nicko – nick does hockey

Ninja moves.

June 18, 2013 by Nicko Place 2 Comments

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

Button available here.

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

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

Especially while managing to look like you totally meant it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I manage it. Just this once.

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

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

Or didn’t.

Who cares? I saw it. I lived it.

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

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

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

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

The running man

June 3, 2013 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

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

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

What I’m trying to avoid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dusk at the Brunswick Street Oval as I ran.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a good plan. See me run.

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

Falling in love with shifting sands

April 19, 2013 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

I more or less grew up down at Lorne so sand was always a key ingredient in my life. Mostly it was something scorching hot to somehow run across between the grass of the Lorne foreshore and the surf. Or it was the wet, gritty crap somehow finding its way into a thick winter wetsuit, no matter how hard you tried not to have sandy feet, leaving nasty rub-rashes that screeched on the skin in the post-surf shower. Beach sex raised a whole new set of issues that probably shouldn’t be discussed in a family-friendly hockey blog. (Nonetheless, I’m ‘for’ it.)

As a young kid, I adored standing on the edge of those sand cliffs that form on beaches after a strong storm, crumbling the edge of the cliff beneath me, often ending up with my foot and jean cuffs in the river. Oops. These days, it’s all about the hardness and flatness of the sand’s surface, as a petanque pitch.

Petanque – an excellent use of sand.

But none of sand’s crimes or games were enough to give me a strong opinion for or against sand. It just was.

Until a few years ago, when I was sent, on assignment by an airline magazine, to Oodnadatta. (The actual eventual story is here)

Oodnadatta is a South Australian town, so far off the map it is literally not covered by any shire or council. It’s 200 kilometres up a corrugated dirt road from Coober Pedy, which isn’t exactly an urban metropolis. Cowboy towns; literally in Oodnadatta’s case, with giant beef stations all around. It used to be a stop on the Ghan railway and the town’s Intercontinental Hotel remains a colourful but genuinely dangerous drinking venue. A guy was killed in the front bar a few days after we were there.

I’d never really put any thought to Oodnadatta before I got sent there, to cover the annual gymkhana and races. But suddenly, here was my dad and I, bouncing along that endless dirt road in a Toyota “troopie”, 20 litres of water in the back, along with satellite navigation gear and other survival essentials. People die on roads like this.

It’s desert; nothing but desert. To the point that Mission to Mars, a mediocre Brian De Palma film, was shot there at the turn of the millennium, because it was the surface of Earth that Hollywood felt most resembled that alien red planet. Not a single distinguishable feature in any direction to the horizon, for 360 degrees, apart from the road itself.

On the road to Oodnadatta. Or on Mars. Who can tell?

Sounds pretty boring, huh? But it wasn’t at all. Because over that trip, I gained an entirely new appreciation for sand. As a kid, we used to holiday in Queensland, where you could literally collect “coloured sand” from beachside cliffs near Noosa (you would then put layers of the colours in old bottles for truly crappy works of art that kicked around our house for decades), but the central Australian sands were different. There were hues and grains and entire hills that shifted in colour and texture as the kilometres ticked over. Just as rainforest might change to grassland. I started seeing the landscape as incredibly diverse and beautiful, when previously I would have seen, well, sand.

If you’re open to it, there’s a guide to life right there, folks, and one I still carry with me. Even when you think life is routine, day-to-day, clock-on/clock-off, it’s almost certainly not. There are shades and angles and dimensions going on, if you only look for them.

I’ve come to realize that one of the most interesting parts of my hockey adventure is how the sands are ever shifting. A week ago, I was signed to do Intermediate class at the Icehouse. Again. For the umpteenth time, just to keep working on my outside edges and transitions, and to get some ice time. In which, I’m sure, I would have found new learnings and experiences (see above).

But then a 10 pm development league slot opened up and so Big Cat and I switched out of Inter, and now I’m doing double dev, 8.45 pm and 10 pm, which means two hours of hard skating against hockey friends, with furious meaningless battle and laughter. I adore Wednesday nights, not least because this week, for the first time ever, I went coast-to-coast, carrying the puck from deep in defence to score a goal, just like Pavel Datsyuk does …

OK, nothing like Pavel Datsyuk does.

But also because Mackquist, my younger son and buried in the remorselessness of Year 12, has stepped up to join Big Cat and I in the first hour of dev league, and Mack did really well in his opening appearance. Even if he was one of the opposition I managed to get past, early in the dash to my goal, and he whacked me as I went by. All I heard as I skated doggedly forward was his voice trailing behind me: “Sorry, Daaaaaad!” which made me grin, even as I skated.

This was all after I’d watched friends go into the winter draft and disappear into winter competition. More changes, even though it’s awesome for them all.

And it was after I’d made my debut for the Nite Owls on Sunday night, which will need to be a blog all on its own, and the day before I was due to see a knee surgeon about the ongoing Battle of Wounded Knee. A joint specialist – one of Richmond footy club’s doctors, actually – had read the MRI summary and told me he thought the meniscal tear I’m carrying was almost certainly going to need an arthroscope surgery. But then Thursday’s surgeon looked at the MRI films and said no, let’s try some more physio and see how you go …

Late night dev league: a cult classic. (And this shot is a year or so old. I’m sure my stance would never look like that now. Right? Right?)

I had been depressed about the idea of being booked in fast for surgery and being out of hockey for a while, missing all those Wednesday and Sunday nights, or having to wait for surgery, which meant no running, footy , boxing, etc, until the knee was fixed. Now? Well, actually, I have no idea what the latest developments mean.

Physio, I guess. And try again to kick a footy at The Bang, and see how sore I am … and hope I don’t pile on weight or lose condition before I can get seriously active again.

Or see what next week’s medical appointment says. Or what happens in next week’s dev league hours. Or whether work gets in the way. Or trips out of town, for pleasure or to promote the new book. Or whether I whoop as the bits-and-pieces Detroit Red Wings somehow sneak into the NHL play-offs or sigh as the 21-year streak ends … Or whether Melbourne Ice gets off to a winning start tomorrow …

… or … or …

The sands are never the same. Ever-changing. Which is, I guess, why this blog has survived this long.

What happens next? Your guess is as good as mine.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: dev league, meniscal tear, nick place, nicko, nicko place, noosa, oodnadatta

Birds with arms, endless politics and dinosaur sex. I need hockey back.

April 11, 2013 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

Life without hockey: meh.

Oh, these non-hockey weeks can drag.

The Victorian hockey world is going a little loopy. Well, I know I am, but I suspect I’m not alone.

On Facebook, politics and tension ripple across the various hockey pages. The IHV winter draft was finally held – long delayed because of Game of Thrones machinations in backrooms, leading to resignations and indignations. Friends of mine, from summer league teams, finally discovered their fate; drafted to teams they knew, or didn’t. A goalie got drafted as a player and therefore isn’t playing after all. Or maybe wouldn’t have been drafted anyway. And discuss. Endlessly. Spitfires moved up to the show, even into “checking” hockey, where bodies can be hit.

For those drafted and meeting teammates, a new world beginning. For us summer players, counting the long months until next season, we have to wait for Icehouse classes to recommence, or at least some scrimmages, or plunge into the Next Level frenzy at Oakleigh.

It’s gotten so bad that this morning (Thursday), a few of my fellow Interceptors dragged their sorry arses down to the Docklands for a 7 am drop-in game. Only to find the ice was double-booked and the drop-in was cancelled. That number again: 7. A.M.

The surprise was that their weekend hangovers had faded. We’d had our end-of-season presentation night on Saturday, full of vote-counts and stories and hockey players in suits or cocktail dresses, and strawberry dacquiris. Hockey players lurching, drunken, out of bars and eventually wandering Chapel Street on the wrong side of 2 am, hunting any place that would serve us beer.

When hockey players scrub up: Spitfires presentation night.

In the taxi, winding home, at 2.55 am, I looked again at my watch and it was suddenly 2.10 am. Huzzah for the end of daylight saving. A respectable finish after all.

And then a long week of no hockey. Throwing myself into culture to fill the hole.

Sunday at the comedy festival, Lawrence Leung funny as a part-time detective, and then roaming the city with my girl.

Monday, finding work and life difficult, eventually riding bikes through the cool evening with Chloe, blowing cobwebs from our minds. Loving the night.

Tuesday, the Pajama Men at the Fairfax Studio at the Arts Centre. Adoring those guys as much as ever. “You’re too kind. On a scale of one-kind to ten-kind, you’re two-kind.” That joke among about a thousand in an hour. Wham, wham, wham, wham.

Wednesday night, eating bargain schnitzel at the Swiss Club on Flinders Street with Mackquist, and watching more comedy festival shows, instead of chasing a puck.

Every day planning to go to the gym, but not quite getting there. Every day, planning to lift weights, but managing it exactly once. Eating the wrong foods, not exercising, feeling my hard-won fitness sliding away. The stupid, troublesome knee aching here, hurting there, or otherwise fine. Seeing the doctor, getting a referral. Wondering what all the medical talk on the MRI result means. A small tear, healing. Surgery or no surgery? Booked for a specialist on Monday.

Thursday night hanging with a hockey crowd to eat cheap dumplings in Chinatown, and hear hilarious stories of erotic fiction at the Wheeler Centre. Jeff the Wiggle schtupping Dorothy the Dinosaur, a TV reality fitness host taking on Matt Preston, sans cravat. So so so so wrong.

Dorothy: say it ain’t so.

Talking hockey politics, so much of that while we’re not skating, and life and everything else. Counting the seconds until Sunday, when a Nite Owl scrimmage will see me back on the ice for the first time in more than two weeks, dodgy knee or not. Wondering if I’ll be able to stand on skates after that break, whether my legs are wasting away as much as I think, while I can’t run.

Reduced to spending too much time on Facebook, looking up ‘birds with arms’ on Google image, watching docos about bikie gangs for my next novel, keeping my breath calm as the mighty Richmond Tigers win their first two games of the season, laughing with my boys, walking my dog, debating with my also-son whether it’s a giant spider or whale on the second floor of a café, making all that furniture-dragging noise, drinking too much coffee, despairing at Australian politics, wondering if North Korea is really that stupid, laughing at the emotional tributes for ruthless Margaret Thatcher, wondering if I’d be fitter if I was on the weight-losing, muscle-building chemicals that AFL people are said to be on, pondering why I haven’t just dug my inlines out of my boot and taken on the Giants car park to fill the skating hole.

In other words, doing anything but chase a puck. Dev league starts again next Wednesday. Summer league is half a year away. The Nite Owls skate on Sunday. It can’t come soon enough.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: game of thrones, lawrence leung, mackquist, nick place, nicko, nicko place, north korea, pajama men, place, presentation night, spitfires, wheeler centre

Today’s word of the day is ‘patellofemoral’

April 9, 2013 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

“Small knee joint effusion. Superficial chondral fissuring over the central aspect of the median patellar ridge and at the junction between the middle and odd facet of the patella plus internal osteophytic spurring of the inferior aspect of the femoral trochlea occurring on a background of patellofemoral joint dysplasia. No infrapattelar fat pad oedema to confirm patellar maltracking. Complex tear inferior articular surface posterior horn medial maniscus. Findings in keeping with previous osteochondral injury and spontaneous repear here central weightbearing portion lateral femoral condyle.”

Well, that clears that up.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: knee, MRI, nick, nick place, nicko, nicko place, place

Relax. You won’t feel a thing …

March 26, 2013 by Nicko Place 1 Comment

The scene of today’s high drama.

‘You’re just a blog hater,’ I said. ‘This is a valid media. You’re refusing to embrace the future.’

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I just can’t do it.’

I was lying on my back, half in and half out of the big white tube that is an MRI machine. All I’d asked was that he grab my iPhone and take a quick photo, for the blog.

The MRI technician shrugged apologetically. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘if I brought your phone in here, it would be sucked straight into the heart of the machine. Which, you might remember from the pre-scan briefing, is a giant motherfucking magnet.’

Actually he didn’t say that last sentence but he didn’t have to. I did remember I was lying in a massive magnetic core, so the photo became a lost dream. Science versus creativity: will that battle ever end?

So I finally got around to having my knee scanned. ‘Just lie still for 20 minutes,’ the technician had said. ‘Don’t move your left leg at all, if you can manage it. The machine is incredibly loud so here are some headphones. Would you like some music?’

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘What sort?’

“Dunno … classical, Triple J. Anything but easy listening because then I’d have to kill myself.’

He settled it by forgetting to turn on the music. So I lay there, for an endless age, listening to the whirring and pulsing and grinding of this massive machine; feeling strange tingling and currents in my knee. Giving the joint a little talking to inside my head: ‘Well, whose fault is this? Don’t start blaming me for gamma rays coursing through you, stupid knee.’

I’d spent a few schoolboy minutes sniggering at how the brand of the machine, Siemens, sounds like something else, but even that distraction wore off by the second half of the journey. Buzz. Whir. Clank. Grrrrrrr … Of course, all I wanted in the whole world was to move my fricking leg. But tried not to.

Lying there, it occurred to me that this entire moment was actually a minor miracle; that for the first time in two and a half years of playing hockey, I was undergoing something more medical than a Magic Enzo osteo session. I really can’t complain to have gotten this far without a major injury or wound. And I’m still not even sure if it was hockey or a 38 degree Bang footy session that blew the knee out late last year.

It was worth it just for the adventure of an MRI. Luckily it was my legs being examined so my head was outside the machine. I’ve heard that it can be claustrophobic if you have to be fully inside it.

The whole thing runs on magnets moving the atoms in your body around while radio frequencies pick the movement up as images. Or something. Its full name is Magnetic Resonance Imaging and it raises your body temperature and basically pushes and pulls the nuclei of the atoms around as you lie still.

‘If my head is in there, I can feel my hair ties lifting off my head,’ said the MRI department’s registrar, a blonde chick with tied back hair.

‘Do you do that at lunchtime, just for kicks?’ I’d asked her.

An MRI machine. Riddle me this: how did this camera not get sucked into the machine? Shenanigans.

‘No’, she said. ‘It’s actually weird and freaks me out.’

Sadly, my hair was untied and so I felt nothing. But I wouldn’t want to attempt an MRI after a joint. It could be amazing or terrible.

But anyway, it’s done. And so now what? I wait at least five working days for the results to go to my doctor, the Christmas hepcat who I saw at Lorne. When I last saw him, he looked up ‘knee’ on Wikipedia.

But I rang a top knee specialist recommended by a hockey buddy, Tony Sheng, and was told I needed a doctor reference even to get an initial appointment. This doctor reference thing is the biggest legal lurk going around; fifty bucks or so to be allowed to just get in the diary of a specialist so he or she can start fleecing you in creative new ways.

I’m going to do it though. I just signed up for the Nite Owls winter Sunday comp (for old bastard skaters only) and am about to sign for dev league and maybe the Icehouse Academy. Plus I can’t kick at the Bang while the knee stops me running.

Time to get it fixed. Hang the expense.

And to see if I developed any super powers while those gamma rays were flying around. That’s what happens, right?

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: knee, MRI, nicko, tony sheng

Guest writer: Brendan Parsons on scorekeeping

March 25, 2013 by Nicko Place 1 Comment

The scorer’s box, looking down on the Ghetto’s ice. @ Oakleigh.

A change of gear today. Ever wondered who is operating the scoreboard and compiling the teamsheet at any given game? Even in Rec D, summer league, in Melbourne, a bunch of tireless almost-volunteers work to make it happen – and we are damn grateful. (I’ve only been in there long enough to feel sheepish that I don’t help more.)

A big thanks to Brendan Parsons for taking us behind the glass, ice-side, to explain the magic.

Hockey scoring: not for the faint-hearted

By Brendan Parsons

“Shit!”

“What was that?”

“I didn’t see! Get ready whatever it is.”

“What number?”

“Use double zero, just make sure you get the two in right, we can fix it after.”

“I’m on it.”

“Hey can I –“

“Shut up! Hold on a second – watch the ice – anything coming in on the radio?”

“No… OK, we’re good.”

“Time?”

“Fourteen twenty seven.”

Radio hisses

“Hey, you there?”

“Yep, what was it?”

“Fourteen, tripping, two minutes.”

“Ok, got it.”

“Sorted – shot on – two shots, home.”

The score box at Oakleigh ice rink is nothing short of parody of a TV newsroom– but without the Sorkinesque hallway walking. Scraps of paper litter the eagles-nest perched high above the stands. Aged, yellow control boxes operating the scoreboard and clock flash their analogue red LEDs alarmingly and intrusively. Only the edges of the vintage, leather stools are used by the scorer and timekeeper; the scorebox is no place to sit in comfort despite its relative warmth. Snacks and coffee sit safely away from the equipment, but close at hand for the occasional 20 second break. The computer hums and grinds to process the demands of the byzantine excel spreadsheet.

This isn’t scoring a cricket match – an ice hockey game moves at the speed of the ref’s whistle (which is the speed of sound, so it’s pretty fast.)

With the growth of beer-league hockey in Melbourne, the league should not have been surprised by the massive response to their call for timekeepers and scorekeepers in the summer league.

I answered the call to give back to the league which I have been only taking from so far. After volunteering, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a (modestly) paid gig. The pay nearly covers the cost of the non-kosher snacks (for wannabe hockey athletes at least) consumed within the box.

Working in the box has given me a new appreciation for the support structure required to play hockey, and the importance of doing things right; like wearing clear and consistent numbers on your uniform, handing in proper team sheets, and only playing registered players. In a recent game, the numbers on one player’s back, arms and helmet didn’t match – and they wonder (and complain) how the ref may wrongly attribute a goal.

Rookies Rachael Hands and Lliam "Apollo" Patrick man the scorer's box during a Rookies v IBM social game.

Rookies Rachael Hands and Liam “Apollo” Patrick man the scorer’s box during a Rookies v IBM social game.

The box requires two people. The time keeper is predominantly in charge of keeping the clock running, keeping the scoreboard up to date, displaying penalties and, at Oakleigh, controlling the walkie-talkie which serves as our only link to the ref. The score keeper operates the flawlessly macro-ed score sheet. Both need to watch and record all shots on goal – a call requiring consensus, as not every goalie’s ‘save’ is a shot on goal.*

You begin to appreciate the teams that play cleanly – minimizing penalties, playing around the opposition and not through them. You notice the teams that continually lob pucks to the net, like a prisoner in solitary confinement with only a tennis ball. You start to feel how each team constructs, and reconstructs, their lines through the game. You see how goals and assists are not the golden metric against which to measure a player’s skill.

With all the sound and fury of a hockey game below you, from your cloistered, anonymous, impartial isolation, you can see the beauty of the game in its rarer moments. It’s a haven from the regular week; removed from quotidian mediocrity. A Zen Koan, not requiring anything from you but the application of the rules. No hype, not fans; just the game itself.

But mostly, it’s a pleasing way to spend a Thursday night, or a lazy Sunday afternoon; watching hockey from a heated room.

*A shot is counted only if, with the goalie removed, it would have been a goal. Brilliantly catching a puck that was not going straight into the net unfortunately does not count.

A final game sheet, as produced by the scorers from every official IHV game. Oh, wait, did I happen to pick one out where No. 4 (Nicko Place) got an assist and an unassisted goal for the Interceptors? Wow, what are the odds?

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: Brendan Parsons, Icehouse, IHV, Liam Patrick, nick, nicko, nicko place, Oakleigh, place, Rachael Hands, scorers

The end of summer

March 11, 2013 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

Interceptors get ready, before our final game.

Well, somebody had to say it. And, of course, guess who it was.

It was last night, Sunday evening, in the middle of a long weekend. About 6.30 pm, in the Ghetto, which is what we fondly call the Oakleigh ice rink. Yet again, the mighty Interceptors had been handed the tiny, claustrophobic changing room 4, where our bags end up on top of one another because it’s so crowded and we have to take turns sitting on the tiny wooden benches to lace our skates. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

I looked around the room at my team and felt a wave of emotion. “Aw, Nicko’s getting all mushy,” said Alex, true to form, and I shrugged and laughed but said, yeah. Actually. I am.

“I just want us all to take a moment to consider that this team will never play together again,” I said to the ‘Ceptors. And it was true. Whatever future is to unfold, it will never see that group of players combine again.

Given how close we have become as a team, as a little band of warriors, this was no small thing.

At least one player, Savv, is trying his luck in the winter league draft (if you play winter, you can’t play summer) and he’s so good there’s no way he won’t be snapped up. Dan ‘Yoda’ Byrne, a spiritual leader and my fellow alternate captain, is moving to Newcastle with his family in a month. So that’s two. I have no doubt that by the time we have to start actually committing to teams for next summer’s competition, other players will have been injured, or drifted away from the sport, or decided to play with friends in other teams or want more ice time than you get in our over-crowded line-up, or any of the other many reasons why they might not don the Interceptor jersey for the 2013-14 campaign. As Big Cat and I drove out to Oakleigh, through Melbourne’s endless summer heat, I pondered if we would even ever play as teammates again, beyond social matches and scrimmages?

The Ceptors, after one of our games this summer.

I have no idea if Big Cat or the rest of the team was as aware of this as I was last night. My long career as a journo, covering team sports, had seen me observe this moment over and over again. Every AFL season, I watch Richmond’s last game and feel that slight sadness, that this team of young men, mates playing in front of 80,000 people at the MCG, having the time of their fucking lives, will never form as a unit again. Last year, the point was tragically underlined when John McCarthy, a player from that last Richmond v Port Adelaide game – a scrappy, unlikely draw at the MCG – died in mysterious circumstances on the Power’s end-of-season trip to Las Vegas a couple of weeks later.

Even away from a freak accident like that, players come and go. The Melbourne Ice team that won the famous three-peat grand final last year has lost several players (imports Matt Korthuis and Doug Wilson Jnr, for starters) and will gain new faces this season. The Sydney Swans team that won the flag in that classic against Hawthorn is already changed for a new season. With the Red Wings, I don’t have this same sense of ownership of a team as a whole because players can be and are traded in and out even mid-season. It’s a different vibe, when players are thrown out of and onto the bus as it rolls along. In football and local hockey, this is not the case, and I prefer our sporting model to the NHL. Each year, I find myself watching Round 22, aware that Tiger rookies and players I have invested in, urged on and despaired over, wanted to be great and wondered if they’ll make it, will receive that dreaded call into the footy manager’s office a few days after the last game, to be told they’re out. Or will retire. Or, their body just can’t go again. Something like a quarter of the listed 700 AFL players across all clubs fall out of the sport and are replaced each year.

Will it be the same in ice hockey, Summer League Rec D? With the Ceptors, the reality is that we will move in directions over the next six months, and it was important to acknowledge it before we hit the ice. Just enjoy this moment where our team – such a close, happy, enthusiastic, bonded team – would strap on our armour for one last tilt.

Against the league’s top side, and with the Fighters’ Nate Pedretti, one of the better goalies in the league, filling in. What could go wrong?

Actually, for our formidable opponents, the Wolverines, pretty much everything. A bunch of their players didn’t show up (far too much room to spread out in their palatial changing room, I’d imagine) and eventually they were forced to forfeit because they couldn’t come up with the bare minimum number of players to compete, under IHV rules. The Interceptors won on a forfeit, giving us a final 8-7 win-loss record for the season and solidifying us in seventh place in the league; almost exactly where I reckon we should sit and a very decent effort for our first season. Hardly any of us had played truly competitive hockey before this summer, so we held up well, I reckon. Especially for a team that barely got to train together because of scheduling gremlins.

This sounds selfish but the forfeit turned out to be a nice way to end the season. If it had been an official match, I think the Wolverines would have dismantled us – even without refs and playing a friendly scrimmage (because, shit, we were all there and armoured up and on the ice, so why not?) they scored freely and probably beat us about 10-3, but nobody really kept count. I didn’t anyway. Maybe Jay, our goalie, knows how many times he faced down their rampaging No. 5 on a solo breakaway and with our defence trailing behind him. Sorry, Jay.

Period break, versus the Fighters last week.

On the whole, the unofficial nature of the match took all the competitive pressure off. We could just play as a team one last time for fun, and enjoying the ice time. A trademark Oakleigh fog began to settle over the third period as the heat outside the shed battled the coldness of the slushy ice.

I managed to score our third goal and it was a classic example of how an unofficial scrimmage differs from a genuine match.

A puck spilled to the left hand side of Nate, their goalie. I was the first player there (I know, right!) and actually had time to think of how I would usually handle this situation. I think my backhand is serviceable and so I would normally use it to sweep the puck back behind my left leg to the slot, hoping an Interceptor was crashing the net to slot home the blind pass.

This is awesome if it works, but it does also mean you’re passing blind to centre ice, which is a no-no, if the defence can then sweep away up the centre lane.

This time, I had that fraction of a second to devise a different plan. I braked hard, stopping the puck, and sliding my body past it as I hockey-stopped to finish with the puck on my forehand. No real gap between the near goalpost and Nate’s left pad, but what the Hell. I shot, and somehow found that zone of uncertainty. I’m not even sure if it was that first shot that went in, squeezing into that fragment of a gap. I followed the puck and it was lying between Nate’s legs as he looked for it. I poked it into the net, to make sure of the goal.

Like I said, in a genuine game, with high stakes and refs and the Wolverines fielding a less tired, more complete team, maybe I wouldn’t have had the window for all of that to occur? Maybe I would have arrived at that puck under intense defensive pressure and swiped at it, backhand and blind, while I could? Who can say.

As it is, I finished the season with one officially recorded goal, but actually three goals in summer league play, which I’m happy with, given I started the season genuinely wondering if I would score even once. I got a few assists, I improved a lot in my game play, my positioning and my sheer skating. I loved being an AC of my team and I loved feeling part of a genuine team, something I haven’t experienced – apart from the ragtag brotherhood that is The Bang footy – for a long time. Deep in my forties, I had every right to think I would never feel that team spirit again.

High-fiving the bench: we Interceptors have always been good at celebrating goals.

On Facebook, after the game, Interceptors poured out their emotion at the season being over, at the reality that we won’t assemble as a team, apart from at the presentation night in a few weeks. A bunch of us are carrying knees or other ailments. Big Cat and I hung our black bowties, celebrating Charlie Srour, in safe places until next season.Then went out drinking with the hockey crowd.

I woke late, on a public holiday Monday, watched the fitful Red Wings lurch to a shoot-out loss against the Blue jackets, cursed some, staggered out of bed, hung out my armour in the heat and rode my bike down to Brunswick Street cafes for coffee and over-priced eggs.

In what’s left of this afternoon, I’ll go to the gym, maybe hit the Fitzroy Back Beach (pool), catch a movie, think again about how I organize that MRI for my knee, and then start to tune in on Wednesday night. That’s dev league at the Icehouse or, as I like to call it, the Happy Scrimmage Club, with Army, Tommy and Lliam.

A few ‘Ceptors will be out there, wearing red or black, happily beating each other up. Maybe there’ll be a Wolverine, maybe some Ice Wolves, Fighters, TigerSharks, Braves, Sharks, Demons, Devils and Jets. Possibly even a Nite Owl. I can’t keep exact track of who played for which teams in summer league. And now, apart from those who made the play-offs, it really doesn’t matter.

We’re all the one band of brothers and sisters.

We’ll laugh and collide and skate and shoot and curse and whinge and chase that puck all over the Henke Rink, like we do every Wednesday.

Only 50 hours to wait.

After the game: The original Interceptors team members have left the building, forever.

And we’re gone.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: Big Cat Place, dan byrne, henke rink, interceptors, nate pedretti, nick place, nicko, nicko place, pete savvides, place, summer league, wolverines

The walking wounded

February 11, 2013 by Nicko Place 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.

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.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: big cat, Big Cat Place, detroit, injuries, interceptors, jay hellis, nick, nick place, nicko, nicko place, Oakleigh, Olympic Rink, place, red wings

Friday on my mind

January 29, 2013 by Nicko Place Leave a Comment

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

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.

Filed Under: Ice hockey Tagged With: army, big cat, fun, hockey, Jack Hammet, jake adamsons, jason baclig, mackquist, mark stone, matt armstrong, nick place, nicko, nicko place, place