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The walking wounded

February 11, 2013 by 2 Comments
A huge Oakleigh crowd watches the dying seconds of the Ceptors' win; Jay Hellis in perfect pose, mid shut-out. (Pic: Elizabeth Vine)

A huge Oakleigh crowd watches the last seconds of the Ceptors’ win; Jay Hellis in perfect pose, mid shut-out. (Pic: Elizabeth Vine)

“So, let’s get this straight,” I said, looking around the purple haze of Interceptor jerseys in the Oakleigh rink’s tiniest change-room. Pointing, and ticking off our players.

Two bad knees: one for the season, the other almost certainly for the season.

Next player: a suspected broken toe.

Next along: a badly swollen puck-hammered thumb.

Next along: separated shoulder, now strapped up and on a prayer to survive the game about to start.

Next to me, on the right: painful back that hurts badly after every game.

Me: dubious knee that is refusing to heal.

Next to me, on the left: another strained and painful lower back.

And so it went. Around the room.

“You know what?” I said, thinking aloud. “We’re a real hockey team now.”

Mid-season, winning some, losing some. Just about everybody carrying something; maybe major, maybe not. At the bare minimum number of players without forfeiting, because Interceptors were away or on hens’ nights or sick or elsewhere.

And about to face a bunch of our friends in the TigerSharks, who had played the night before and were also only just able to scrape a healthy team together on a Saturday evening for this clash.

It’s 30 degree C-plus almost every day outside at the moment in Melbourne, but in the magnificently dilapidated surrounds of the Olympic Ice Rink, sliding and scrapping across a block of freshly-laid ice, or at the Icehouse, the war of attrition between Summer Rec D teams continues.

Maybe this is not mid-season as much as just hockey. After the endless NHL lockout, the Red Wings returned to find they were alrady in disarray with a bunch of injuries that have stopped coach Babcock fielding what he would regard as his best team at any stage so far, a quarter of the way into the season. Heroically, my winged wheel team keeps finding ways to win, more than they lose, although there have been a few meek days. This photo from the game against the Oilers on the weekend is one of the best hockey shots I’ve seen (and well found, James Smith).

Red Wings v Oilers. Pic: NHL (I think) via Facebook.

Red Wings v Oilers. Pic: NHL (I think) via Facebook.

The staggering Ceptors managed a win, with my boy, Big Cat, scoring a hat-trick and his old man, camped in the slot at the moment that counted, managing to swipe a rebound through the goalie’s five-hole for our other goal. Unfortunately the refs didn’t see it like that, giving one of Big Cat’s goals to somebody else, and mine to the assist before it. But gave me the assist. Weird. If I had one take-out of my first summer league competition, it would be to politely suggest to Ice Hockey Victoria that the official scorers consult the coach and captain of each team before officially signing off on the score sheet. Nobody is about to deliberately steal somebody else’s goal, and it would be nice to have them right when they’re lodged. Every time I talk to players from other teams, they have stories of wrongly-attributed goals but I don’t blame the refs at all – they have a million other things to think about mid-game. We should just be able to correct mistakes before we leave the rooms. Then again, Pete Sav got the goal for his shot, which deflected off Big Cat’s leg. Does it change anything? All that really matters is that the goal went in. It counted.

So we had a win – goalie Jay having a kick-arse shut-out that I was crazy-excited about, for him, after all his hard work, over the last couple of years – and we shared our post-game beer with the TigerSharks, before I limped off into the dusk, my stupid knee still giving me grief. Don’t know right now if it’s going to last the season or not. Strangely, it is least troublesome when skating, but I pulled out of Powerskating with Zac, at the Icehouse last Wednesday (it is an intense class – everything I hate, but NEED to do, from intensive crossover work to outside edge work) because I wanted to make sure I made it safely to Saturday’s game where we were so short of numbers. The injury feels like a timebomb, yet hasn’t collapsed yet.

Nicko, v Champs at the Icehouse. Lots to work on, including not looking at the puck while skating, apparently. (Pic Elizabeth Vine)

Nicko, v Champs at the Icehouse. Lots to work on to improve, including not looking at the puck while skating, apparently. (Pic Elizabeth Vine)

I think this week I’ll play Dev League. And power-skating. No tomorrow; suffering in the interests of improving my ever-not-good-enough skating. If my knee folds, it folds.

It was strange to score a goal but leave the game feeling unsatisfied, knowing that I hadn’t skated well enough and feeling like I hadn’t put skating skills I know I have into practice during the actual games. Why don’t I do crossovers when carrying the puck? Why don’t I carry the puck more? Things to work on this Wednesday at Dev. If I can walk.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m whinging by the way. I loved our win and had an awesome weekend on and off the ice, even if painful when I walk or ride my bike. Then again, when I show up on Wednesday night and look around the change room, the chances are that everybody else at Dev League will  also be carrying a wound or strain or bruise or knee or back or something at this stage of things.

So giddyup, Nicko.

We’re hockey players. We need to go play hockey now.

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Friday on my mind

January 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Ceptors' captain Jake Adamsons fights for the puck on Friday.

Ceptors’ captain Jake Adamsons fights for the puck on Friday.

Four days later and I’m still smiling about Friday’s night’s game. It was the Interceptors versus a scratch Rookie team, containing lots of my hockey mates, and also my younger son, Mackquist, who continues to improve so that he’s able to join in a match like this, and leaves me excited that we’ll probably be able to play in a team together next summer.

Friday was just one of those games that is played in a fantastic spirit, with everybody going as hard as they can but with smiles on the ice. It was only a practice match; all of us trying to get our legs back, our game sense back, our hockey sense back before summer league starts again (10.30 pm, this Thursday, for my team).

I’d put in a big training effort since returning from the summer holiday to Lorne and Tassie, and since I decided my dodgy knee would survive being on the ice. The week before last, I was on the ice, or in off-ice hockey-dedicated training, for at least two hours each night, every night but Tuesday.

I joined a new initiative, the Icehouse Hockey Academy’s summer program where Melbourne Ice star Jason Baclig, and one of my usual coaches, also a Melbourne Ice star, Matt Armstrong, put us through our paces. It was challenging, doing skating drills, having every weakness in our stride and leg muscles pinpointed by Jason, who skates like you can’t believe.

Jason hadn’t coached us before and it was great to get a new take on how to improve. Just little things like getting us to skate blue-line to blue-line on one skate, crouching. Then having us do it again on both skates, which was easier, and felt so much easier after the one-skate. Confidence builds, just like that. Then he and Army took us up to the Icehouse gym for a hockey-specific strength circuit. In the middle of all this, I continued my own return to upper body training at my usual gym in Fitzroy, and had a practice game against an IBM team, and took part in some Jets training sessions – learning new moves from the wider club’s coaches. All in all, the hockey cobwebs were blown away in a big way, to the point that in the final sprint lap of that Jets training session, skating along next to coach Scotte Giroux, my body hit “empty” and I simply lost my ability to skate hard. In the course of half a lap, I went from next to Scotte to barely moving. Petrol… gone.

It led to a quiet week last week, knee hobbling again – Magic Enzo, the osteo, finally doing some magic – until Friday’s game, by which time I was bursting to hit the ice.

Jack Hammet, on the move for the Rookies, as I attempt, probably unsuccessfully, to close him down and Big Cat waits, ready to pounce. Pic: Dave Walker

Jack Hammet, on the move for the Rookies, as I attempt, probably unsuccessfully, to close him down and Big Cat waits, ready to pounce. Pic: Dave Walker

And it was a blast. A total blast. A reminder of everything I love about playing hockey. Early in the first period, Big Cat, at speed, won the puck on the right wing, looked across the width of the ice, saw me charging and dinked a perfect pass through the air and over two opposition sticks so that I skated onto the puck without breaking stride. Through the blue line and clear, although the defenders were closing. Me travelling fast (for me) and winding up the wrist-shot.

That glorious feeling of seeing the puck disappear through the five-hole, as the goalie dropped but a fraction too late (sorry, Stoney). Interceptors whooping and hollering. A glove-pumping celebration glide-by past our bench.

Then marveling, in the second period, as our captain, Jake, got the puck on the defensive side of the red line, out of the corner of his eye saw an Interceptor player coming over the boards, half a rink away, and duly delivered an almost-blind pass right onto the stick of Big Cat, motoring away from the bench. That left Big Cat all alone with the goalie and his finish was clinical (sorry again, Stoney).

The Rookies had many decent players and scored three goals going the other way, but the Interceptors eventually prevailed 4-3, on the back of a second goal from Big Cat and one from our coach, Will Ong.

I don’t mean to give a match report as much as to convey that it was just a fun, end-to-end game, where we Interceptors felt ourselves click as a team, even if we were missing a bunch of players through travel and injury, and had coach Ong and Mark “Happy Feet” Da Costa Caroselli as one-off free agent players. Our defence was calm and measured, working together and playing smart hockey. The forwards, me included, were charging at every opportunity.

Yesterday, at Lorne, Big Cat and I were still grinning about it.

And so I thought I should share that joy on the blog. As a counter to all those posts where I doubt myself and the journey.

It’s good to stop occasionally and just celebrate the joy of playing.

So this is a salute to the sheer joy of playing with mates and against friends.

The fun of good-naturedly bantering with an opponent who has just scored a great goal; both of you hunkering down for the next face-off.

The fun of skating as hard as you can to try and go with somebody who is better on their legs than you are.

The satisfaction of scoring a goal, or of nailing a good pass to a teammate’s stick.

All those little one-percenters, all that sweat, all that effort. The satisfaction of an intense, hectic, brilliant hour.

Icehouse classes (dev league and power-skating) start again on Wednesday night. Thursday, we play the Champs, who smashed us last time.

I play hockey. For a team. Like I dreamed of, crazy dream that it was, two and a bit years ago.

I’m definitely getting better as a player and a skater, bit by bit, skate by skate, game by game.

And I love being a part of it, win or lose.

How fucking awesome is that?

Friday's winning Interceptors line-up. I was so happy with the win and the game that I didn't even care my post-helmet hair looked like Milton the Monster. So there. Pic: Dave Walker.

Friday’s winning Interceptors line-up. I was so happy with the win and the game that I didn’t even care my post-helmet hair looked like Milton the Monster. So there. Pic: Dave Walker.

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It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)

December 21, 2012 by 3 Comments

So, the world is ending later today, according to the Mayans.

10.11 pm, I think I read, which will come as a real bummer for anybody watching “You Only Live Twice” on Channel Seven, because the film will have about half an hour to run when the Earth implodes. (Bond beats the bad guy, if that helps).

I’m fine with the world ending, by the way, which is a good way to be. I can’t remember if I’ve written about this before (I’m sure I must have), but I have long held the view that we should live our lives hard and for the moment. My cousin, a leading cancer specialist, taught me this, having spent his career treating people who suddenly ran out of time, who suddenly found out life is not an endless resource to be savoured at some point, when they get around to it.

You Only Live Twice: Connery as Bond. Hard not to like.

You Only Live Twice: Connery as Bond. Hard not to like.

The elevator pitch of my life philosophy is this: at your funeral, you don’t want anybody crying and saying, “Oh, poor (insert your name here) … he/she was so young, hadn’t lived yet, had all these things he/she was going to do … what a tragedy.”

You want everybody holding a good old fashioned Irish wake, getting pissed, crying sure but also playing music with a beat, laughing, shaking their heads, telling stories of your escapades. “Well, it’s a shame (insert your name here) got caught up in that bizarre shark versus giant octopus fight but, hell, he/she packed a lot into that life. Here’s to him/her.”

That’s what you want people saying.

I’m aware that age helps, in this situation. I’ve been on Earth for a while now, although not as long as a misunderstood Mayan calendar, and so have had the chance to pack in the adventures. And, oh hells yeah, I have. Not even going to attempt to list them.

But the bottom line is this: if John Cusack runs past my house, looking wild eyed, at 10 pm tonight, and then the buildings inexplicably shake and fall into giant fissures (good word, not often I get to use it, but don’t Google it; Google goes wrong fast on that one) I’ll take one final sip of good whisky, hug my beautiful partner and know that I died after a very satisfying final week of hockey for the year.

Which is all that matters, right?

It all started on Sunday. Big Cat Place and I drove out to Oakleigh, which gave us a lot of time to chat and listen to songs, ad we found ourselves listening to “Thrift Shop” again, by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, and I had a bolt of lightning idea out of the blue that I’m excited about.

And then we played the Nite Owls, which was a particular thrill for me because this team is known as the “old men” of Summer League, or of Victorian hockey for that matter. The team is an Over-35s team, which of course makes them ancient in the wider hockey community. One guy had a snowy white beard but mostly they looked disconcertingly younger than me, mostly because they were.

To be clear, I was almost a teenager when most of them were born.

But on Sunday, I was safely hidden among my mostly younger teammates and my trusty red helmet and face cage. One Nite Owl, midway through the second period, was puffing hard and I was cheeky enough to ask him if he was okay, if he was feeling alright with all this exertion? Poor old guy …

The Interceptors ready for a face-off, versus the Nite Owls. Pic: Elizabeth Vine

The Interceptors ready for a face-off, versus the Nite Owls. Pic: Elizabeth Vine

There’s a good chance I will one day limp into the Nite Owls’ club rooms, or nest or tree branch or wherever owls hang out when off the ice, and plead to be allowed to trundle my mediocre hockey wares in their midst, but for now I pretended I was a rookie, a sapling, and skated like a maniac. It was fun. And the Ceptors played our best game maybe ever, playing smart, fast, skilled team hockey, to win 3-1, The Nite Owls’ only goal deflecting off my stick, as I charged a defender driving a shot from the blue line. Beating our goalie, Jay, with the deflection. (Sorry, Jay)

They were a very good team, though. Perfect positioning, tape-to-tape passing, just as we’d been warned. It was a very solid win by us, a brilliant way for the Interceptors to finish the first half of our season, and our calendar year. We now go to a break for a month or so, which is a good thing given my current injury toll, as noted on facebook:
Right hammie undiagnosed habitual tightness.
Left knee dislocation or maybe chipped bone.
Right elbow tendonitis.
Left bicep undiagnosed cramping and muscle strain.
Stomach bruising (from user-error impalement on stick against boards)

Yes, I could do with a break but the season is already a massive win. I stood in front of the team before we even went onto the ice and felt a need to make a speech. The team no doubt rolled their collective eyes but they knew the risks when they gave me that ‘A’ for my chest. There would be speeches.

But all I had to say was this, and I meant it: Playing for the Interceptors is probably the most fun I have EVER had in sports. I’ve played some schoolboy footy (and, of course, The Bang, my Sunday footy zoo, which is amazing in all different ways, but is not technically competitive sport and therefore doesn’t need to be compared), as well as running, cricket, indoor cricket, surfing, boxing, one triathlon … I don’t know what else.

Nothing compares to ice hockey, and to being part of such a fun, got-it-together, love-playing-for-each-other team.

After midnight in a Footscray car wash ...

After midnight in a Footscray car wash …

After the Nite Owls, all that was left was the final night of Wednesday dev league for the year, which always has a carnival atmosphere. Big Cat played four games of scrimmage in five hours (and then lay prone on the couch all Thursday). I played my usual 10 pm then 11.15 pm games, and scored a goal in both, which was a first – a two goal evening. Decent goals too. Anybody would think I’m improving. God knows there’s a long way to go (backward crossovers, anybody?) but four goals in the last three Wednesdays … sweethouse.

At 1.30 am on Thursday, as Melbourne slept, 15 or so hockey players, still smelly and steaming from the game, stood in the traditional, glamorous post-dev league surrounds of a deserted car wash cubicle at a Footscray BP service station, drinking Big Ms or variations thereof, swapping shit, laughing and celebrating the end of another hockey year. Gentle rain fell outside our car wash and a year and maybe the world ticked to its end.

I went back to my first nickdoeshockey blog post of 2012 to see what I’d written. The key words were these:

I feel confident that the goal a group of us have, of forming a team ready to join summer league next September, is very achievable. And I should be proficient enough to play by then, or something has gone horribly wrong.

Nothing did go horribly wrong. We did it, through the hard backroom work of Theresa Neate, and then the ongoing work of Chris Janson and a bunch of other rookies. We got some teams together and we have proven to be competitive, in summer league Rec D. Who knows where it goes from here, where I go from here? Some or many of our team will go into winter competition, which is harder and has a player draft, while others will aim for next summer, once this competition is over. Mackquist, now 17 and skating better every day, could well be ready to join me in summer in 2013-14. It would rock to play a season with him, or even Big Cat and Mackquist.

Dev league bench shenanigans. Pic: Brendan Parsons

Dev league bench shenanigans. Pic: Brendan Parsons

See, that’s the thing that should never be confused about my life philosophy. Even though you want to rack up the adventures, and the moments, and the achievements, and feeling loved and loving, and the travels, and the sensations of miracles and wonder and enduring sorrow and heartbreak and everything else life has to offer and hit you with … you never want to stop looking ahead, and wondering where next to gallop.

If the Mayans are right and it all ends at 10.11 pm, then so be it. It’s been a turbulent year in many ways, full of disappointment but also revelations (I almost physically died twice, that I can count), and 2013 may be more of the same but, in hockey, I’ve improved more than I ever could have hoped for and am playing at a level I would have shaken my head at in January.

If by some non-Mayan quirk of fate, I happen to wake up tomorrow, my skates will be sharp, my keyboard will be ready, my heart and eyes will be open and my legs are strong.

Have a great Christmas and New Year, hockey fans. Skate to where the puck will be, not where the puck is.

Giddyup.

Nicko

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Canada 5, Nicko 0

December 4, 2012 by 1 Comment

So, the short story is that the Champs handed the Interceptors our collective arse on Sunday. Strangely, I left the Icehouse feeling much better than after our loss the week before.

Maybe it’s because the penalties seemed about even? Maybe it was because we landed four goals, even if 10 went the other way? Maybe I was just coming off such a clusterfuck of a week in that bastard known as the Real World that a hockey scoreline simply couldn’t rattle me beyond acceptable levels? Who knows?

Or maybe it’s because, in fact, we were beaten by one really good Canadian and his mate.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a rant, or sour grapes. We were beaten fair and square. Well played, Champs.

Andrew Poss playing for the Champs. I mostly watched his back as he skated away from me. Pic: Facebook

Andrew Poss playing for the Champs. I mostly watched his back as he skated away from me. Pic: Facebook

But five of the Champs’ goals were scored by a guy called Andrew Poss, who carried at least three of them, from memory, end-to-end before casually deeking our goalie to score. Like a Melbourne Ice player in dev league against rookies, a Test cricketer joining a work social match or an NBA basketballer against a weekend amateur team. His mate, Harley Hancock, was also barely breaking a sweat in beating us.

Does it make me feel better or worse to know that Andrew is apparently from Edmonton, Alberta, in Canada, and is a former, or maybe resting, member of a team called the Northstars in the Edmonton Municipal Hockey League? I guess there’s no real shame to being sliced and diced by an experienced Canadian player. But how depressing that I remain so far off the pace. Note to self: DO NOT move to Edmonton and decide to play hockey over there, if Andrew Poss is the average everyday player in that town.

I had a bad game on most levels. I’d been yearning for more skating and more responsibility, the coach gave me both and I didn’t do enough with my moment. Skated hard but ineffectually as this Poss guy and Hancock, in a black jersey with masking tape numbers, carved us up.

The worst moment was after a face-off near our goal in the first period. I was Left Wing and the Champs won the face-off and shot the puck across the slot. It literally grazed my stick. If I’d trapped it, it might have been a fraction of a second of just me and the goalie. Might have been. But instead the puck grazed the toe of my stick, and I realized it was a set play, releasing Poss, lurking behind me, to carry it the length of the ice to score, Interceptors and I trailing helplessly in his wake. It went like that the whole game and Andrew seemed like a decent guy, not celebrating too hard after his fifth.

Hockey in Victoria remains a strange beast. I try to stay well out of politics and all the off-ice theatre that seems to dominate the sport. However, I do think one of the better decisions in recent times was to ban Winter League players from summer comp. Winter League is a much tougher competition, by all accounts. There’s a player draft, so you get chosen by clubs if you’re good enough. It’s intense and the standard is high. Last summer, as these players came back to Recreational League D, which is where I now play, they smashed teams made up of fledgling rookies such as myself. Turning up for training at the Icehouse this time last year, we’d hear horrified accounts of of ugly 20-something-to-zero scorelines. Of demoralized and shattered wannabe players. It was nasty.

IHV reacted, despite the natural grumbling of the winter players who suddenly couldn’t play competition hockey through the summer months, and it’s been brilliant for all of us, starting out. In games where the Interceptors have been against similar players – learning and training for less than two years – the hockey has been even and challenging, yet at a standard where you can feel like you’re part of it, that you can compete, that you’re ready.

Shit, I even managed that goal a few weeks ago.

hancock

Hancock in Australian colours: he’s also a better player than me. Pic: facebook

But every now and then, some players or even a team have snuck through. Hancock’s Facebook page has happy snaps of him lined up for the national anthem just before playing inline hockey for Australia. Presumably Andrew Poss didn’t play last winter, so he is eligible to play for the Champs’ summer team and he is simply three or four levels too good for us. And for pretty much everybody else, going by the league scoring records. He had 13 points in three games before scoring a lazy five goals against us.

For the hundredth time, I’m not whinging. The Champs had other good players too. I was really proud of how we Interceptors kept our heads up, fought hard, never crumpled. Some of my teammates really did skate with Poss, Hancock and the other Champs guns, making a contest of it. Our goalie, Jay, saved some beauties, even if – in true goalie fashion – he slumped into a festival of self-hate for those pucks that got through.

And the Champs aren’t the only team with a few gun players. Our Spitfire sister team, the Fighters, also has several players who are also clearly of winter comp standard, not summer. They beat up on mortals like me every week. I’m only jealous that I can’t skate and shoot like that; dubious that I ever will. I only curse Poss and Hancock for their youth and their endless hours on the ice for years before I discovered this crazy sport. I appreciate it when those players don’t gloat about outclassing P-platers on the ice.

And I’m looking forward to the rematch, to see if I can make a better fist of trying to go with them, to get more than the occasional stick in their way as they charge the blue line. It’s how I’ll improve, how I’ll know that I – and the Interceptors – are still evolving through dev league and summer competition, by matching up against the best.

And secretly, I’ll thank the IHV decision-makers, for making that call that such elite players carving through our defences are the exception this summer, rather than the rule.

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Sometimes you need context

November 28, 2012 by 10 Comments

Me, battling it out against an Ice Wolf, as Kittens supports. Pic: Elizabeth Vine

So, I had a shitty weekend of hockey. My first loss as a member of the Interceptors and the game went pear-shaped, from pretty early on. We didn’t play well, as a team, for the first time in my experience, just couldn’t get any magic happening, and the other team played really well. We copped a bunch of penalties, not all of which felt justified, so that the game felt like an endless penalty kill and we fourth liners sat and sat and sat. I’m not whingeing (no really, coach, I’m not). Just saying it was a crappy game, as far as a hockey game can ever be sub-awesome.*

The game put me in a foul mood through to Monday, which surprised me, because I try not to take hockey that seriously. I am, after all, playing in the lowest level of social amateur hockey in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; a long way from Canada or the American Original Six cities.

But I’ve played enough sport to know there are bad weeks along with the great weeks. That self-doubts and demons are lurking as soon as things don’t go well. That all you can do is front up again and improve, work on your game, get better.

And yet … Sunday sat in my stomach like a badly digested hamburger.

The Victorian Supreme Court: where the nasty side of real life gets judged. Pic: Herald Sun.

Happily I spent Monday afternoon at the Supreme Court, being grilled by barristers, and context was very quickly restored. I wrote a university thesis a million years ago about whether journalists should get psychological debriefing after covering trauma, and every now and then it bobs back up in my life as an important document in that area of the world (which is lucky, because in my professional career, nobody, as in NOBODY, has ever asked if I have a BA in Journalism. Nine years of night school and it’s the most irrelevant piece of paper in the world, other than maybe a document outlining a Dedication of Goodwill & Respect  between the NHL executives and the NHL Players Association, if such a thing attempts to exist.)

Revisiting my thesis was a trip and a disturbing one. I read it carefully for the first time in a few years. Journalists talking about covering murder scenes and fatal car accidents, getting home and looking at their children and struggling not to cry, having spent the entire night reporting on the rape-murder of a six-year-old girl found in a gutter (no really, that’s one of the stories). Detailed eye-witness accounts of the senseless Hoddle Street shooting, the Australia Post mass shooting, the Russell Street police bomb. Bringing up my own memories of my time on the “Graveyard Shift”, covering murders and fatals. One anecdote I’d forgotten in the thesis was of two cops who were feeling around under an overturned car in a massive puddle. They felt something and pulled from opposite sides of the car until the object gave and one cop suddenly found himself sitting up, holding a human leg. They laughed their arses off. He ended up needing intense counseling.

The Supreme Court case is about potential damage done to media workers, or one in particular, and I was a witness and it was draining, being cross-examined and all. I got home to hear that my sister’s cat, one of my top five cats ever, had died that day. My partner was stressed about some real life problems. A schoolie had died an unnecessary death on the Gold Coast. The NHL lock-out parties weren’t talking again. Storm clouds were literally gathering over Melbourne as we got home from dinner in the city, and by 1.30 am, I was unexpectedly awake and alert, thanks to thunder claps, and out in the backyard, dragging hockey gear off the line as the rain pelted down. (It was pretty awesome lightning, actually. I love storms.) My brain turned to all of the above and I couldn’t sleep until near-dawn. My old life, as an insomniac, revisited.

Just another week.

Of real life.

Of reminders that some people have much more difficult lives than I do.

Of the occasional struggle to go on. To literally go on. To process life as we choose to live it, and as it sometimes rises up against us.

That real grief is a lot different to a shitty hockey game.

Like I said, context.

Tonight I have dev league, to hang with the hockey crowd, to skate my legs off, to sharpen up for the weekend.

Then a game against the highly-rated Champs on Sunday.

Maybe we’ll win, maybe we’ll lose. Maybe I’ll play well and get heaps of ice time. Maybe I’ll stink up the Henke Rink.

Who can say?

The key is to care intensely and yet only to a certain point. Act like hockey is life and death, but know deep down that it actually isn’t.

That’s the trick. I just have to remember that. We all do.

(*This blog is going to get tough from here, because I don’t want it to turn into Interceptor Weekly, good or bad. I’ve thought about whether it’s actually time to shut it down, now that my journey to trying to be a hockey player – even if a crappy fourth liner in a low team – is presumably through the major learning curve, but I may still have things hopefully worth saying. I don’t think I’ll be posting as regularly, to try and keep it fresh. For anybody still turning up to read it, thank you. I appreciate it.)

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Pucks, like life, can bounce randomly. Ask Rodriguez

November 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It’s been a patchy couple of weeks, in terms of hockey. The NHL lock-out rolls endlessly on, with occasional flares of optimism that a deal will get done and hockey will be played but then, no, everybody walks off in a huff, like schoolkids fighting over marbles.

I’ve been reduced to watching documentaries about Detroit. A few weeks ago, I watched the mesmeric Detropia, and last night Chloe and I finally hit the Nova to see Searching for Sugar Man, an astonishing and moving documentary about Rodriguez, who you, like the rest of the world, had probably never heard of before this film. Strangely, I had, because of one of my more ridiculous little-known hobbies. It goes like this: sometimes, on a whim, I march into Polyester or one of my other favourite music stores, on a mission. The challenge is to choose a CD or vinyl album that I have never heard of, that purely attracts me on the day. It might be cover art or the name of the band or who knows what “Use the Force, Luke” factor that draws me to it.

I can only choose one.

I can never have heard of the band.

It’s a hobby that has clearly led to some horrible mistakes. There are definitely vinyl albums and CDs sitting on my shelf that have had only earned one or maybe two optimistic listens. (A copy of Fourtet’s “There is love in you” double vinyl album is going way cheap if anybody is interested) but not as many disasters as you’d think, and the wins can be huge. The Herbaliser’s “Same As It Never Was” CD probably remains my single greatest triumph of this game, although local artist Matt Bailey’s first album “The Three I’s” is a rival for Best Ever. (A graphic designer friend of mine, who turned out to have designed the art for a Bailey follow-up album, when I looked at the liner notes, said to me, in amazement: “How did you discover Matt Bailey??” Hopefully sales have picked up. For a down low night at home, it’s up there with Massive Attack.) Other honourable mentions go to The Two Things In One (Together Forever – The Music City Sessions; back cover pic won me) and Delta Swamp Rock (vinyl – the sheer name and the photo of two dweebs sitting awkwardly in a picnic area as the cover shot. How could I not?)

Yes, this back cover photo convinced me to buy an album. I never said the game was smart, or sophisticated. But really, how could you not want to hear this band?

So one day, playing this game, I wandered around a shop on the corner of Gertrude and George Street and stumbled upon a CD, “Cold Fact” by some guy called Rodriguez. It was clearly very old … late Sixties or Seventies old. He was pictured, cross-legged, in big dark glasses and a hat, as though floating.

Dunno. Looking at it now it’s an unremarkable cover. One track, “Sugar Man”, rang a bell but not one that I could isolate and identify. I honestly don’t know why I chose it. There’s every chance it was the title of a song more often known as “The Establishment Blues”. Its full title is: “This Is Not A Song, It’s An Outburst: Or, The Establishment Blues”.

Yeah, actually, that would have won me for sure. Where’s my wallet?

Back in the car, I slotted the CD and Sugar Man, and The Establishment Blues justified the money on their own. Rodriguez went into rotation on my iPad and life moved along. You know, the usual … I worked, I fell in and out of love, I bought other CDs with varying degrees of success, my dog and I grew older, I started playing hockey, I finished a novel, I swam with manta rays, I went to America with my boys, I saw the Red Wings live (but not win). I fell in love again … Rodriguez was part of the soundtrack.

And then this doco came out and the story is mind-blowing. Go see it. I openly cried. If you’re a creative type, it’s the ultimate bittersweet fairytale. Which is quite an achievement for a film that explains before the opening credits that Rodriguez, a commercial musical failure, reportedly died when he poured petrol on himself, on stage, and set himself alight.

But guess where the mystery man, Rodriguez, came from? Yep, good old Detroit. Straight out of the opening credits, I’m looking at a helicopter shot of the city, and having been there a year ago, I was easily able to spot the unglamorous blocky shape of the Joe Louis Arena by the Detroit River. Even better, Chloe (who a year ago may never have heard of ice hockey) squeezed my hand when somebody walked past a shop window with a poster celebrating various Red Wing Stanley Cup championships.

Even if you’re not a Wings fan or an increasingly passionate Detroitophile like me, it’s a brilliant doco.

But that’s as close to the Red Wings as I’ve been able to get lately. Detroit stars are scattered across Europe or training listlessly at minor rinks, waiting for the lock-out to end. The 2012-13 season shrinks and is probably gone. No Datsyuk magic in the winged wheel for another year? Fuck. Although Dats is having fun, making the best players in the top professional league in Russia look like development leaguers up against Lliam Webster:

(Thanks to Zak Wookie for that link)

Luckily, half a world away, on Melbourne ice rinks, hockey is being played, and sometimes by me.

In Rec D, my team lost 7-1 but then won 2-0 over the past fortnight. I missed the loss, because I was making sandcastles at Lorne, which might possibly endanger my claims for Devoted Team Player of the Year.

In between, we had a strangely listless two hours of dev league on the Wednesday night; one of those nights where players were flat-footed, waiting for the puck to come to them, not powering up and down the ice. I was probably as guilty as anybody, it was just a night where mojo was missing, although I did wake up sore the next day, which is always a good sign I’ve skated hard, and I did manage a goal – my third in four games.

The best thing was that when I woke the next morning with my usual Thursday morning hockey hangover, I was unexpectedly aware that I had made a surprise breakthrough in my hockey learning.

I had spent the night, especially the second game, determined to “own the puck”. As in, if it was there on my wing, I was going to win it. There are many better skaters than me in dev league; many better puck-handlers or more experienced players. But that’s what is great about dev league. It’s training, it’s learning, it’s not entirely about the scoreboard, even if we pretend it is. So I  didn’t back off when I would normally think, ‘Oh, that guy’s good; he’ll beat me to it/win it,’; I better go into defensive mode early. Instead, I kept charging. And the shock was that I won a share of pucks. Not always, obviously, but enough that it reminded me all over again how much easier hockey is and how the puck comes to you, when you take this attitude, instead of feeling, in the back of your mind, that you’re somehow making up the numbers. It’s the same in footy, probably the same in most sports. Confidence and commitment leads to good results.

Maybe it’s the fact I’ve managed a few goals lately? Maybe it’s false confidence? Maybe I’m delusional?

I don’t care. It’s been working and tomorrow night, when dev league cranks up again, and this weekend, against the Ice Wolves, I’m looking for that puck.

And after that? As Rodriguez sang, I’ll slip away.

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The most beautiful chime in the world

November 7, 2012 by 2 Comments

A puck can make many different sounds near the goal. There’s the dull thud of it hitting a goalie’s padding, or the soft thwack of it being swallowed by the goalie’s glove. There’s the clank of the puck bouncing off the goalie’s stick and the heart-stopping ping of it hitting the frame of the goal, usually riccocheting back into play.

But then there’s another sound – a sound that ranks among the best I have heard in my entire life*.

It’s the chime of the puck hitting the bottom metal framework of the goal, at the back of the net, behind the goalie.

Yes, my first goal in Summer League Rec D was a sensory overload.

The big moment. My first Summer League goal (We’re in our cool Arato-designed white-and-red Interceptor “away” jerseys. I was wearing No. 4 instead of my usual 17. Now known as lucky number 4.) Pic: Elizabeth Vine

As I wrote last week, I felt like I just hadn’t had a chance to skate in last week’s game, so I made sure I got three or four general skates in during the week, including a skate on the morning of Sunday’s game against the Jets. Nothing strenuous; just getting the legs moving and enjoying watching Chloé finding her legs on the almost empty ice.

Our coach, Will Ong, had reacted to my frustration, which was cool, and made me Centre, instead of Wing, on a fourth line of forwards, so I got to take face-offs and skate like a maniac from the jump.

There are different strategies at face-offs; even different stick-grips, depending on the situation. Mostly a Centre is hoping to knock the puck back to a D man, the theory being that that player has more time and space than the Wings and Centre who are all pushing and shoving and tangled with their opposition. The D can see who gets clear and look for a pass.

But we had several face-offs in a row from the face-off spot immediately to the left of the goal we were attacking. The fact it was on the left side was significant for me, because it meant my forehand shot was towards the goal.

I kept hunching over my stick, ready for the puck drop, looking at how close the goal was, only two or three metres away. Sure, there was the goalie, and several defenders between me and it, but if I could win a face-off cleanly… It was like a tee-shot in golf. I knew exactly where the puck would be, and everybody was stopped, flat footed.

Of course, it didn’t work. My opponent won the face-off, clattering the puck to the boards and his defender. The next face-off from that spot saw us tangle sticks, an inconclusive result, and the Jets smacked the puck to the other end for an icing.

Which brought us back to the same spot.

And the most sweetly hit puck of my career so far. My face-off opponent was a fraction early, swinging over the puck, but my blade found it and somehow, against all the odds, the shot was true.

Oh, man.

The visual of seeing the puck vanish through that tiny gap between the goalie’s right leg and the goal. That chime. The ref taking a moment to realise what had happened. The reaction of my teammates.

The goal itself wasn’t that important. I think it made the scoreline 4-0 to us, so it wasn’t some last second game-winner or anything like that.

But I felt this weight lift. That chime meant something else, for me alone.

It sounded a bell that I belong in this competition; that I can genuinely play. I’ve had goal-assists in every game and done some good things, but there was something about scoring that goal, about single-handedly finding the net – the coach called it “audacious” – that confirmed for me, finally, that I wasn’t kidding myself by trying to play Summer League after less than two years on the ice. That I can cut it enough to be there.

I suspect everybody playing Summer League for the first time, or any sport for the first time, carries that fear: will I be good enough? Will I be competitive? Will I be embarrassed?

That chime behind the goalie said: it’s okay. You can turn up and believe you deserve your spot on the team.

Celebration time: Yes, the No. 4 still pumping the air would be me. OK, I probably shouldn’t have kept doing this for 19 minutes … Pic: Elizabeth Vine.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a goal that does that, but we all need to look for that moment. For a goalie, it only takes a genuine, legitimate, stone-cold save. Or so many other moments within moments, which hockey games are full of. One of our team, Clayton, moved to a wing this week, from defence, and won a tough physical battle on the blue line, as well as finding his attacking game. Scarlett, the only woman playing for us on Sunday, tangled with bigger players and won her share of physical battles for the puck. Our most hot-headed defender, Mike Donohue, didn’t take the bait when an opponent tried to go toe-to-toe, a triumph of a whole other kind.

I’ve been determined that this blog won’t turn into a quasi-match report for Summer League. It’s why I haven’t gone blow-by-blow through our games as my team, the Spitfire Interceptors, has made its way to three straight wins to start the season, as has our sister team, the Spitfire Fighters. I’m sure we’re going to hit one of the more experienced, accomplished teams in the coming weeks and find our confidence tested.

But some moments just have to be noted. Ah, that chime. I’m still grinning like a school kid, listening to the ring of that goal over and over in my head. Hell, if they’d given me an assist on Zac Arato’s goal, despite the minor issue of a defender touching it between my shot and Zac’s, I’d have a two point-per-game average right now. Wayne Gretsky finished his career with a 1.921 points-per-game average. Just saying **

Hockey can be sweet.

* Other great sounds, in no particular order: thunder, the clink of glasses, the sound of surf, a Richmond crowd rising to a great goal, certain moans and sighs, a cat purring, child laughter, a guitar played properly, silence after a busy day.

** Career stats for further analysis:  N. Place: three games (Melbourne Summer Recreational League D).  Goals: 1. Assists: 3. Hat tricks: 0.
W. Gretsky: 1487 games (NHL). Career regular season goals (894), assists (1,963), points (2,857), and hat tricks (50). The next closest player in total points for the regular season is sometime teammate Mark Messier at 1,887 – thus Gretzky had more career assists than any other player has total points. Gretzky’s point total including regular season and playoffs stands at an imposing 3,239. (Wikipedia)

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Signs the NHL lock-out is starting to bite

November 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The 2009 Winter Classic: New Year’s Day’s planned Classic, hosted by Detroit, ain’t gonna happen.

So, as sure as the weather is shitty in New York right now, on Friday (American time)/Saturday (Australian time), the NHL will announce that the Winter Classic is cancelled for New Year’s Day, 2013. This is a crappy development, on many levels, except for the fact that it gives me another year to save up and try to get there in 2014, assuming Detroit still gets to host the Classic, if and when the NHL lock-out finally ends.

But the Winter Classic was always a signature event in terms of the lock-out, as it provides so much in terms of TV ratings, revenue and interest. Letting it slide away without doing a deal means the NHL owners and the players can now drift for the rest of the fast evaporating northern winter without doing a deal and playing some hockey. Yes, I’m calling it: season gone.

So at a time where Red Wings fans like me should be debating how our team is looking deep into the season, post-Lidstrom (The Perfect Human), whether Patrick Eaves will ever come back from concussion, what a genius Datsyuk is, and so on, the Joe Louis Arena is hosting public skating days and gathering cobwebs.

It sucks, and there are signs that the world is starting to unravel without the best hockey league in the world. Such as:

1. Vancouver shooting fans have embraced an offer to have NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman as a target at a shooting range.

2. NHL.com is reduced to reviewing hockey films from two decades ago.

3. Starved of hockey, Manhattan folk have lost their minds as Hurricane Sandy blows out of town.

4. Some idiot decided to close the Elwood RSL Club, one of the better memories I have of hanging out in that suburb.

5. The Grand Rapids Griffins continue to attract a surprising amount of interest, as they head to Texas for a road trip. The Wings have just swapped out starting goalie Jordan Pearce for wunderkind Petr Mrazek, which is interesting in terms of Detroit’s future development.

6. Detroit Tigers fans, still hurting from being swept in the World Series, at least got to snigger when the parade for their conquerers, the San Francisco Giants, went horribly, horribly wrong. Like the manager’s car in the parade running out of petrol. No, really. It didn’t occur to the parade organisers to make sure cars had enough petrol to make it down a street?

7. People are doing weird things with pumpkins, in the name of Halloween.

I could go on … we really need to start watching some hockey. Damn you, NHL and, for the sake of fairness, NHLPA.

Me? I missed my Wednesday night dev league hit last night, to go and watch the Black Keys at the Myer Music Bowl. I loved it; partly because I’m just really into their music and have been from their first album, and secondly because I was pumped that they stripped back their sound, instead of adding 10 band members for a bigger sound. Big Cat being Big Cat, he spent the last few songs looking at his watch, calculating whether he could get home to grab his gear and still make the 11.15 pm dev league.

The Black Keys: a fine way to fill in those lock-out hours. Pic: Brisbane Times.

We didn’t and it was strange to wake on a Thursday morning without that post-dev league hockey hangover. I’m used to creaking around and lacking sleep on a Thursday. I’m not sure I like this don’t-actually-need-coffee-to-survive feeling.

To compensate for no dev league, I went for a skate yesterday afternoon, sneaking onto the smooth ice of the Henke Rink because the Bradbury Rink is being relaid. It was just me and eight or 10 skaters who looked to be total newbies, so I was able to really let myself go, skating as hard and fast as I could for 40 minutes. I felt fantastic; really concentrating on correct form, bending my knees, lower centre of gravity, pushing all the way with my stride. That pleasing crunch that digging a skate in provides. After feeling, post last weekend’s game, that I hadn’t moved well enough, hadn’t been mobile, I was intent on just trying to fly, and to skate sprints up and down the ice. I even found a few minutes at the end for backward crossover toiling, seeing as to how I wasn’t in the usual crowded general skate environment.

My slates are being sharpened today and I plan to get out there at least once more before Sunday’s game against a Jets team, to keep working my legs and feel comfortable on my blades when it matters. I think I need to hit Sunday’s game in a puck-hungry mood. Ready to hustle.

If only Bettman and his cronies had the same sense of urgency.

Oh well … crank the Black Keys on iTunes, and fill the non-Red Wings time with crappy internet reads like this. Nothing personal, Cindy, but I’d rather be reading about Zetterberg and Dats destroying defences.

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Sunday on my mind

October 19, 2012 by 8 Comments

So, on Sunday, at 4.15 pm, I officially become a hockey player. I know I’ve argued for 20 months or so that I’m a player but I’ve been a student until now.

On Sunday, I pull on a purple Jets jersey, as Alternate Captain of the Interceptors team, against an Ice Wolves team of mostly strangers at Oakleigh, in Melbourne’s Summer Recreation League, Div 4; the lowest level of competitive hockey for championship points in town.

On Tuesday night, I hung laps at the Icehouse in a happily not-very-crowded general skate. As usual, my skating was so-so. I was gliding gentle outside edge to gentle outside edge, just feeling them. Occasionally I’d head into the centre circle and work on my backward crossovers, batting away other skaters who came to offer the inevitable and necessary advice. Not up for a barrage of well-meaning advice this night. Feeling the same frustrations that have been brewing to the surface over the past few weeks. Noticing the distinct lack of other 40-something rookies wobbling around this ice, instead of being at home with loved ones, nestled in front of a television, on a week night. Heroic or delusional, Place? Such a fine line.

The Power-Hough gals model the new Jets jersey.

Tuesday didn’t solve anything and on Wednesday, back on the Bradbury Rink but now in full hockey gear, warming up for 10 pm development league, I started to think about Sunday. My first official match as a player. A working scoreboard, a league ladder, official hockey rules, everybody needing matching socks, genuine referees who weren’t Melbourne Ice players laughing: Lliam in dev league later that night, after calling a big guy, Charles, for elbowing a little guy, Geoff, in the head: “(Laughter) I’m sorry. I know you didn’t mean it, but I have to call it. You’re just so big and he’s so small. That’s hilarious. I’m sorry … Penalty. Hahahaha.” This is the sort of ref call that’s unlikely on Sunday, where a player actually gets sent to the box instead of awarding a penalty shot for goalie practice in a game where the score is irrelevant.

Plus, we Spitfires face the unknown of whether we’re going to be competitive against other teams, like the Ice Wolves, Demons and Champs.

A lot to think about but then on Wednesday, pre-Dev League, in my gear, on the Bradbury ice, everything suddenly became clear to me; all anxiety dissolved. Just like that.

I thought: You know what, Nicko? Your skating is what it is. It’s actually not terrible (despite all the angst on this blog); you just can’t pull off moves that would make you better. But you’re not going to master transitions or Kutek-level outside edge C-cuts before Sunday. It’s done. And you are a 47-year-old rookie with only limited time to master this sport, among (in no particular order) running a business, falling in love, raising kids, writing novels, scuba diving, having a social life, enjoying street art, books, films, footy, art, waves, sky, whisky. You can only be so good, giving hockey the windows you do, which is as much as you can. And you are giving away 20 or more years to most of these teammates and opponents, but screw that, who cares? You have other strengths.

As I cruised, outside edge to outside edge, my mind travelled back to Lliam Webster’s sage advice when I was in that performance funk, months ago. “When you’re in a funk, concentrate on what you do well. Don’t worry about all the things you can’t do, or think you suck at. Just do the things you do well and the rest will follow.”

Not even realizing at the time, not until I saw the Ice 3-Peat doco, which talked about Lliam’s early season scoring drought, just how much he was also living that reality when he spoke to me.

And finally, as 10 pm ticked closer, as Big Cat Place and the rest of the preceding Intermediate class cleared the Henke Rink and the goalies shoved the goals to the side so the Zamboni could chug its way onto the surface, I felt strangely calm. Shit, I’m going to play recreational  league. We’re all going to go as hard as we can; try our guts out; hurt if we lose; go nuts if we win, but it’s Division 4, it’s the lowest rung of being a competitive player. Just do what you do well, love being in a team, equally share the ice time between the guns and the strugglers, and let the rest happen.

TigerShark and 11.15 pm dev league mate Brendan Parsons seems less stressed about the looming Summer League comp than some.

10 pm arrived and I stepped onto the ice with a clear mind and had my best game in a long time. Didn’t try to skate at warp 10 speeds, instead slowed slightly and moved better, all while controlling and using the puck, doing the slice-through-traffic passes that seem to be my specialty. Was unlucky not to score a few times. Had so much fun that Big Cat and I thought ‘To Hell with Thursday and real world commitments” and stayed around for the 11.15 game, finally getting off the ice at 12.15 am, in bed an hour later, wide awake. I played defence, alongside Wunders, which was a learning experience but just as enjoyable. Even if I did give away a penalty by tangling my stick in Aimee Hough’s legs and headbutting her into the boards. Turns out that’s a penalty …

My teammates good-naturedly gave it to me as I skated sheepishly back to the bench to watch her penalty shot (she missed). I shrugged. Sorry, all … just clumsy.

An NHL player wouldn’t have given away that penalty.

I did.

… Expectations versus Realities.

All leading into Sunday …

This player, this ever-improving, ever-striving rookie will continue to make mistakes. But will also occasionally position himself well, use hand-eye and innate hockey sense to steal pucks and even stone-cold his more talented son, playing for the other team in the 11.15 game, every now and then on a forward rush; will no doubt be part of an Interceptors team that comes up against a more seasoned, experienced unit this season and gets belted, or has that moment when everything clicks as a team and we win large and feel like world beaters.

Play-offs? Maybe. Or not.

It’s all to come and I’m in for the ride; warts and all, age and all, faults and all, strengths and learnings and wisdoms and laughter and friends and all.

Can’t wait. Roll on, Sunday. I’m good to go.

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Introducing ‘The Podium Line’

October 15, 2012 by 4 Comments

The Podium Line: Big Cat, Nicko and Mackqvist.

You know you’re having a good week of hockey when scoring the Game Winning Goal (GWG) isn’t the highlight of your week.

That rare and unlikely event – me scoring a GWG – happened on Wednesday night; my first goal in 10 pm dev league. This will sound strange but as rapt as I was to see my shot from the slot beat a totally-screened goalie, I was most satisfied because the goal came as the result of a classic barely-noticed one-percenter. The opposition defence controlled the puck at our goal line and instead of hanging back, I skated hard to put pressure on the puck-carrier. As a result, his attempt to clear it down the boards was angled too sharply, to get around me, and rebounded to one of our defenders, inside the blue, instead of making it out of the zone. A fight for the puck from there saw it suddenly spill into open ice and onto my stick as I turned, nicely on my forehand. Somehow all the heavy traffic in front of me didn’t get in the way of my shot which went like a slow exocet into the bottom right corner. Remember Luke Skywalker using the Force to shoot a missile into the Death Star’s air conditioning duct? It was pretty much exactly the same thing but at the Icehouse.

Opposition coach Webster wandered into the change rooms after the game and said: “Was that you? I was looking down at the whiteboard and missed it.”

“Yep,” I replied. “It was beautiful. It was like the legs just parted and it went straight in.”

Lliam, Wunders, Kittens and I stopped to reflect briefly on how that statement would sound in any context other than hockey, and then thankfully moved on.

As we changed back into street clothes, Lliam picked up a few pieces of paper that had been left in the room and discovered it was a list of “great lines of NHL” and not-NHL. For non-hockey folk reading, groups of forwards hit the ice during games in lines of three players (Left Wing, Centre and Right Wing), and defenders two at a time (Left Dee, Right Dee). So you have linemates. Sometimes these can shuffle during a season, or even during a game, but all going well, the same three forwards work as a line for a long period of time, to get to know each other’s games and develop understanding and set plays.

In hockey history, there have been occasionally great lines which earn their own nicknames, such as the Red Wings’ famed “Production Line” of Gordie Howe (“Mr Hockey”), Sid Abel and Ted Lindsay. This line was so productive in the late Forties that it dominated the entire competition. Amazingly, in 1950, the three Red Wings finished first, second and third in scoring for the NHL. One line providing the league’s top three scorers. Holy crap. It will stun you to know that the Wings won the Stanley Cup that year.

Detroit’s most famous line: The Production Line of G. Howe, Lindsay and Abel.

So Lliam kicked through the pages of famous lines and I mentioned that Friday night promised history as my younger son, Macklin, joined Will (aka Big Cat) and I in a social match against an IBM team. The first and maybe only time that the three Places would form a line.

We all went to work, throwing names around for the looming Place line. Facebook had been running hot with what would make an appropriate collective noun for a group of Places. I had opted for “a clusterfuck of Places”, but other suggestions had included “a map of Places”, a “postcode of Places”, and a “pose of Places”.

Finally, we arrived on The Podium Line – first Place, second Place and third Place. Bow.

And so it happened. Macka suited up, we posed for photos – Will looking surly because he had ‘game face’ on – and got our arses handed to us by an IBM team that decided the best way to approach a social match was to draft in some Canadians and some guy who allegedly played international junior hockey for Sweden. Turns out he was better than me. And everybody.

Between shifts. Pic: Anna Heywood

But I didn’t care about the lopsided scoreline. The game was played in the usual good spirit, and shit, I got to skate with my boys – even if I didn’t skate particularly well. Macka abused Will for having a shot instead of passing it to him, gave me advice about positioning and then took a hard shot to the ankle in the second game, a friendly fundraiser for the Melbourne Ice, to end up on crutches. Solid night’s work. There’s no need here, in this public forum, to go into who hammered a puck into my young son’s ankle – managing to find the only unprotected spot and seriously injure him. This isn’t about blame, Hodson. Not at all.

The man WHO TRIED TO KILL MY SON!                  Pic: Tarcha Lou

Anyway, Mac was up until well after midnight, texting everybody he’d ever met to boast that he’d suffered the nastiest injury of any Place on a hockey arena – a compliment/observation from Big Cat – and then the next day attempted crutches for as long as it took to realize they are more uncomfortable than just trying to walk on a nasty bruise. He had a top weekend. As did Big Cat, who scored a sublime goal with a shot across the goalie to the top corner in the second game, to make his night.

And my weekend was fun, even if I lacked respect for the first strong sunshine of the season at the famed Bang Superkick on Sunday, suffering a nasty sunburn while finishing decidedly mid-field among hot competition in every sense.

The boys’ mum, Anna, had been on hand on Friday night, armed with a camera, and dropped by with the pics shown on this blog. In almost every action shot, I’m flat-footed, camped on both skates, looking as proppy as I felt on the night. Both boys are moving their feet, moving well – even Mac who has only just started Intermediate. Dammnit. Yet again, I’m battling realistic expectations versus frustrations. But not now, not here.

For now, I’m just saluting the night that Will, Mac and I formed the Podium Line for hockey history. It may happen 1000 times, or never again. But it happened – and that rocks.

History: Mack and I jump the boards together in a game.

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