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Playtime for the Sporting Gods

November 4, 2011 by 2 Comments

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Above: The Joe Louis Arena, pre-game, this week.

In 2007, I was at one of the lowest ebbs of my life. I was lurching toward an inescapable conclusion that I couldn’t stay in my marriage. No need to dwell here, but when you deeply love the woman involved and have two boys, that is a very hard place to be.
So, to distract myself, I did what all sports fans do and went to lose myself in some live sport.
I know, I thought, I’ll go watch Richmond play Geelong in a Sunday twilight game at the Docklands stadium! That will be awesome!
If I had thought to look, the Icehouse was probably under construction at the time, just a little over to the west.
I caught the tram from Fitzroy to Docklands with an uncomfortable awareness that the afternoon might not go according to my plan. See, Richmond v Geelong has a certain history in recent times. Yes, my Tigers kicked Geelong in the 1967 Grand Final but that was quite a while ago. Almost perfectly matching the time I spent as a football journalist for major Melbourne papers, and The Seven Network, Richmond had fallen into a hole deeper than the Romanche Trench. It wasn’t so much that successive Geelong sides of the late Eighties, Nineties and new millennium, featuring several Hall of Famers, would beat the hapless Tigers, whose back line would struggle to get a game in the VFA, but more that the Cats would slice and dice with the needless brutality of A Clockwork Orange. Gary Ablett Snr would perform party tricks that made the entire press box* burst into spontaneous laughter and applause (journo humour being what it is, I was ALWAYS sent to cover these games; to suffer it out) and I’d laugh and clap along. What the Hell. It wasn’t as though we had a chance. One day at the MCG, I can recall Ablett flying so high and so ridiculously early (over Brian Leys, maybe, or Mark Summers, or both) that he found himself metres into the air, looking around for the ball. It finally arrived as he was well into his potentially painful descent. The great No. 5 marked it one handed, jammed into his elbow, moments before he hit the turf. He booted 10 or maybe 12 that day …
So anyway, Richmond had improved a bit by 2007 but the Terry Wallace five-year plan was lurching and our young kids would be up against it on this day. But I needed a change of headspace, I needed some light in my life. Surely, my mule-headed lifelong devotion to the often hapless Tigers would show mercy and give me something to smile about.
Richmond lost by what I believe was an all-time record against the Cats. 157 points. I didn’t need to look that margin up for this blog. It’s scarred into my withered soul.
The loss was so huge that by mid third quarter, I was smiling. Even chuckling. Ah, Tigers, you never fail to let me down. It’s not only that you continue to kill us fans, you run the truck over us four or five times to make sure of it, when we are most hurt. The funniest part was that the sheer black humour of The Universe that day strangely did the trick. The massacre was so horrific, it was awesome. I walked all the way home, lighter, thinking: OK, you’ve got more planned for me, huh, Universe? Bring it.
And it did. And it has.
What has all this got to do with hockey?
Well, a key component of my current massive American trip has involved watching the Detroit Red Wings live. To actually witness some games at the Joe Louis Arena. And Will (aka Kittens), Mack and I have now seen three of four.
The Red Wings are the most consistently successful team of the past two decades. They haven’t missed the play-offs in 20 seasons, despite salary caps, equalization, etc. They are very much a Geelong, not a Richmond.
The Red Wings home-grow players, churn them out and create great team after great team. In that 20 year span, the Wings have won four Stanley Cups. In poor, half-deserted, out-of-money-and-luck Detroit, they have been a shining light. Because Detroit IS Hockeytown and the Wings MATTER.
So, our first Wings game ever was in Washington DC, against the Capitals at the Verizon Centre. Detroit lost, 7-1. A massacre.
No, matter. Bring on the Joe Louis Arena, hometown Detroit with a Wings crowd revving them on. Against the San Jose Sharks, who knocked the Wings out of the last two play-off series but haven’t been as dominant this season. The Wings lost, 4-2.
Tuesday night, we were there again to see the increasingly worried Wings take on Minnesota Wild. By now the losing streak, home and away, was at four, the worst straight streak since 2008. The Wings hit the ice like skaters possessed. A goal inside of 5 minutes to Nick Lidstrom, with Zetterberg and Datsyuk on assists; our main line sparking. The Wild barely had a shot on goal for the entire first period. The Wings lost, 2-1 in Over Time. We were totally robbed by the refs on the final goal, but still …
The lesson: No matter which side of the world you are on, in any sport, the Sporting Gods will fuck with you, given half a chance. “Hey! It’s that Richmond loser in a Lidstrom jersey!” they must say to one another, sniggering.
Happily, I am in a much better headspace than 2007. I have genuinely shaken my head with nothing more than bemusement at Detroit hitting such a trough at the exact moment we are in town and have paid hundreds of dollars to be in excellent seats at the Joe.
It actually occurred to me after the Wild fiasco that I must be in a good place. I have genuinely loved every game – just being at NHL games, with all the excitement, hoopla and energy. The sheer breathtaking level of skating and shooting and skill of NHL players. Seeing my heroes, “Hank” “Zee” Zetterberg, Dats, Lids, Mule, Helm, Abby, Jimmy Howard in the flesh. Gazing at the retired numbers and all the pennants hanging from the roof of the ageing Joe arena. Being surrounded by genuine Wings fans and being accepted, unquestioningly into the fold.
Between games, we have wandered the eery streets of Detroit and fallen in love with this art deco, decaying city. We have examined every inch of the Hockeytown Cafe – sort of a Red Wings version of the Hard Rock Cafe – and grinned at old time Wing names like Honey Walker, Ebbie Goodfellow, Art Giloux and Wilf Starr (all 35-36 Cup-winning team), Gunzo Humeniuk and Red Kelly (49-50 Cup team, with Gordie Howe) and Lefty Wilson and Enio Scisizzi (51-52 Cup). I’ve loved building my knowledge of Wings lore and general hockey history.
The NHL home and away season is 82 games, so the Wings don’t have to panic yet, although this form slump is worrying. They have barely scored since we arrived in America – five goals in five games, which is ridiculous.
Maybe tonight will be when the drought breaks? At our final game, when we’re sitting on the glass. Row 1, Seat 1. And the Red Wings are giving us a personal tour of the Joe before the game. and it is Bobblehead Thursday, so we get to add three Henrik Zetterberg bobbleheads to our already groaning baggage.
Or maybe the Wings will lose again, to the struggling Calgary Flames and I’ll head home to Australia on Saturday, possibly never to see the team play live ever again, having not seen a win, having not sung “Don’t Stop Believin'” to celebrate victory because we’re enough goals clear with a minute to go.
I don’t really care either way. I have a lifetime of Tiger training on absorbing match day disappointment to fall back on.
I’m just happy to be here. Getting momentarily annoyed by opposition goals, dud ref calls or whooping at Wings brilliance. Letting my passion soar.
Watch for the three of us, behind the glass in Section 120, screaming our lungs out, whichever way tonight goes.

LATER THAT NIGHT UPDATE: Wings played like crap and got beaten 4-1, the last goal being an empty netter after they’d pulled Jimmy Howard. Laugh it up, Sporting Gods. Like I said, I can take it. On a brighter note, we stood on the ice at the Joe Louis Arena, during our tour. The ice maintenance guy wasn’t thrilled but we did it. Stood on that famous ice. Now we’re leaving the country, Detroit can get back to winning …

* As I was typing this, auto-correct on my iPad changed Press Box to Pessimism Box, which is so perfect I never could have come up with it.

Below: happier days at the Joe. The celebrations after a Cup victory.

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America

October 31, 2011 by 4 Comments

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OK, You can look at this two ways: I’ve been slack, or I’ve stayed heroically on message. This is allegedly a hockey blog and the vast majority of our American adventure has not involved pucks or ice, so I was right not to blog about it. The reality is also that I’ve loved having a month of not being in front of computer screens, so for a while there the idea of trying to write anything, even about hockey, wasn’t appealing.
Sometimes you just need to live life. I always want to slap people who look at their entire vacation through a viewfinder (“Here’s the Eiffel Tower, although I didn’t see it in the flesh, because I was filming every second.”) and tell them that.
I’m as guilty as anybody of wanting to record moments, to immortalise them through an iPhone camera. But you can’t always. And you don’t need to. And so it is with this trip, despite the literally thousands of photos and short videos we have shot along the way (Will aka Kittens has got the camera bug big time).
And yet … White water rafting in Carolina, a bald eagle flapping majestically above the Fall leaves ahead of us. The Chrysler Building in the sunshine. Mack asleep, with his head on my legs, like a kid, as he hasn’t for five years or so, and may never again, thanks to a brutal early start for the train to Chicago, where I’m typing this. A crazy knife-scarred taxi driver’s wildly inappropriate stories of nightclub adventures and women, while hammering through Chicago lakeside streets at 60 miles per hour, all of us laughing our heads off. The eery emptiness of Detroit’s downtown. The sheer rush of the start of the 0-40 mph in 2 seconds Hulk rollecoaster in Orlando. Gotta live all these things.
Hockey was nowhere for the first few weeks. In LA, we drove past a few Kings billboards but nothing to get excited about. In New York, apart from one small flock of Rangers fans, gathered in a bar next to Madison Square Garden to watch their team’s early season game in Sweden (they lost), we barely sighted the sport. The NHL store on Sixth Avenue was our only fix ( and potential source of financial ruin).
In Washington DC, we saw the Red Wings play live for the first time. A capacity crowd of Caps fans, with plenty of Wings sprinkled. Us among 20,000 hockey fans. The sheer joy of diving into the energy of a NHL game and seeing the Wings for real, in the flesh. Even if they did stink things up and lose 7-1. Watching Ovechkin as well. I still can’t believe how hard his shot is. A wrist flick that could put a puck through a wall.
But even then, DC doesn’t live and breathe hockey. It was in Chicago that we finally found what we were looking for. There’s no way I can write it but hockey is in the fabric of the city. Johnny’s Icehouse rinks, one of which is the Blackhawks’ training venue, in dubious western suburbs of the city; Will and I wandering like tourists with neon signs around our neck. making pilgramages to Gunzo’s and then Total Hockey, massive stores devoted to the sport. (Will and I loading up on new gear, so much cheaper than Australia, and with so much quality and choice.)
But even more than hockey retail, it’s the outdoor rinks, the players everywhere; talking to guys who have played their whole lives. Winter approaching with lakes and rivers freezing so that people like us can play pond hockey or skate for fitness. A sense of hockey being central, of being important.
Of course, we were glittering novelty items: Australian hockey players?? But accepted unquestioningly into the tribe. John, a slick-haired Chicago futures trader just finished a drop-in game at Johnny’s, who possibly saved our lives by offering to drive us to Gunzo’s – quite a distance west and through some parts of Madison Street we really were best not to walk – sympathized about learning hockey stops and pivots, even though, for him, that struggle was as a kid. A guy in his 50s, on the train back from Total Hockey, telling about his life of hockey, up to playing street hockey as well as winter hockey. Players who made it to college level; something to be respected by everybody’s tone.
In Detroit, we stood at the shrine of the Red Wings, at the base of the steep stairs leading into the aging Joe Louis Arena. Inside, I found myself meeting Gordie Howe, THE Gordie Howe. Feeling like such a fraud; a rookie Australian chatting with this whispering-voiced, white-haired man only metres from his statue celebrating the greatest Detroit career ever. But his eyes watching me as I explained how honoured I was to meet him, that this was my very first time at the Joe, being an Australian. Becoming genuinely interesting to him at that point, instead of just another book signing. Howe ditching the polite photo opp to start actually taking to me, telling me he wasn’t allowed into Australia although I couldn’t understand why, his soft soft voice swallowed by a buzzing crowd, pre Wings-Sharks. Me joking that he must have been seen as a dodgy character – hanging shit on Gordon Howe, for fuck’s sake – and him getting a gleam in those old eyes; his minders’ beaming, slightly startled faces as I said goodbye telling me how rare that moment had been. how I should appreciate what had just magically happened. Aussie rookie has genuine chat with Hockey Royalty. Give me that brief volume-challenged connection with The Red Wings’ immortal No 9 any day over tea with the Queen or, Hell, somebody who matters.
I’ll have to write a whole different blog about watching the Wings live. Right now, we’re en route to Chicago. The Blackhawks lost 3-0 last night, so there will be talk of that. I won’t wear my brand new, signed Lidstrom jersey while in the Windy City. Wings fans aren’t liked in that town. On Tuesday, we head back to Detroit for three days, and two games. I think I have a tour of the Joe, by the Wings, lined up for Tuesday afternoon. Hockey adventures await. And then a plane home.
It’s been a trip. I can’t begin to do it justice in brief words. So much for me being a writer.

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Once more with feeling …

September 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Nicko (right) and a manta friend.

So, I have a game of ice hockey tomorrow night. Turns out I’m in town, back from crazy manta ray adventures, for the final class of Wednesday night lessons. And that means scrimmages.

Having not been on the ice for a couple of weeks, and having been in a different universe (see picture) and now caught in the quicksand of life and labouring under a heavy head cold … well, what could go wrong?

Weirdly, this could be just what I need. I can hit the ice tomorrow with no real expectation of performing at a high standard. I should just get out there, crash into people and have fun. Given that I don’t plan to take formal classes next term (Will and many others are doing Intermediate again, and Dev League, so I’m very worried about being left behind, but I think I need to follow my plan to become a better pure skater) … this could be my last real game for a long time, unless I take the plunge into Drop-In hockey when I’m back from America.

The last scrimmage session I attempted was at the end of my second stint of Intro and it was an absolute shocker. My dodgy shoulder exploded very early in the piece after a nasty fall, confidence ebbed with every shift and I was terrible all night.

I’m pretty sure the whole experience was made worse because I was dumb enough to carry expectations onto the ice. I hadn’t played so badly in my first end-of-Intro scrimmage and it made sense that, 10 weeks of refining and underlining skills later, I should be an infinitely better player, right?

Wrong. When I was clearly fumbling and bumbling like your standard end-of-Intro beginner, I unravelled.

Happily, in Intermediate, I’ve known all term that I’m at the lower end of skills among the class, so I can just embrace that and do what I can. The others have been in hockey mode right through, whereas I blew off to Lady Elliot Island to dive with Project Manta, and you can’t believe what an awesome/foreign headspace that was.

hockey sledging in the Tropics.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the lead scientist, Kathy, is a Canadian who wore her Canadian hockey jersey around between dives, and one of the dive masters, Alesh, was a Czech who gave Kathy anti-Canada hockey shit at every turn, well, hockey would have been another planet.

Canadian Kathy.

Even stranger than spending seven days underwater with giant mantas was having no phone or internet access for a week. You tried that lately? It’s freaky, if you’re as connected as most people who would bother to read a blog. I had no idea Sam Stosur had won the US Open, only sketchy details of the footy finals and missed a whole week of friends’ lives on facebook. Very unusual.

Since I got back to Melbourne, I’ve been absorbing the trusty Detroit Free Press and Detroit News sites, to see what’s been happening at the Red Wings. Informal training has now ended and the team is in Traverse City, holding formal pre-season training. Pavel Datsyuk is wearing No. 24 instead of his usual No. 13 for the entire pre-season, as a tribute to the Wings’ previous 24, the late Ruslan Salei, killed in that plane crash a week or so ago.

Me at Earthwatch's Project Manta.

My last blog stands, about not knowing where life is going to take you; allowing those Wings of Fate to flap. For good and bad, and often at the same time.

Right now, I need to concentrate on the good, because there’s a lot of it if I tune in. I can’t believe last week I was swimming with manta rays, with up to a five-metre wingspan. I can’t believe in two and a half weeks, I’ll be in Manhattan, skating at Central Park. I can’t believe in a month and a bit, we’ll be watching the Wings live, in Washington and then Detroit. I even have tickets, stashed among my luggage. As long as online booking across two countries works, we’re there. Or very unhappy.

But first I need to survive tomorrow night, including coming up with a way to handle mass snot under a glass visor. I never said this hockey adventure would be pretty.

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A matter of life & death

September 8, 2011 by 3 Comments

RIP Ruslan Salei

I hadn’t planned on posting anything before taking off tomorrow for the great manta ray adventure, but news has come through of the Russian plane crash that has killed 44 people, including many hockey stars, from Swedish Olympic champions and ex-NHL players to several ex-Red Wings, most notably Ruslan Salei, who only left the team at the end of last season, and coach Brad McCrimmon.

Bam. Just like that. A faulty 18-year-old Russian plane and an entire team of hockey players in their prime, or not far off it, are gone.

Pavel Datsyuk broke the news to the Wings as they were about to go onto the ice for an informal training session and the team closed the locker-room to the media. Coach Mike Babcock and his wife headed for the home of McCrimmon’s wife and kids, to offer support.

Just like that, hockey and sport and so much everyday life is put into perspective.

There’s not much to say, except for this: live your lives, people.

Embrace life. Smell the air. Look at the sky. Take a moment to be aware of the fact that you’re alive and the world is full of potential.

I’ve had a few deaths, and other losses, in my circles over the past couple of years and they’ve hit me deeply. This one is on a grander scale, we’ve already watched the Japanese earthquake in horror, and tomorrow you can guarantee every news service will carry the images of those planes slamming into the twin towers exactly 10 years ago over and over again.

In one month, my boys and I will be standing at Ground Zero, in downtown Manhattan, site of those fallen towers, looking at the reflecting pools they have built as a memorial. The first time I went there, less than a year after the terrorist act, I stood contemplating that twisted metal, the carnage visible from Church Street, the financial district only a block or so away. I can remember the smell of decay and death that hung over the mountains of rubble, and drifted through the subway system. And I became aware of the people around me, many crying, many holding photos, many silent. They were the family members of those lost in the towers, paying painful homage.

I walked away from that site thinking about the thousands of people who went to work that day, not realising they weren’t coming home. That such a random vicious act would snatch their lives.

My cousin, an oncologist, has told me many times how cancer is so random; it takes whoever it wants, and he treats so many “gunna” people – those who were “gunna do this or gunna do that” but now they won’t have that chance. I determined early that I would not be one of those people.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a long fucking way from perfect. I continue to hurt people and I fail at things and I stumble in fog and have no idea where I’m going; more or less than most? I have no idea.

But I try. To be a good person. To do the right thing. To take my seat on a small plane flying precariously from Hervey Bay to Lady Elliot Island on Saturday morning with the knowledge that those around me hopefully know they are loved and I have tried my absolute hardest, for them and for me. Win or lose.

I spend possibly too much time wondering about this stuff; what do I need to wrestle, to ensure is right, rather than just letting life unfold. I just got a large tattoo of a yellow-tailed black cockatoo feather on my upper left arm to remind myself every single day that we are all in the Wings of Fate.

And we are. If I broke my leg last week at hockey, that adventure would be over and my trip to Project Manta and America a week or so later would be scuppered. Do I stop skating in fear of that? Or trust those flapping wings?

And that’s not the least of it. If I had happened to be a member of an elite Russian hockey team attempting to take off from Yaroslavl Airport yesterday, could I say I’ve lived a life? Could I say I have left the world a better place? Could I say that I took the bites out of existence that justifies time on Earth?

Rest in peace, Ruslan Salei, Brad McCrimmon and everybody else on that plane.

For the rest of us? None of us know how long we’ve got so live life as though you mean it. I intend to, starting with manta ray face time.

After that? Who knows.

Take care, hockey fans.

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Scubacam …

September 3, 2011 by 2 Comments

OK, so I got a new GoPro camera (gopro.com …. they rock) for my looming manta ray adventure. And thought, hey, I wonder what the view would be like from the top of a hockey helmet?

So we did it twice in the warm-up for today’s class at the Icehouse: once with me in the skates, and once with Melbourne Ice player and our sometime coach, Steve “Scuba” Edwards (# 17 for the Ice), who agreed to take it for a real spin, at speed.

This is Scuba in flight. HD video from a camera the size of a matchbox, mounted on his helmet.  Check it out:

I’ll post the one with me skating if and when I work out how to edit out all the crap before (as I try to nut out if it’s working). Yes, technology and me are great friends …

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Punches & Plans

September 1, 2011 by 1 Comment

The fun started on Saturday, right off the top.

“To warm up,” said coach Shona, “I want you to dump your sticks and pair up. OK, one person has to protect the puck and one has to get it.”

Will and I had faced off and he had the puck, so we went to it; a fun drill actually, as you lean hard on one another while trying to push your weight off a skate without losing the edge so that your foot slides out. We pushed and shoved and he was smart enough to kick the puck away from me. I got it once or twice, mainly by falling and landing on it.

Then Shona ordered us to swap, and now I had the puck. My 18-year-old son glided in, ready for more body-weight tests … and you should have seen the look of shock behind the visor when my first punch, a fast right hook, caught him perfectly in the midriff, just in the gap between hockey padded shorts and chest armour.

Before he registered what was happening, I hit him with a left-right combination to the shoulder armour and then snuck another sneaky right to the stomach – nothing so hard that it was going to see me dragged before the Worst Fathers in History Commission and, anyway, we’re wearing armour, right? And we’re hockey players, right?

Will finally got what was happening, and then it was on. We were both crying with laughter while beating into each other. Of course, it was me who lost my balance and fell on my back, still aiming rights to his stomach and trying to hold his jersey with my left glove. On Facebook, later, Will was bragging about how he’d beaten me up … I’m happy to sit quietly in the knowledge of what really happened.

(Big ups to Icehouse Rookie Daniel Epstein, who found that video.)

So Saturday’s session was a good one with lots of end-to-end skating drills, which is when I’m happiest.

I’ve also been aware that this intermediate term is fast coming to an end, even though it has two or three weeks to go. I’ve got lots of travels and adventures looming, which will keep me away from the ice for an extended period and, anyway, I’m thinking of stepping away from lessons for a while.

After last Wednesday’s session, I was talking to classmate Jay who made the very kind and hopefully accurate observation that my stick-handling (as in, controlling the puck, passing and general hand-eye-coordination) is up there with most in the class, but agreed that it’s my skating that is still letting me down. I’d been telling him about my crazy plan to become the skater I want to be.

My theory is: I go diving with manta rays for eight days on an Earthwatch project (leaving next Friday; oh yeah!), then I go to America for almost six weeks, with Will and Mack, taking in some Detroit Red Wings games (leaving late September, Oh yeah!!!) and then I get back to work on hockey, but not in another round of intermediate.

Instead, I sign up for private skating lessons.

The fact is that I’m slow but solid when skating forward, calling for a puck, passing, etc. But as soon as any of the trickier hockey skating moves like pivots, tight turns (front leg forward), transitions and even fast backward skating are required, I’m not up to it. The next steps for me are drop-in hockey games (where Melbourne Ice players might show up) or Development League, and I need to be a lot better on my legs if I’m going to tackle either.

A couple of friends, Dave and Mel (who used to do hockey class, and with whom I had my celebrated first on-ice fight) came along to watch last night and Mel couldn’t believe how much better we had all got, since she quit to travel. “You looked like you knew what you were doing,” Dave observed, which showed I had him fooled.

But they’re right: the improvement since January’s first skate has been fast and steady. I’m heading in the right direction. But I also know where my weaknesses lie and it’s time to step out of class and fix them. Private lessons at the Icehouse are my go for the first few months after getting back from overseas.

Having said all that, last night’s Wednesday session was a beauty, with Lliam and Army getting ever scruffier around the face as this weekend’s play-offs loom. Melbourne Ice is in a semi-final on Saturday and then hopefully the final on Sunday night. I was expecting some pre-finals edge to the coaches but they both seemed pretty calm.

We finished the session with an awesome drill. Two Wings take off down the ice, tackling a Defender, two-on-one, then the Defender passes the puck, if he or she wins it, to another couple of Wings ready to charge the other way. It’s a continuous drill and actually needs judgement on when to take off, when to step in and try to help. I loved it, and on my final run of the night even managed to slide home a goal. It was my last touch of the session in maybe my last class of the year.

Nice way to go out.

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Be the puck. Clear your mind. Be the puck.

August 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Aimee meets Nicko

Ah, the glamour of hockey.

Last night’s session saw us trying to master the following skill: skate as fast as you could to the boards, spin and hit the wall with your arse, while the puck came screeching along the boards from Lliam’s stick behind the goals, like something out of Rollerball.

Now you’re planting your skate so that the puck ricochets off it, neatly stopping on the ice at the end of your stick, as you take off, passing to a teammate gliding past.

That was the theory anyway.

Of course, I got maybe one out of six attempts right, but the puck only clean-bowled me once, which I took as a minor victory.

Heady with this newfound skill, we even extended it to a more involved drill where one skater did the arse-to-wall-ricochet thing while another received the pass, they both skated hard down the rink, the puck-holder did a tight turn and passed to the original arse-waller* to have a shot.

I was okay at all this. But not great. I’d received a very bad email, from my day job perspective, literally as I was getting in my car to drive to the Icehouse and I found it, and some wider Life stuff going on, hard to shake out of my head while on the ice.

This is a very rare occurrence. In fact, one of the things I most love about hockey is that I tend to leave the rest of my brain at the gate as I step onto the ice.

From my very first skating lesson, where I thought I’d broken my arm about two minutes in, I learned to be in the moment while on the ice. And generally I am.

While skating, I feel all sorts of emotions; including exhilaration and excitement, but also frustration at not being better, anger when my skills let me down, determination, fear … the list goes on, but that’s the point.

I usually also end up laughing, and often because of Lliam and Army’s way of teaching. They’ll explain something to us and we’ll all stare, silently processing, taking it in.

And they’ll say: “We all good with that?”

Silence.

“No questions?”

More silence.

“… OK … (under breath:) Good talk.”

We get “OK, good talk” a lot. And Lliam’s other favourite, when explaining why a puck bounces a certain way off the boards, or why your front foot needs to be just so during a tight turn – which is tough for him because skating is like breathing for these guys and they don’t think at all, they just auto-skill/muscle memory this stuff – so he often ends up shrugging and saying: “It’s … you know, science.”

Hockey player science. There’s a reality show waiting to happen.

So I’m always engaged and very alive when on the ice. In fact, off the top, I can only think of twice where I have caught myself staring into the middle distance, thinking of non-hockey matters.

So last night had a touch of that and my skating wasn’t great. I was a step slow, lacking the confidence, or at least the who-gives-a-shit?-have-a-crack attitude that can improve your skating, and I think it showed.

Happily, you can rely on your teammates. For the last five minutes or so, we played Russian roulette again (see last week’s blog) although, this time, Will and I were both in dark/red jerseys so we were on the same team and couldn’t be set up for a one-on-one Placefest, luckily for me.

In the first shift, five-on-five, I had my finest moment of the night. Skated to a loose puck on the boards, controlled it, kept my head among swarming opponents, spotted a teammate free and clear and passed it right in front of him, so he could skate onto it and cruise to goal … except that as I skated hard to provide emergency back-up, he turned and almost collided with me, heading the other way. Turns out we were shooting to the other end. Oops. I decided instead it was a mature look-for-your-defender-behind-the-play kind of pass.

And then, in my final shift, I was chasing the puck and a classmate, Aimee, still sporting an impressive technicolour bruise from last Wednesday’s smash-up-derby session, came hard the other way and collided front-on, helmet-to-helmet, like two steam trains at full speed. Go helmets! And armour! And go Aimee, who had no intention of doing anything but taking me out. (She fessed up later it was premeditated revenge for the Mighty Ducks Incident.)

So I crashed and landed on my knees and, for the first time that session, all non-hockey thoughts were definitely nowhere in my head. We looked at each other in surprise, post-crash, and I instinctively called her a motherfucker, which I suspect shocked Aimee more than the crash. But I said it fondly.

And we were grinning. Especially me. That full body collision was just what I needed. It was a great way to finish the hour because, amen, I was a hockey player again. (Thanks, Aimee.)

At least for those next last few minutes, before the Real World came calling again. But you know what? Bring it.

… Good talk.

 (* technical hockey term)

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Bobblehead shenanigans

August 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

True sports fans understand that the worst moment of the year is not necessarily when you realise your team won’t make the finals, or that gun recruit might not be all he was cracked up to be, or even losing a grand final (although clearly that is up there).

The worst moment is the day after the grand final, when you realize you have just entered the wasteland known as the off-season.

For AFL fans, this runs October through to February, although there is enough cattle trading of players and draft news through the first month or so to feed the cravings. English Premier League fans I know are only just joyously losing sleep to watch the first games of a new season. Golf and tennis pretty much never stop, between official events and meaningless exhibitions, for those 12 people who still care about those sports.

The NHL has been on summer vacation for quite a while now and the absence of meaningful hockey is starting to bite. Even from half a world away, you can feel the stir-crazy. The biggest hockey story running on the Detroit Free Press website, as I type this, is that Red Wings coach Mike Babcock is planning to speak at a luncheon in a few weeks. Also that the Wings have renewed their affiliation with Double A team, Toledo. Wow.

Red Wing bobbleheads: competition is fierce.

This was after the great bobblehead face-off where the Free Press breathlessly reported on the Red Wings’ official site running a poll for which player fans would most like to have made into a bobblehead figurine. Clearly as bored by the off-season wasteland as the rest of us, several Wings players started campaigning, with Dan Cleary creating a video where he said: ““Hi, this is Dan Cleary. Vote for me for my bobblehead. I really want one. Please. Don’t vote for Bertuzzi — his head is way too big, it won’t even fit on a bobblehead anyway.”

Cleary’s victory led to my favourite headline of the off-season: “Wings’ Cleary gets a bobblehead; Bertuzzi calls shenanigans”.

Given shenanigans remains close to my favourite word in the English language, I was thrilled on many levels, not least that a hockey player for my team could use it and in the right context.

Of course, half a world away, it’s not summer, we’re not running countdown clicks until the first NHL game, the leading local hockey players are not reclining in their summer mansions in Canada or Sweden or Russia. The hockey season is in full swing, with the mighty Melbourne Ice confirmed as minor premiers and all roads leading to the semi-finals and final, on the weekend of September 3-4 at the Icehouse.

At training last Wednesday, somebody pointed out that Lliam’s beard is getting bushy and he confirmed it was a play-off growth, making the point that players have to start early because it’s kind of hard to grow the traditional play-off beard over the single weekend of Australian Ice Hockey League finals. Army is also getting scruffy so the Melbourne Ice players are clearly getting in the zone.

In the locker-room, we’re starting to wonder how to fill the summer, with players considering private lessons or the training programs that run through December and January. This time last year, it hadn’t occurred to me to play hockey so it’s all new to me. How is it possible that I was completely uninvolved in playing this sport nine months ago?

As the great Harry Hoo, off Get Smart, would say: “Amazing.” …

On Saturday, we had our usual intense session, fuelled by all the teammates from dev league, who aren’t shy to tell you if they think you’re not pushing it. I got talking to one guy in a cool jersey who confirmed it was the official jersey of a Kuala Lumpur ex-pats team, with his actual name on the back. So there’s another guy who has played for real. The terms “intermediate” and “learning” are pretty loose at the Icehouse.

But even post-intro hacks like me can have fun. We played a game ‘Scuba’ Edwards introduced, called “boggle”, where it was five-on-five inside the blue line, kind of the hockey equivalent of half-court basketball. If your team got the puck, and you made a pass to a teammate, you could go for goal. The other side switched to defence until they got the puck back. It was fun, even if I did have one embarrassing moment of watching a loose puck too closely while at speed and forgetting to stop until it was too late.

“You boarded yourself,” said the celebrated northern skater, Hotcakes Gillespie, who had been watching from the stands, just above where I slammed into the glass. “Impressive.”

I’m just glad she wasn’t watching the other time it happened.

Yes, managed it twice.

I rock.

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Getting edgy

August 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Since I got back from the Gold Coast, I’ve managed to hit the ice a few times. I had a morning skate, which I always love because a) the ice is practically empty and b) those who are there are usually interesting.

On Tuesday, there were a few figure skaters doing their thing and one older dude speed skating, but in third gear. As in, sort of lazily doing laps but in full speed-skate position, one arm behind back, crouched, long strides.

I was down on the goal line at the far end of the rink, entertaining the hockey Gods with my attempts

Cossack dancing: Not so good on the ice, or on new edges.

to skate only on my outside edges along the line, or doing the tight-turn drill Army had us doing a few weeks ago, stepping over the line and trying to turn as tightly as possible on one foot, either inside or outside edge.

Like I said, the key word here is attempting.

While I was getting up off the deck from one such attempt, another hockey player hit the ice. Tall, dark, dashing. Name of Tom, once we’d introduced ourselves. He skated like a dream, with powerful confident strides, broken only by the occasional flawless one-foot hockey stop, snow flying. Or to pivot effortlessly, to either side. Or to skate backwards, with the occasional backward crossover to mix things up.

“Wow,” I said. “What level are you at? Dev league?”

“Intro,” he said.

Motherfucker.

But one thing I liked about him: he fell over a lot. As in, I’d be doing my thing on that far goal line and I’d hear the crash as Tom bodily hit the boards at speed at the other end (figure skaters, not so happy). Tom was fully prepared to push himself and his ability beyond comfortable, which I liked him for. It was apparently his first time in armour, so he figured he may as well as crash and get used to it.

Falling is the only way to get better, as they keep telling us in class, and as I keep proving … but without getting better. (Ok, maybe a bit, at glacier pace.) Another friend was skating last night as we finished class and was proud and/or relieved to get through the skate with a dry butt, which is reasonable. I looked down at my hockey kit, covered in snow from repeated falls. Maybe that’s the key: to know that by wearing the kit, you’re padded and able to get wet and icy without worrying?

At class last night, Melbourne Ice player Tommy Powell joined Shona and Scuba in putting us through lots of drills. Heaps of skating, which was good, involving puck handling, one-on-two, attack-and-defence. Fun.

Well, eventually fun. To start things off, they had us doing all sorts of skating drills, such as skating and crouching while trying to put one leg forward and then the other, like a Russian Cossack dancer jogging. Nuts. In fact, here’s video of our class trying it. (I’m the one in the traditional Red Wings colours). See for yourself.

I had just had my skates re-edged and to a different, deeper cut. Having new edges always makes me skate like a drunkard (ok, even more so), and I was not loving these drills to push your skating ability. My feet felt wrong all night and I was wobbly, but not so badly that I didn’t enjoy the class.

Talking to Josh, a classmate, between drills, he said that it usually takes him three skates before new edges feel okay. So I had better try to somehow skate between now and Saturday’s next official Intermediate outing. Or maybe I should just wear the skates to the supermarket, or for a day at work … that should blunt the edge, huh?

In other news: Our big USA trip is close to booked and looks like including four Red Wings games. One in Washington (four rows back from the glass: booked!), three at the Joe Louis Arena, plus a tour of the facility by the Wings, who seem genuinely pleased we’re making the trip from Melbourne. And, for a change-up, we are also ticketed for Harry Potter World in Florida.

Life is about diversity. Write that down.

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Infiltrating Blue Tongue country

August 8, 2011 by 21 Comments

It’s winter on the Gold Coast in Queensland, which means it’s sunny and 26 degrees. I’m freezing (which could be a virus I’m battling), wearing a Red Wings baseball cap, a jumper and a scarf, watching my breath fog in front of my face. In front of me, a diesel-powered Zamboni is chugging along an ice rink in what can only be described as an old shed.

I’m at Iceland, in the suburb of Bundall. Bundall is not close to “The Worlds” to the north or

The Iceland rink, in all its glory.

Coolangatta airport to the south, which basically means it’s part of the endless industrial park hinterland that makes up any part of the Gold Coast that hasn’t been subdivided into tiny housing blocks.

Having skated at Iceland, Hotcakes Gillespie, the celebrated northern skater, tells me to watch for the arch across the road on approach. It turns out the piping, like some plumbing experiment gone wrong, is celebrating the Gold Coast Turf Club, which is nearby, but, hey, it’s a landmark among the factories and we sail under the arch, turn left and find ourselves at the home rink of the Gold Coast Blue Tongues ice hockey team.

I don’t want to get all elitist about this place. I had always kind of known that the Melbourne

The view from my seat: Ice players stand in front of the crowd between shifts.

Icehouse, where I train, is Australia’s official winter Olympic training facility and as such is pretty schmick. I guess what I hadn’t taken into account is life away from the Icehouse.

In fact, far from being all sniffy about the Gold Coast Iceland, I’m in awe of the Blue Tongues players. To train and play at such a dilapidated, sub-standard rink and then duke it out with the better resourced teams, like Melbourne Ice, is nothing short of heroic.

A photo on the Melbourne Ice facebook page from Sunday showed the showers at Iceland … several plastic water drums on top of a shed, with hoses to let the water fall. When we arrived, Jason Baclig and other members of the Ice were warming up in the carpark. The actual rink looked wet, not frozen, and instead of that pleasing, sharp scrapped-ice sound of a good hockey stop, when players changed direction there was a kind of slushy sound. I have never seen so many players in an AIHL game lose their footing, sliding around on watery ice. And the rink looked smaller than the Heinke Rink where we train, and where Melbourne Ice plays its home games. I’m not sure if it was an optical illusion or not. I suspect this rink was NHL sized, not Olympic sized.

Watching all this was about 150-200 fans, who had paid ten bucks each at the door. Five or six people were wearing Gold Coast jerseys, which are based on the Canucks’ colour scheme. Otherwise the major fundraising initiative was a sausage sizzle out the front, cooked by parents of Blue Tongue players.

Two or three rows of seats lined one wall, meaning even such a small crowd was capacity. Amazingly, there was no glass around the rink, meaning netting was all that protected spectators from the flying puck, and also meant any player getting “boarded” was pushed into a waist-high wall, not safer glass.

The scoreboard was for “Visitors” v “Grizzlies” (much better name than the Blue Tongues, btw, Coasters). There were no benches for the teams, or penalty boxes. That swarthy sex symbol of the Ice, Jacques Perreault, got a penalty and had to stand with the rest of the team for two minutes, seething quietly.

Ice goalie Stu Denman didn't bother trying to go outside to the change room during intervals.

Between shifts, Melbourne Ice players stood in front of us, local fans wandering past them with sausages in bread, as the Ice players discussed tactics and were baited by the crowd. After one dodgy penalty, an old dude standing next to us muttered in a super-satisfied growl under his breath: “Welcome to the Gold Coast.” By the game’s end, when the Blue Tongues sunk an empty netter to take a 5-3 lead, Ice captain Vinnie Hughes was leaning on the wall, having verbal stoushes with the crowd, sitting a whole metre away.

“Man, tomorrow’s game is going to have an edge,” Hotcakes Gillespie observed, as Joey Hughes was led out of a fight with three seconds to go on the clock. And she was right … according to Twitter, the refs tried to give Army a five minute penalty for fighting the next day, when Melbourne claimed he wasn’t even on the ice at the time, Lliam got thrown out of the game, and Ice eventually won 5-3 after Jason Baclig (who else?) chipped into the empty net to split the weekend’s scorelines.

So this is AIHL life away from the palatial Icehouse? I felt genuinely concerned for the Melbourne Ice and Blue Tongue players, trying to play at the professional level they do on such a dodgy rink (a game was cancelled recently because the Iceland ice was deemed dangerous) EDIT: a broken thermostat made the ice too cold, according to a local, replying to this post (see below).

But I also felt amazed that the Gold Coast team could be at such a decent standard, given their home. And I felt admiration for the bloke who clearly runs everything to keep Iceland going, driving the Zamboni, putting up the netting, checking the bar is ticking over, renting skates on weekdays and ensuring the shipping container that doubles as team changing rooms is clean and tidy for visiting sides. All while 99 per cent of the local population are at the beach down the road.

Aduba, Tommy Powell and Lliam Webster watch the game; a long way from the AHL.

At one stage, I was watching Melbourne’s star import Obi Aduba clamber over the sponsor-free wall to stand on wet carpet with only a net separating him from the fans, dodgy under-wattage lighting making the whole scene gloomy. When the AIHL finals finish, Aduba is heading back to America to play for the Quad City Mallards, in Illinois, (This is him dropping the gloves for Quad City before he joined the Ice) and will try out with Springfield, in the AHL – one level below NHL. What must he have made of this Gold Coast scene? It would be like an ATP tennis player competing at antbed tennis courts in central Queensland, local farmers manning the lines.

I guess, like so much else in hockey, he’s in it for the adventure. Iceland provided that.

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