate class that followed mine, fully intending to play Game Time scrimmage, but was so bone-core frozen, I eventually abandoned the idea. Plus everybody looked too skilled for me, so I decided to watch a scrimmage or two before poking my skate out there.

Joey could pass for Latin, or maybe native American, or Italian. He has dark eyes and hair and carries himself like a dancer, but with an intense, harder edge, which comes out on the ice where he is something of a warrior. According to the NLHA website, he has been skating at Oakleigh since he was 11 years old, just before he took off to North America to chase his hockey dream. He’s been a hockey player all that time, and now he’s back at the Olympic rink, training a new generation of players.

The local hockey community is small and very welcoming, but I feel there has been a shade of Us & Them over the past year or so, where you’re either an Icehouse skater or a member of what I laughingly call The Cult of Joey. Many of the Next Level Hockey devotees have an evangelistic loyalty to their coaches, Joey and Martin, along with Tony Theobold, Vinnie Hughes and no doubt others I don’t know about yet.

Any chance they get, Next Level students will tell you about the personal attention, how their skills have improved dramatically, how Oakleigh is where you become a really good hockey player …

I had no reason to doubt them, I just always felt a loyalty to Lliam and Army, and the other Icehouse coaches, who have patiently watched me stumbling around for a long time now. (I spoke to Lliam about it once, and he shrugged that it was great Joey was doing his thing, just turning out more and better hockey players, which was the whole point.)

Even so, I couldn’t afford to drive out to Oakleigh at least one night a week on top of my Icehouse commitments. Real life didn’t have a window that large, regardless of my worry that I would be left behind in terms of development.

And so I’d hear the Cult of Joey rave about Oakleigh, and wonder. Until now. On this Friday, I joined Intro and quickly had all my usual technical faults identified. Told to bend my knee to 90 degrees, while my non-skating foot was horizontally in front of me, I managed maybe 30 degrees, which had Joey skating along beside me, saying, “You gotta be kidding me?” and me giving him a colourful explanation of my age compared to his and where he could shove his deep knee bend. To which he laughed and explained why I simply have to bend my knees more, even though – like everybody – I totally thought I was already.

And so it went.

Part of the Next Level way is to drive its students to be better, to buy in, to forge together and commit. It’s definitely a more driven, different atmosphere to the Icehouse classes where Lliam and Army push us hard, but in a slightly more casual, shambolic way. Lliam’s description of how to fire a wrist-shot (which in his case, is a bullet) was along the lines of: “Look, I learned this at age four and I can’t really explain it, but it works, so do it like this.”

As you know by now, I love these classes and have improved more than I ever could have imagined over 18 months of training and lessons.

Talking to Joey, on the boards after my class, he explained that he had read my “funk” blog and felt a genuine desire to help. He said he read about a passionate rookie who’d hit a wall, and rode in to help if he could. Fresh eyes, is all he thought. Even as an elite international player, Joey said he benefits hugely from new ideas, new voices, different slants on the same technical or fitness issues. So he wanted me to come along and hear something new.

And he’s been totally right. Martin has already given me some amazing tips about outside edge work, everything Joey has said has been useful. It’s great.

And on Wednesdays, Lliam and Army have begun the long road of Intermediate classes again, with encouragement and enthusiasm for our improvement.

I’ve relaxed and can feel improvement happening, even in Dev League where I’ve been in the thick of things. We’re in good hands at both venues, and talking to Joey, just like Lliam, that’s the whole point. There’s an excitement about how many rookies are swelling the ranks of the playing numbers in Victoria; a genuine problem at Ice Hockey Victoria level of how the Hell to accommodate so many people who want ice time.

The Cult of Joey might exist in the enthusiasm of NLHA skaters, but not among the coaches. Joey and Lliam, as Victorian born and bred stars, are mutually enjoying the ride as hockey surges in Australia.

As am I, now savouring personal, friendly, expert teaching from so many Melbourne Ice stars, and with my rookie mates both encouraging me and hanging shit at me at every turn.

Life’s good and the funk is gone.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: Icehouse, joey hughes, lliam webster, matt armstrong, next level hockey australia, nick, nicko, nicko place, NLHA, Oakleigh south, place, Ridge A, The Cult of Joey

Guest writer (Origin story): Jack Hammet

July 23, 2012 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

WORLD EXCLUSIVE

Today’s guest writer is Jack Hammet and I feel a need to explain how we came to know each other.

He’s more or less the same age as Will (AKA BIg Cat). In fact, Jack went to school with Will and his wider circle of mates, which is where I first heard about him. What I heard wasn’t always great. From all accounts, Jack was a little more wild than the others; more prepared to really push boundaries and potentially get into trouble. I’ve always been a big believer that teenagers should get into some trouble (ask my younger son, Mack – AKA Wookie, AKA Mackquist – for an account of The Ferret Incident sometime and you’ll hear an outstanding story of the kind of trouble kids should get into).

Teenagers should push things a bit, but not so much that you worry for them, that you’re scared. I heard rumours of this kid who played it harder and faster than the rest of the school crowd, and I’d seen guys like that in my generation, especially in journalism, where some cadets couldn’t handle the hard-drinking, hard-living, dick-swinging world that was daily papers. Some spun out badly and were alcoholics or fuck-ups by their mid-20s. Others swam on, survived and matured.

So, I finally got to meet Jack when I ventured down to the Icehouse. He and Big Cat had been skating most of the summer, in fact from the moment VCE exams ended, if not before. They were getting good as I literally staggered onto the ice, barely vertical.

And here’s the thing, this manchild instantly struck me as an outstanding person. I was ready for some punk Hellraiser (and he still loves that profile, as you will read between the lines below – he’s a happy Goon) but damn, if Jack, big bad Jack, wasn’t a man I could look in the eye and just know that he was a good one. He wasn’t always a genius – he hurt Will one day, needlessly slamming him during a Stick & Puck session – but he travelled for a while, then came back and you could see him growing into himself, losing the anger that (until the piece below) I had never understood, and had really only heard about.

Here we are, a whole – what? 12 or 18 months later, and Jack is a lock for a leadership role in whichever team he lands on; he’s helping rookie defenders know where to position themselves, what not to do; he’s endlessly there for people.

Rock on, Jack, and thanks for this piece. It’s from the heart and honest and for that, respect.

Nicko

Does blood bounce on ice?

By Jack Hammet

I hate to start this on a depressing note but bear with me, it’s not all sad, and I think it’s important in explaining my story and unwavering love for hockey…

When I was 7, my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a long and hard road that unfortunately ended five years later with her passing away when I was about to hit 13. I never knew my dad and for a lot of my childhood it was just my mum and I. As you would expect, this formed a strong connection between us and she was my rock. When she passed away, everything changed for me. I found myself dealing with a step dad trying to drown his sorrows in beer (and doing well at it) and a little brother who was still far too young to look after himself. This left me, just entering my teenage years, trying to balance looking after my brother, school (which I hated) and the anger/confusion/sadness and everything else that resided within me as a result of my mum’s death.

“What? Who? Me?” Jack (standing) in his element.

But I feel in a lot of ways, that sport was my saviour. I know other people that have been through similar things and become drug dealers, criminals and all kinds of things and I honestly think that sport has kept me grounded and given me something to focus on and provided an outlet for all the anger I had.

(No more depressing stuff, I promise.)

I always loved sport and had played football (Aussie Rules) since I was old enough to run, I loved the contact and was always good at dropping (and sometimes injuring) other players. For this reason, I played full back. I played full back for the Fitzroy Lions for about eight years before I made the switch to basketball.

Immediately I missed the contact and got fouled out most games for my first season and occasionally ejected (kicked out of the stadium). In both basketball and football, I found myself getting in trouble due to fights. I went to a pretty rough school for most of high school and needed to be able to look after myself. I was pretty big in comparison to most people my age but decided I better learn how to fight anyway so I started doing MMA/ judo/ karate/ jujitsu/ boxing and a whole bunch of other fighting styles as well as my personal favourite, sporting brawls!

As those of you who have spent time with me will know, I like to have a laugh and do stupid shit but once the game starts, whatever that sport may be, I get much more serious! I’m not one to go looking for a fight but if people mess with my teammates, I’ll be coming for them. This attitude was appreciated by my teammates but not so much by refs, parents etc… Due to this, basketball just didn’t quite fit my style. But that all changed when I discovered ice hockey!

When I was nearing the end of year 12, I saw a family friend who was managing the Icehouse at the time. Once I told him I had never skated before, he told me I had to go down and give it a go. I made a day of it and brought a few friends down with me (one of them being Will “Kittens” Place). Will and I immediately fell in love and came back later that night for a pond hockey session, I came back the next day and bought my first pair of hockey skates. To say I was hooked is an understatement! It was then that I started watching the NHL and AIHL and started following the greatest hockey teams on the planet, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Melbourne Ice!

It was not long after this that I met Joey Hughes (of Melbourne Ice and NLHA fame) at a party. We got talking (and drinking). He encouraged me to keep up the hockey and to come down and get trained by him. The fact that even the top level players in Australia are so chilled out and happy to talk to newbies made me feel right at home and seeing his passion for hockey only made my love for it stronger.

I felt straight away that I had found a sport that I truly clicked with. The parts I was most fond of were the contact, the team (family like) oriented mentality and of course, the fighting. I had to pinch myself, I had finally found a sport where I wouldn’t get in trouble (well not too much) for fighting!

From the day of that first skate, hockey became a big part of my life. And has become more and more so as time has passed, to the point

The only pic I could find of Jack in a Washington Capitals jersey, instead of his Penguins kit. He remains fun to annoy. … oh, wait. I’ve made a huge mistake. – Nicko

where I now even work at the Icehouse. It is safe to say that I bleed hockey!

Throughout all of the year 12 exam period, I didn’t study, well not biology and business management anyway, I studied hockey! I spent the better part of every day down at the Icehouse. Even on days I had exams, I would skate in the morning, rush to my exam, do it as quickly as possible, then go back to the Icehouse to practice my crossovers and hockey stops, the important stuff, not stupid school work.

It wasn’t long before I joined classes and Lliam and Army became my mentors, I skipped intro and went straight to intermediate classes … a term of that and I was on to dev league. As with past sports, it was clear that defence was where I belonged and I couldn’t have been happier!

I got my first hockey injury at around the same time at a stick and puck session. Being a male, I thought the helmet cage made me look soft, so naturally, I put a screwdriver to it and went without. I was on the ice for no longer than 20 seconds before I realized my mistake, I took a slap shot to the face and got knocked out. As I woke in a pool of blood, I realized that cage was probably there for a reason… I made the trip to the hospital in my full gear (minus skates, gloves and helmet) and once I was recommended for plastic surgery (no scar) but also had the option of stitches (scar) to get my lip put back together, I took the stitches. It was then, sitting in the car in my gear, going home with a mouth full of stitches, that I felt like a real hockey player and I have never looked back.

This is only the beginning of my hockey journey, I’m 19 years young and I’ve got a lot to learn (I now wear a cage and just deal with looking stupid) plenty of time to work on my skating, shooting, dangles and all the rest of it. I’ve met some awesome people through hockey and I know I’ll continue to meet more. Thank you to those of you who have been there with me so far, I look forward to skating alongside you for years to come.

I am eagerly waiting to play my first season of summer hockey this year and I can’t wait to play my first game, score my first goal, get my first check (even if summer is non contact) but more than anything… I can’t wait to drop the gloves!

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: Hammet, Icehouse, jack, Jack Hammet, joey hughes, lliam webster, matt armstrong

Guest writer (Origin story): Theresa

July 17, 2012 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

WORLD EXCLUSIVE

Today’s guest writer is Theresa, a dynamo of organisation and hockey passion who has become a leading figure in the self-proclaimed Rookies and our dreams of forming a summer team. Well, actually, it simply wouldn’t happen, or have a chance of happening, without her drive.

Here, she explains how her hockey obsession began and how it survived so many false starts.

My hockey addiction: a love story

By Theresa

Theresa, about to tear it up at the Icehouse. Pic: Wayne McBride

Hi, my name is Theresa, and I am addicted to hockey.

First a bit of background info:

I grew up in South Africa. I found hockey at age 13 when I went general skating to go look at some handsome hockey boys. I happily general-skated once a week for a few years, gaping from afar at these boys. By age 16 I was a real “rink rat” and running the rink cafeteria. By age 18 I was dating one of these boys, and tried to play a bit of hockey myself for a half season. My prized birthday gift was a pair of Graf hockey skates.

But I was talked out of playing hockey by the boy I was dating, because he and his friends felt it was “unladylike”. I was impressionable back then; I listened to him.

I moved continents to North America (L.A.), and while I only took one suitcase, they contained my skates. In my year in L.A., I bought everything Kings and Gretzky at the time, though I never skated.

At age 19, I presented myself to the Canadian consulate in South Africa and filled in all the paperwork they could give me for immigration. The Canadians are pretty strict about who they let in, and who they don’t. This 19-year old upstart with no qualifications to speak of, no hockey skills, on her own dime, was hardly given a glance. I was told in no uncertain terms that I didn’t qualify.

By age 21, I was on my way to Sydney, Australia. In my two suitcases, was one suitcase of shoes (what else??), and one of clothing and again my prized Graf skates. I worked crazy hours and hardly skated. I can count on one hand how many times I skated in many years. I lost most of the ability to skate.

Fast forward to the near-present, when I settled in Melbourne a few years ago. That’s where I met Adam McGuinness of (among others) Nite Owls fame, who encouraged me to come back to hockey. He didn’t seem to think it was unseemly for me to play – in fact he encouraged it!

For a work social outing, Adam suggested we all go watch a hockey game, and so I was introduced to the Melbourne Ice. And here my resistance to being involved in hockey crumbled.

In my head went around a myriad of thoughts, among others: “Wow the standards in Australia are high! The Icehouse is amazing! I am mesmerised! I am in LOVE!!”

I knew that in all my years out of hockey, I was still madly in love with it. All of it. Perhaps it was self-preservation that kept me away from it. I could feel the pull back into it, magnetic and irresistible. I remember saying to my sister at the time: “This is going to suck me in, it’s a bit scary”.

And so it sucked me in.

I enrolled in beginner hockey school at the Icehouse, and started over again. Imagine my awe when I found out that the Melbourne Ice captain, Lliam Webster, was also my coach! Talk about weak knees! And this other guy called Army, whom I couldn’t understand at the time because of his thick Canadian accent, also from the Melbourne Ice, was coaching me! Army is the guy who skates over opposition defence men like a tank and scores multiple goals! Wow, I was in the company of hockey royalty!!

I went to all the Melbourne Ice games in the remainder of 2010 and in 2011. In 2012 I bought a Melbourne Ice membership and went on a road trip to Adelaide and the Gold Coast as a MI “groupie”. I will be going to Perth for the MI games in August, and of course to the finals in Newcastle in September. I have become a “one-eyed” MI fan (as fellow Rookie Wayne McBride calls me).

I attended all the IIHF world championship games in Melbourne in February 2011. It was there that I really noticed the hockey marvel called Joey Hughes, awarded the top forward for the tournament. I remember Googling him at the time and not only discovering his business NLHA, but also seeing more about his international career. I mistakenly thought at first: “Wow, there is another Joey Hughes who plays professional hockey in North America, also with a brother Vinnie Hughes!” – only to realise it was this very same person I was seeing in action in front of me.

I vowed to be trained by him, and after emailing him a few times, but not getting enough people to join me to help cover the cost of private lessons, I didn’t make it to NLHA in 2011.

In June that year, some of us started a Facebook group called “The Rookies“. We have grown from a five-person group of hockey school friends, to several hundred. We are intensely enthusiastic, intensely vocal, intensely passionate about hockey. We are all, to a greater or lesser degree, addicted to hockey. I am one of its five “admins” who monitor and steer the group direction and activities.

At the end of 2011, I enthusiastically bought my first full kit and another pair of Grafs online, which (due to being very ill-fitting) regressed my skating noticeably.

It was in these ill-fitting Grafs that I presented myself to Joey for my first NLHA camp in January 2012. It was a group bootcamp, and more affordable than private lessons. Joey was diplomatically horrified with my skating abilities. But he and Czech legend Martin Kutek and local hard man Tony Theobald (and guest instructors like Vinnie), persisted with me and patiently got me to skate better and faster and harder, despite my feet aching almost every time I skated. They truly took me to my next level – many of them. I love every camp and every individual class with NLHA. I get better and better and better. I even deferred my part-time degree for one semester, to be able to fit in all the NLHA camps. (Now of course, I am going to buy new skates from them, after NLHA sized me up for the right fit!)

I almost went to Poland to support the Mighty Roos in April this year, but I couldn’t get anyone to come with me! Even my husband, who has reluctantly but obligingly been dragged along to all my hockey excursions and activities, wasn’t up for this one.

Earlier this year, The Rookies secretly raised funds within our group, and surprised our coaches and heroes (and now our friends) Joey, Army and Martin, each with full 2012 Melbourne Ice player sponsorship. If we had more money we would have sponsored Lliam and Tommy and Shona too!

The Rookies are also doing volunteer work for The Melbourne Mustangs, particularly in supporting their imports. For instance this Saturday just past, we had an off-ice training day and fundraiser with three of the imports (and with import Martin Kutek from the Melbourne Ice).

We vocally and enthusiastically support anything that is Melbourne hockey and hockey school, in either of its two rinks. We believe in “Hockey Karma” and in paying it forward.

And now we are starting to look at putting some IHV 2012/2013 summer league teams on the ice for the Rookies, with at least two clubs so far expressing an interest in assisting us, and at least two or three teams’ worth of Rookies ready and willing to commit.

Theresa where she’s happiest: on the ice with a bunch of Rookies.

We believe that while we are working hard at opening up avenues for our own development and involvement in hockey, we also try to give back as much as (and more, if possible) than we have received. I look forward to seeing more individuals and more clubs join hands in this cause.

My renewed dreams of “making the big time” in hockey, will of course never be realised. I have a full time job, which pays my mortgage and limits my hockey practise time. Besides, I am now *cough* a bit older, and not really able to compete against 20-year olds anymore. And yes, I am getting back to that degree next semester because I like to finish what I started; which means I consciously have to cut back a bit on hockey.

But that does not alter my love of (read: passion for, addiction to) the sport.

I still have dreams of going on an extended leave/sabbatical/whatever to Canada. I might do a short one, a teaser, at the end of this year.

But the longer one will also still happen…

One day.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: Icehouse, joey hughes, lliam webster, martin kutek, matt armstrong, Neate, rookies, Theresa, vinnie hughes

Guest writer: Rachael Hands

July 14, 2012 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

WORLD EXCLUSIVE

Our latest guest writer is Rachael Hands, just coming off a nasty knee injury, queen of the pre-skate snacks and happily a new classmate of mine on Friday nights. This story makes me wince in all sorts of bad ways … and I fully intend to privately find out the identity of the “Melbourne Ice player” in question. Rachael, you’ve been warned.

Hi, I’m Rachael and I’m a basiphobic*.

By Rachael Hands

Hi, I’m Rachael and I’m a basiphobic*.

Like any good Rookie, I’m self-diagnosed of course… Oh, and according to http://www.webmd.com, I’m also traumatophobic, which feeds into my basiphobia. This makes me more anxious and then ultimately leads to me falling on my butt during hockey lessons anyway!

Simply put, I’m attempting to be an ice hockey player with a pretty serious fear of falling over and hurting myself badly. Again.

Back in August 2011, on Tuesday the 16^th to be precise, I was skating up and down the Henke rink at the Icehouse during a regular hockey lesson when CRUNCH! I hit the ice. Me being me when I fell, didn’t do things by halves either. I hit the ice very hard and very awkwardly with my knees taking all of the impact first. It was less than a split second after the initial crack of the protective gear meeting the ice that I heard the popping and crackling in my left knee, then felt this weird sucking sensation as I skidded with surprising grace (as if I meant to look like a falling tonne of bricks with arms and legs) on plastic shin guards (sans socks!) through centre ice. Having been rushed at full-tilt by a professional Melbourne Ice player I panicked, not trusting his ability to stop before he got to me; then I hesitated about getting out of his way so as not to hurt him and our chances of winning a back-to-back Goodall Trophy. The rather serious result of those normally inconsequential actions was little newbie me crashing onto the ice like a sack of potatoes. The bizarre noises and feeling in my knee joint was my Medial Collateral Ligament being torn clean in half.

That was in the first 12 minutes of the 60-minute lesson. I still had 48 minutes of ice time and I was damn well going to use them! I got up, adrenaline coursing through my veins, and with some kind of misguided steely resolve I laughed the fall off and the subsequent pain I was in to skate out the rest of the session. Admittedly when I look back on it, I didn’t just have a ‘lazy leg’ as I skated around that night, I actually couldn’t lift it. I couldn’t bend it and I didn’t do terribly much weight-bearing on it either. I glided through the rest of the session in a mass of throbbing agony. The following day (when the inside of my knee was almost the size of a grapefruit and purple) I took myself to see Nick M, my regular physio who has treated almost every injury I’ve ever obtained through the playing of sport. He had yet to see me for a hockey injury, even though I’d been in classes for a term and a bit and evidently doing well by my coordination standards! I don’t remember much of the session other than he lifted my bad leg up from the table and I cried like a baby because it hurt that much. He hadn’t even put any stress on the joint! Nick immediately ordered an MRI and it confirmed the worst-case scenario. My MCL was totally ruptured and would require the most intense rehabilitation and physiotherapy I had ever experienced in order to heal.

What followed, without giving you another blow-by-blow account, was five and a half months in a hinged leg brace, firstly locked dead straight for three months then little by little I was given a few degrees of flex in the knee joint until a second MRI revealed the knitting of the MCL was complete. After that, it was intense physical therapy (progressing from daily appointments to now once a week) to learn to reengage the MCL and the surrounding muscles correctly to prevent re-injury. I literally had to learn to walk before I could run, let alone skate! Which brings me back to my fears of falling over and hurting myself again.

I arrived at my (clearly very accurate) phobiæ diagnosis one ridiculously hot January afternoon in Nick M’s sweltering treatment room. I was being run through a series of stress tests on my knee to determine whether I was going to be able to return to skating in the foreseeable future. It dawned on me that as much as I had been bugging the indeterminably patient Nick to let me back out onto the ice since my ‘limbed bag of flour’ impression; I was actually (and very secretly) incredibly terrified of falling over and making the existing injury worse. So, like any good gen-y’er, I went straight home to google what the fear of falling was, coupled with a fear of injury and arrived at a mild case of basiphobia (a fear of walking and or falling down) and traumatophobia which is other wise known as the fear of significant injury.

I am happy to report to you, the readers of Nicko Place’s blog, that while my knee has healed to the point where my physio has begrudgingly given me his blessing to continue my hockey lessons and join a summer league team, my fear of falling and hurting myself gets more intense every week.

As the drills get harder, the edgework more extreme and the general pace of lessons increases, my fears escalate in an uncanny correlation. Since finally getting back onto the ice regularly in February of this year, I can see how far I’ve come. In a lesson at NLHA last week, I felt some complete control over my skating again. My legs were really solid underneath me and I loved every minute of it! I felt good on the ice and not like I was struggling as usual, but that pervasive nagging thought about falling and hurting myself so badly all over again kept eating away at me. For many hockey Rookies, the fear of falling and or hurting themselves disappears with confidence in their own abilities. For me though, it’s a struggle to talk myself into the fact that my knee can handle it. I still baulk at the superman/sliding drills or anything requiring me to put all of my weight on my ‘bad leg’ while it’s bent at any angle greater than straight. My coaches have been patient and very understanding but I sometimes wonder whether or not I can teach myself to ignore those feelings. So far though, such attempts have proven to be fruitless. Practising falling over on ice so I get used to it again requires discipline I just don’t (want to) have. I’d rather spend the precious little time for hockey I have available to me trying to gain some more of that elusive control on my outside edges, crossovers and joining the infamous Martin Kutek-led ‘underpoosh’ revolution. Surely, if I practise those skills enough then I don’t need to think about forcing myself to fall over? I’ll be good enough not to, right? Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

But, I’ve resolved (very publicly today) that for the coming term (intermediate classes at the Icehouse in addition to another round at NLHA) I will not let my fears get the best of me. I will skate and if I fall, so be it. I won’t try to fight it and stay upright; I will just go with momentum, following the quickest route straight on to the ice (a mantra coach Joey Hughes likes to drill into me every week). The only thing for me to do in order to get over the irrationality and anxiety about falling and potential re-injury, is to bite the bullet and just trust myself and of course the work that Nick the Physio has done with my knee to get me back to a point where I CAN skate. I simply have to jump in, skates first and the fear of falling be damned. That, and remember to enjoy learning to map the shortest distance down on to the ice from wherever I may be on the rink!

An intense fear of jumping is called ‘catapedophobia’ by the way… I’m just saying! 😉

*well, sort of…

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: basiphobic, falling, Icehouse, joey hughes, martin kutek, nicko place, NLHA, Rachael Hands

Guest writer: Liam Patrick

July 4, 2012 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

WORLD EXCLUSIVE:

Welcome to the first nickdoeshockey entry not by me, Nicko. Instead, Liam takes us through his intro to the non_icehouse world of Joey Hughes. (Liam gets the nod as the first guest because he shamelessly mentioned my goal a week or so ago. Next up: Chris Tran, who doesn’t mention my goal, in a rookie error, but will be published anyway.)

A rookie’s journey to NLHA

By Liam Patrick

Oakleigh. It’s the little rink that is (in many ways) the heartbeat of Victorian hockey. It’s the ugly older brother to the shiny, sexy new Icehouse. Over 30 years old it can be best described as in need of some TLC and at times you cant really see what is going on due to the fog, or being freezing cold when not skating or the delightful “war bunkers” that are the changerooms. However it is where many hockey players can access ice-time – be it for training, games or the NLHA classes.

Next Level Hockey Australia (NLHA or “Next Level” – the constant catch-cry) is lead by Joey Hughes (Melbourne Ice-star, Hockey sensei, all round good guy) with more coaching from Martin Kutek (Melbourne Ice-star, master of the “underpoosh” and another all round good guy). They also do really good pricing on gear – plus the fancy new flat bottomed V skate sharpening. Ok, end plug. NLHA have run boot camps and coaching clinics in the past but this Winter they kicked off a program for adults not dissimilar to the Icehouse’s hockey school.

Now, the famous Rookies group (often mentioned here by Nicko) had began to get involved with NLHA and many, many rookies immediately signed up to these classes and championed them! Unfortunately, I didn’t. Yes – lazy, stupid, slow. I was most jealous when Facebook would become abuzz on a Friday night with excited Rookies extolling the virtues of this great new hockey frontier. I had actually been fortunate enough to get to tag along to summer league team training (they needed numbers and I knew a guy who knew a guy…) taken by Joey way back in January. I knew they would be getting some really good coaching. I looked at my bank account, sighed, and checked what supermarket had baked beans on special…..

Liam Patrick (black and green) celebrates a goal at the Icehouse, Intermediate end of term game. Pic: Wayne McBride

I entered the program 3 weeks in. At the Icehouse I was doing intermediate and dev league. Joey said he needed to see if I could skate and asked me to do a beginners class first then he would see where I could fit in. I was a bit miffed “Hang on, I’m doing intermediate, I have some weaknesses, but I can skate” I thought/posted to the Rookies. Anyway I headed down that first Friday night.

After battling a wet Monash Carpark (I refuse to call it a freeway), I wobbled my way through the beginners class feeling like the new kid at school sitting exams on day 1. 5 minutes in Joey called for us to get into “hockey stance” and promptly came and knocked me over onto my arse before pointing out where I was going wrong (feet too wide, knees not bent, head down….) This sums up the whole NLHA experience for me – Joey and Martin can always find something you need to fix up to make yourself a better hockey player and go to the next level no matter how basic it is. I got through the class and Joey agreed I could play game time and that he would happily take me into classes. I was to stay with the beginners and work hard on my basics – particularly my non-existent outside edge!

The weeks went on. I got the chance to try an intermediate class – wow! There was a step up. Filled with IHV players looking for an edge plus a lot of the more skilled Rookies meant the standard was pretty good. My skills got shown up fast. The drive home that night was very sombre as I recounted the number of times I fell on my arse, lost the puck, went the wrong way, got beaten for pace and generally just made myself look like Bambi. In hindsight it was a great reality check and probably stopped me getting too big for my boots! I had been recommended to repeat intro at the end of term 4 at the Icehouse, instead I skated 3-4 hours a week over Christmas and went up to intermediate. Likewise I then went up to Dev the next term after a semi-successful crack at “intermediate dev league”. I think I needed the wake-up call to remind me I was a long way away from being a semi-competent hockey player, take my eye off summer league and worry about getting the basics right, which were starting to get exposed.

The “term” rolled on. I had 4 hours a week of hockey. My non-hockey friends thought I was mad (“But its Friday night!”), my housemate questioned me when I was lying on the couch moaning and sooking the following days (rank hockey gear stinking up the laundry). I was in heaven! I began to see some tiny improvements – I could almost occasionally stay on my outside edge, sometimes. I was focusing a bit more on my basics and almost executing them in Dev and game-time – the downside being I forgot about my positioning, the puck and other things that “occasionally” count in a hockey game. I found a bit of extra time to general skate during the week to work on the latest tips from Martin and Joey. I found having four different coaches (with Lliam and Army contributing from the Icehouse – as helpful as ever) meant I was picking up extra observations and tweaking different things (I even nailed a slapshot in a stick n puck which was exciting, if not entirely useful!). But I still wasn’t nailing my outside edges, my cross-overs were still clunky and generally I lacked any sort of agility – something that was continually being found out in dev and gametime.

Icehouse hockey school finished. I engaged in a great “battle” with Nicko on the ice. It was bloody brilliant to see him score his goal. As a reader of his blog for 6 months it was great to see him finally get a chance and he finished the job (would have loved to have seen that rodeo celebration though….), we all know how much he loves hitting the ice and how hard he works – even if we were on the opposing teams. I managed to snag a goal myself which improved my hockey spirits somewhat. At least I wasn’t totally useless on the ice. I found myself skating a tiny better with the upbeat frame of mind.

Friday night at gametime was a different story. I nearly always played D because my lack of agility wasn’t exposed as much, if anything it made attacking forwards skate out to the boards as I clogged up the “guts”. But I still l didn’t handle the puck cleanly, regularly turned it over in our zone, fell over (including bruising my shoulder and tailbone in one night which really concerned me as to what damage I may have done once I cooled down and was shovelling Nurofen whilst sitting on my couch) and generally didn’t contribute much more than another body on the ice. Yet for some bizarre reason I still enjoyed every second and was busting to get back over the boards. Hockey is a strange drug.

Finally it was graduation night. I’d had a long day of personal disputes, girl problems, Icehouse registrations going into meltdown and then

Boarding, with Liam Patrick …

work being well, work. I found myself wearily driving down “the carpark” to the rink not even considering, let alone focused on what I needed to do. Joey agreed to change the sharpen on my skates as I tried a new tactic to find this mysterious outside edge and I hit the ice for beginners. Whoops. So now stopping was hard, I was slower, my legs hurt, my pivots were worse than my stopping and I barely felt any improvement in tracking my outside edge. Oh and we are being assessed tonight? Good call Liam, good time to experiment – idiot. Even by my standards I skated badly. Maybe the distraction of cursing my own stupidity didn’t help.

After a class photo I had an hour before game-time (while the intermediate superstars strutted their stuff, I usually spent this time consuming Masterchef Hands’ latest culinary delight). I grabbed Joey and asked for the feedback. “So do you want honesty or me to blow smoke up your arse” to which I replied “Bullshit, give me honesty, I’m a big boy….”Again I thought the conversation defined Joey as a coach. I had my strong points (apparently) – I could participate in game-time ok, I could pass, I could read the play and position myself accordingly – but my skating was letting me down. I couldn’t get to where I needed to be, I was running into people, I had no agility. But, if I wanted to I could join intermediate, he was going to push me and expected me to work harder on that outside edge.

Challenge accepted!

I walked away feeling positive – for mine, the sign of a good coach. I knew skating was always my weakness. I secretly knew at times I was biting off more than I could chew and pretending I could get by. But it also felt good to know that I didn’t totally suck at everything, that somebody I hold with a lot of respect thought that I was capable of hitting “the next level”. Game-time that night was fun, I even ventured up to a wing and put a shot on goal against people who play Prem C and A reserve hockey. Good players, who cares if they weren’t going 100%. I think the positive frame of mind helped.

So where does that leave me? That was Friday night just gone. The new term starts this Friday night. Good, no lay off. I am putting my finances, time and energy towards skating now. Hockey specific skills (i.e. stick n puck and drop in) can wait. I’m going to own this outside edge. I’m going to become a more competent skater. I’m going to keep up with the better players. Ok. that’s enough self-indulgence of telling my story (Nicko, you did ask for it!).

So NLHA. Get to it. Please trust me, the above reads like a 15 year old emo kids diary, I know. But at the end of the day Joey and Martin have started improving my skating and have made me really focus on it and be aware of it rather than my previous “go get puck” type of attitude (merely hoping my skating would improve over time). I can’t speak highly enough of them (even if Joey seems to make it his mission to make me hit the ice once per class while fixing my hockey stance, knee bend or whatever other lazy habit I have that night). Even if I stop improving now (which I hope I don’t!) the time, money and effort have been worth it thus far and I can only hope I can turn this into real improvement.

Please don’t think this means I don’t like or respect the Icehouse and in particular Army and Lliam. Most certainly NOT the case. Every time I’m there I learn something from them as well, they taught me the foundations I am building on and they are always great fun to be around. They are also both generous with their time and advice to improve people’s game. I intend to participate in both as long as I have the time and money to do so!

Like all the rookies, my gratitude to all four of our coaches is limitless and we cannot thank them enough for their effort and energy!

My perfect week of hockey – some time at the Icehouse, some time with NLHA, nail my outside edges and maybe even find the back of the net. Oh and another big win to the mighty Melbourne Ice…..

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: Icehouse, joey hughes, Liam, Liam Patrick, lliam webster, matt armstrong, NLHA, Oakleigh, Patrick

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