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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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Why do I play hockey? Ask the laddergoat.

October 29, 2012 by 5 Comments

“Why do you play hockey?”

I get asked that a lot. Why hockey?

Yesterday, I walked blinking into the sun after watching the documentary, Detropia, about the death and potential rebirth of Detroit.

As I left Fed Square, still in that post-cinema zone-out, a woman crossed my path who had blood pouring from both sides of her mouth. Her skin was deathly pale. She had a severed human hand on a chain around her neck. Her partners, also with blood-stained faces, and blood-rimmed eyes, were chatting, waiting for the light to change. Cops directed traffic, not even glancing at the trio.

By Spring Street, the pedestrians had changed into the standard bridal couples near the Parliament House steps, and three people in purple and green costumes, with some kind of flower attachments, including a huge hanging flower suspended from the purple guy’s head.

At the Exhibition Buildings, dozens of the most magnificent vintage and veteran cars were queued up, waiting to hit Nicholson Street. Chargers, Holdens, Porsches, too many brands and shapes and sizes for me to know or care about, but I’d wished I’d been driving the Karmann Ghia, to be briefly among them.

Detropia.

In Detropia, an artist talks about moving to Detroit, because he was able to buy a loft apartment – a really good one – for $25,000, and to keep a studio nearby for his art. He and his girlfriend are pictured, wearing golden spray-painted gas masks, and he in a suit and tie, the tie with a big gold dollar sign, standing by a Detroit freeway with a sign: “Give us all your money $”

Random.

Motown locals, who tend to be no-bullshit people, are shown frowning and staring out the car windows, and eventually one female passenger yells: “What the fuck? I mean what the fuck?”

It seems a fair question.

Meanwhile, a Detroit opera singer walks through the city’s empty decaying Grand Central station, practicing his vocal range.

Not a single mention of the Red Wings hockey team, which was disappointing. Opera instead of hockey as an expression of Detroit? Even more random. Or maybe just symbolic given the stupid NHL lock-out, a rich people’s game, which is depriving Detroit’s passionate fans of their team, of some escapism from their lives.

On Saturday night, my hockey team won 7-0 over an inexperienced and undermanned Sharks outfit, in Summer League Rec D. I played ok – managed to get two assists while falling back into bad habits like inside edge skating, legs too far apart, and not keeping two hands on my stick. Although, looking at Jess Hough’s pictures from the game, I might be being too harsh … my feet are moving in most shots. Anyway, that’s the great thing about team sport. It’s about something bigger than just you and your form. I walked into our locker room, where the Philadelphia Flyers’ favourite post-victory song, ‘Knock Knock (Let ‘Em In)’, was already pumping. Everybody excited, happy but without the urgency and adrenalin of our first ever game, a 4-2 win over the Ice Wolves team the week before. I felt I had lacked fluency in the game, spending too long between shifts on the bench, not getting my legs moving, but found other ways to contribute, whether delivering my now trademark passes to the slot, or upper-body duke-outs with the goalie and defenders (ended up flat on my back at one point – big defender), and providing a screen to release a teammate for a goal at one stage. Victory was good.

Whipping a pass to the slot, against the Sharks. Pic: Jess PowerHough

I was cheered off the ice by Australia’s No 1 Kylie Minogue impersonator, an unlikely Facebook friend, Red Wing fan and skating enthusiast who’d shown up to watch after reading my many hockey posts on Facebook or the blog. She told me about being in Las Vegas last year, riding a taxi through the desert to an ice rink in Las Vegas – one most of the locals wouldn’t even know existed. In the desert??? Buying skates crazy cheap and zooming around the ice in that mad city. Random.

Reading the paper overnight, two stories caught my eye. One was about a woman who was bludgeoned to death in her own home a while ago; the same house which has now been robbed and her ashes stolen. Her grieving family, not unreasonably, called a press conference to say: WTF? In New York, a cop has been charged with aiming to torture, kill and eat women of that city.

On Saturday night, Big Cat and I walked into Carlton, not known as a sea port, to hockey player and gad about town Brendan Parson’s birthday drinks at a pub with a seafaring theme. Pictures of potential Moby Dick cast members on the wall, guys posing next to massive fish. So random.

Then the next day, I found myself literally walking on street art bees scattered on the tarmac of the Fed Square car park. That night I surfed Foxtel’s random selection of shows about people hunting pigs, or killer tuna, or running a Detroit pawn broking shop (“Hardcore Pawn” – look it up. Oh boy) or being judged for their looks or dancing or singing or anything else that can potentially humiliate them for other people’s entertainment. As I channel surfed, a couple of kilometers away, at the top of Brunswick Street, in the secret, secure part of St Vincent’s hospital, reached via a tunnel, in the specialist ward for hardcore prisoners, the guy accused of killing a young Irish woman in Brunswick recently was being treated after reportedly trying to take his own life. I tried to imagine the weeks so far in his jail cell. Faced with the randomness and pointlessness and horror of the crime? Nowhere to hide. On the news, it was mentioned that a strange multi-murder in Switzerland had finally been found to have links to Saddam Hussein. Say, huh? As I type, a super storm is moving in on New York City, for the second time in two years and this one is looking to be even bigger and faster and nastier. My friend, Chelsea, having just arrived there in time to meet a hurricane.

Randomness swirling all around me. So many angles to the world.

Chloé and I ride our bikes down Brunswick Street on a Sunday night and a woman rides the other way, in a pink dress, with leaves and jewels and I can’t work out if her painted face is supposed to be fairy or Halloween, hippie or just because? On Facebook, a friend Jay is despondent because he didn’t shoot well over the weekend, dressed in full armour and charging around a semi-pro paintball arena. Fake killing anything that moved. Something he is very good at. Another random way to spend a weekend.

So many threads and interests and people doing crazy shit or following strange passions and urges and needs and thrills and causes and strands.

And I walk among it all, watching, laughing, sighing, horrified, ecstatic, unmoved and delighted.

You ask why do I play hockey, here in Melbourne, half a world away from anything resembling frozen lakes and Canadian winter?

Well, shit, it’s a random world.

Why the hell not?

(Anybody wondering what the laddergoat had to do with this post should watch the first four minutes of this video.)

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Sub-standard skating in context

October 1, 2012 by 1 Comment

Spitfires v Tigersharks. Waiting for a whistle to start things off. Pic: Zac Arato.

Quite the weekend. In Melbourne, a classic AFL grand final took everybody’s mind off the unspeakably horrific murder of Jill Meagher, although in her local hood, Brunswick, they did what Brunswick people do and discussed “yarn-bombing a tree” as a tribute to her. Well played, Swans, and thank you for the distraction.

In Sydney, fuckwit shock jock Alan Jones said Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s father had “died of shame” when he passed away a few weeks ago, because his daughter was such a liar. A paid-up dinner of Young Liberals chortled and applauded. Sponsors are now pulling out of his radio show but what’s the bet he isn’t even sacked?

Big Cat Place prepares for a face-off against the Tigersharks.

Overseas, things were even stranger. American being America, there was a report of a man in a black ski mask being spotted near a window and so a neighbor strode out, invoking his goddamn Constitutional Right to bear arms and to defend property, and shot the intruder dead. Then took off the balaclava and found out it was his 15-year-old son.  This was on the same day that Fox News America was busy following a police car chase in Arizona after some guy had carjacked a vehicle and taken off. The coverage was being enjoyed by the Fox audience right up until the bad guy stopped his car, got out and shot himself in the head, live on national TV. “We really messed up,” a Fox spokesman said.  Meanwhile in Manchester, Britain, two female police – unarmed because that’s how the Brits roll – were shot down by a psycho who had phoned in his own burglary to attract them, and then turned himself into the local police station. In one report on that story, it was pointed out that five British police have been killed by gunfire in the past decade. In the same period, 544 American police have been slain. Over the weekend, of course, in Tennessee, in the USA, there was also a conference of those opposed to gun control. “In a perfect world, without carry permits, anybody ought to be able to own a gun and anybody ought to be able to carry a gun,” said enthusiast Mike Crow.

The point of all this is to provide context to my hockey battles of the weekend. I played twice and was mildly frustrated both times at how my skating is going, or not going, depending on how you look at it. In both games, I was serviceable, didn’t suck – and in the first game, on Friday night, my passing, especially to Big Cat in the forward line, was really happening.

Several of my hockey mates on the move in Spitfires v Tigersharks action. Pic: Zac Arato.

But I still need to work on moving my feet. I still need to get those first few quick steps to put distance between me and back-checkers on a breakaway.

Even so, driving home on Sunday night, I was very aware that my world and the wider world had bigger issues than whether I can train myself to have faster wheels by the time summer league starts in a fortnight. Context can be a good thing sometimes.

On Sunday, a bunch of our new summer team, The Spitfires, took on another actual team, the TigerSharks. This was my first time playing against players I didn’t really know, against genuine opposition.

Sure, I skated onto the ice to take a face-off and said, “Oh, hi, Brendan,” to Brendan Parsons, facing me across the red dot (he duly kicked my arse in getting the puck away) and then said, “Oh hi, Georgia,” to Georgia Giblin, the TigerSharks’ other centre I faced. And said hi to Dan and Mark and others I knew on that team … but honestly, really, there were people playing who I didn’t know, and therefore it was a good test of where our team was at, and where I was at.

Short answer: still not a good enough skater to play centre now we’re playing for real. On a wing, I’m okay, and I’m getting better, but I have to get to more general sessions, just to keep my legs getting faster.

The Spitfires team listen to our coach for the day, Melbourne Ice player Austin McKenzie. It’s quite possible he was saying: “Kittens? Really? Kittens? Was that to get the chicks?” Pic: Zac Arato

Hockey remains a lot of fun though. It was a very clean game on Sunday; hard-fought but with great spirit. Just the way it should be. I got to share a line with Liam Patrick,  my friendly rival, Apollo Creed to my Rocky,  who excelled by yelling the opposition team’s name instead of our own as we did a group gloves-together-inspirational-yell thing at the start of the third period. “I honestly didn’t mean that,” he said as we prepared for the face-off. I told Georgia, newly named among the Melbourne Ice women’s team and now an intimidating presence staring at me across the face-off dot. “For real?” she asked, wondering what she was up against. My distraction didn’t work; I think she won that one.

Even so, the Spitfires won the day. We somehow jumped to a three goal lead in the opening few minutes (it turned out the TigerSharks hadn’t really been together, as a team, on the ice at all since last summer season and had a lot of ring rust, as boxers call it). Once they woke up, it was a nil-all draw, but we had lots of chances and played well.

Can’t wait for the actual season to start now, in two weeks.

But in the meantime, I’ll distract myself by watching the wider world and scratching my head about bigger issues. Like how Melbourne is mourning Jill Meagher’s murder, or how Alan Jones can be such a dickhead after so many years on Earth, or even what the business plan is behind opening a Victoria’s Secret store at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium? Life is never boring.

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This shit just got real

September 25, 2012 by 7 Comments

Proof that I don’t only go the knuckle these days. Me just getting the pass away in Dev League before James Oliver pounces. Pic: Jack Hammet

An actor/performer friend of mine, Bert Labonte won a Helpmann Award this week, for brilliant work on stage. He fully deserves it. Another friend, Chelsea Roffey, just got named to goal umpire the AFL Grand Final on Saturday. The first woman ever to achieve that honour. I couldn’t be more happy for her. Another friend just finished a film with Robert Duvall, another showed me his latest novel last week and my partner, Chloe, is well on her way to producing Hollywood blockbusters.

Me? I was getting led off the tiny, dilapidated Oakleigh ice rink on Sunday by a member of the Melbourne Ice hockey team, on this occasion moonlighting as a referee, to sit in the penalty box. My first-ever official penalty in a hockey game. So proud.

It was only a one minute penalty because in this Spitfires practice match between my team, the Interceptors, and the Fighters, the periods were short. Even so, the Fighters scored while I was sitting on the little blue bench, forcing my team into an unfamiliar penalty kill. Oops.

So tangling my stick in the legs of a Fighter as we battled for the puck wasn’t my finest moment but it was completely accidental, and the secret guilty truth was that I enjoyed feeling kind of bad-ass being escorted from the ice.

What was worrying was that on both benches, my friends were apparently shaking their head and thinking or even saying: “Oh no, it’s Nicko.”

Because it’s been a strange few weeks since I last blogged. Not just a greater intensity at work, and the small matter of a very tight deadline for the difficult third edit of the 80,000 words that will turn into my first adult crime novel when it’s finally published in March (hence the absence from blogging), but a heightened level of aggression and bizarre activity on and off the ice (thankfully, not always involving me).

In Intermediate Class, words have been exchanged as people got sick of ‘attitude’ among classmates, or of blatant disrespect. In Dev League, a few hits have been harder than is reasonable and there has been some downright nasty play, such as a smallish female player being boarded, and another player repeatedly having shorts tugged from behind. Lots of Facebook discussion asking people to cool it and play nice.

Last Wednesday, we had our final week of term, which means ‘scrimmage’ for Intermediate, and Lliam Webster, serene and peaceful after playing like a demon to help secure Melbourne Ice’s three-peat not long before, sat on the bench in his beanie and Icehouse tracksuit top, shook his head and observed, “That’s hilarious.”

Vinnie Hughes’ infamous fight earlier this year. It really shouldn’t happen in hockey school. Pic: me.

“What is?” I panted, fresh from a shift. Watching two players puffing their chests out on the far boards.

“When you guys try to act tough,” he said.

I agreed with him. I have always thought this. My eyebrow has raised many times towards the dick-swingers among my fellow hockey students who talk a big game when it comes to the prospect of on-ice violence, about dropping the gloves or about Kronwalling. Because the absolute truth is that 99 per cent of us are NEVER going to have to back up such talk. Maybe one or two of the several hundred hockey students in Melbourne will be a natural, be a gun, and somehow get to the Melbourne Ice kind of level where full contact hockey can occur. Even then, it’s actually not supposed to. At AIHL level you can be boarded, can fully collide (Lliam coaching: “In this situation for us, we have to choose, are we going to go for the puck or take the body? For you, it’s only the puck”) but you’re not supposed to fight. Of course, fights occur and players are thrown out for weeks (Vinnie Hughes and then Joey Hughes this season) because it’s intense and hard and for real at that level.

Us? We’re in Development League. L-Plates or P-Plates metaphorically around our neck, and the best we can hope for is a likely hockey career in summer recreational league, or maybe even winter, where hitting, punching, intense take-the-body boarding is still not allowed.

So any tough talk is only that. Or should be. Which is a relief for us middle-aged rookies.

Mid-year, I wandered up to Army, and asked how many fights he had been in during his career? Roughly? Hoping he could narrow it down to the nearest hundred maybe. Matt Armstrong, Canadian, now 15 years or so into a professional/semi-professional hockey career, squinting as he considered the question. Finally, saying: ‘Um, geez, I dunno … probably … ten.”

“Ten?” I said. “Ten fights your entire career?”

“Yeah, about that. Joey would have had more.”

I turned to Lliam. He was already mentally calculating … finally said: “I think five.”

The big bad “Respect the beard” hard man of the Melbourne Ice. Five career fights. Seriously?

“Well, yeah, drop the gloves, actually ‘we’re gonna go’ fights? Five tops, probably.”

But what about all those times you’ve jumped the boards, charged out there, ready to defend a teammate?

Mostly, our hockey is getting more intense in lots of good ways. Pic: Jack Hammet

“Well, nothing much happens, usually. You push and shove, make a presence. You don’t actually fight,” he said. “Joey would have had more.”

So I had to ask Joey, just for journalistic credibility if nothing else. At Oakleigh on a Friday, I posed the question and Joey hated me asking, I could tell. Could see it heading straight to the blog as a headline.

But I really like Joey. He shirks nothing and respects everybody’s hockey journey as he hopes they respect his. He looked me right in the eye, with those dark eyes of his, and said: “Look, I’m not proud of this, ok? The number is probably 60, but you have to understand I’ve had a different career to those guys.”

Siting on the Oakleigh boards, he explained it and he was right. His career is different. Army played almost all his hockey in Canada and then Europe, before coming to Australia for the lifestyle. Worked out Melbourne Ice was a way to scratch the hockey itch while enjoying Australia as a place to settle. In Canada and Europe, fighting is not common – especially in European leagues. Yes, you protect yourself from hits, yes, you occasionally “man up” as Army put it one day, but you don’t go onto the ice expecting UFC action.

Lliam, likewise, in his international stints, hasn’t played much in North American leagues where fighting is common. Or hadn’t felt a need to prove his toughness when he did. Joey had, from a young age. Told me about turning up at teams where there was fighting in camp, just to see who was the real deal, to see if this cocky Australian freak had backbone. Joey fought his way to credibility and, as a younger man, testosterone flying, no doubt felt like a warrior as he walked down the street of pure hockey towns, looking people in the eye because 1. He had proven he could play and 2. he wasn’t scared to fight. A long, long way from the Olympic rink in Oakleigh.

But that was a different time and that’s why Joey doesn’t like to be asked about it, to appear to glorify it, even though he was decent enough to answer my query. He doesn’t go looking for fights these days, even if he was rubbed out for six weeks or something in the season just gone for taking on the entire Sydney Ice Dogs bench. The way I heard it, and not from Joey, he was being held by a referee and an Ice Dog hit him with a huge uppercut to the face, while Joey could not protect himself. A very cheap shot, at which point Joey took issue with the situation, shall we say.

Like father, like son? My younger son, Macklin (aka Mackqvist, in Red Wings jersey, of course), takes out an opponent on the boards then passes from his knees. Yes, he’s a Place, alright … Pic: me.

So that is where things stand regarding hockey fighting. Way over-rated, much rarer than anybody outside of hockey believes. Even more rare if you exclude the NHL where it definitely remains part of The Show in certain situations.

And then there’s last Wednesday when I had enough of getting pushed, held, niggled by my Interceptors teammate, Michael Donohue, playing for the opposition in dev league this night, and decided to give one back the other way. Possibly a little crude in the execution because I’m not experienced in such matters, but making my point. Donohue, always a mad man, usually in a happy way, dropped the gloves and came after me and I found myself testing my new skating speed, thanks to Army, Lliam and Joey’s stride lessons, as fast as I could to stay away from him until he tired chasing me. He said later, as we laughed in the rooms, that he only ever intended to push me over in response (“What else was I going to do? You were wearing a face cage?”) and I finished my shift as he was thrown out of the game.

Back on the bench, Lliam Webster was smiling quietly, as I returned; a full hour after his “That’s hilarious’ observation.

“I know that appeared cowardly,” I said. “But I did the right thing, yeah? You’re not supposed to fight in dev league.”

“You looked incredibly cowardly,” Lliam clarified. “But yes, you did the right thing.”

I’m convinced that dev league refs should call penalties – even if only sending people off the ice if they transgress – to stop everybody taking liberties because nothing short of a chainsaw attack seems to get called. Not being pulled up for hooking, tripping, checking etc, is teaching everybody, especially defenders, bad habits.

Big Cat shows how it should be done: flying feet and puck control. Pic: Jack Hammet

But the tension and aggression of the past few weeks has felt like more than that. There have been insensitive comments in change-rooms, and on the ice, as well as increasingly physical play. Is it just something in the air? Something in our veins? Is it the fact that summer league is around the corner and people are insecure, or nervous? Real competition at last after two years of thinking about it?

Dunno. All I know is that I know the penalty I gave away on Sunday was not even vaguely malicious on my part; just an agricultural and slightly inept puck-attack. Luckily my “victim”, James Oliver, knew that too, wasn’t hurt and held no grudge.

Shit happens on the ice, but we all need to retain the right spirit. The great news, alongside all this turbulence, is that my group of Rookies has taken our hockey to new levels in the past couple of months. You can literally see the improvement, as we train as a team under Martin Kutek and the Next Level coaches, or push Dev League harder and harder. I feel like a hockey player now, not just a wobbly wannabe (any comments on this topic will be deleted).

Hockey is currently taking out Sundays and Monday nights, keeping me away from my beloved Bang footy, and boxing classes, which bites, as well as eating into non-hockey windows, but as summer league approaches, I’m prepared to devote myself. I need to and I want to. I’m loving my team, loving meshing as a group, and supporting each other. Loving playing alongside Kittens aka Big Cat, for what, for all I know, may be our only summer campaign together before he gets good enough to go to Winter comp. I want no part of politics, awkward conversations, or needing to physically stand up to people with tough guy delusions on the ice.

Hopefully everybody else is feeling the same way.

We all need to chill out, smile and enjoy. Thrive on getting better, not get tense because actual competition awaits. We’re about to join Summer League and play for real. It’s supposed to be fun, and it is.

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Love for Lokomotiv

September 8, 2012 by 2 Comments

It’s one year today since hockey suffered probably its greatest disaster, when a Russian plane failed to take off, killing the entire Lokomotiv hockey team.

The ‘Love for Lokomotiv’ wristband. They were commissioned and sold by the wives and girlfriends of NHL players, to raise money for the families of those killed in the crash.

I’m wearing my red “Love for Lokomotiv” wristband, bought to help support the families of those killed in the crash.

I thought it would be a good time to revisit the blog I wrote that day; at a time where I was struck by the randomness of life and death, just as I was about to fly off for my first manta ray adventure and also had an amazing American adventure looming, with my boys. But also a time when my heart was on a difficult road that led to much loss and sadness, which still reverberates. I had also recently received my feather tattoo, deliberately marking the wings of fate. So it was a strange time. In fact, man, I can’t believe it was only a year ago.

Anyway, the lessons of the Lokomotiv crash ring as true today as they did then. RIP the fallen Red Wings, and the others on that plane.

https://nickdoeshockey.com/2011/09/08/a-matter-of-life-death/

Live large, hockey fans. Take bites out of life. None of us know how long we have.

Nicko

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A day is a long time in skating

August 31, 2012 by 2 Comments

By Nicko

On Wednesday night, on the Henke rink, in Dev League, I had one of those tiny moments that can give you hope on a crazy quest – like trying to become a hockey player in your forties.

Wayne McBride is a very decent player, despite the remorseless shit we throw at one another, and he took off on a breakaway, with another good skater, Nicole Cliff, alongside him.

Wayne was hammering up the boards but here came the unlikely figure of Nicko Place, new stride flying, to somehow get past Nicole and close Wayne down against the boards as he flew through the blue line.

For every night like this …

Wow, I thought, as I staggered to the bench moments later. Who knew I could backcheck, and against quality players?

The only reason I’m bragging about this is because it was a rare moment of skating proficiency, and even more so given how I remorselessly sucked at Oakleigh 23 hours later. We had our first team training for the Spitfires; both the Fighters and Interceptor teams on the ice – well, about half of our Interceptor team thanks to the lurgy sweeping around Melbourne, and a few players being away at the snow or on other adventures.

I was terrible; to the point that I felt embarrassed in front of the coaches of the night, Next Level’s Martin Kutek and Tony Theobald. My crossovers were rudimentary, my transitions clumsy, my positioning and thinking sluggish. What was wrong with me?

Those guys have put time and energy into me on several Friday nights and now I show up, as acting captain of the Interceptors, no less, barely able to remain vertical on my skates.

I’m exaggerating, but not much. I’ve felt bad that Friday nights have proven, as I feared, to be a close to impossible night for me, so I haven’t been able to take advantage of the generous efforts of Joey Hughes, Martin, Tony and Scott Corbett to push my skating to, yes, the next level. Now, I finally turn up with my team, and have a shocker.

… there can still be a night like this.

“Skate, Nicko, skate!” Martin kept saying and I was trying hard not to be flat-footed, but it was one of those nights where I had to will myself to move. Was a step slow for passes. Was accused of being lazy – and oh, I hate that. For my many often-confessed faults as a skater, or hockey player, I hate being thought of as lazy.

Maybe, just maybe, my ageing legs weren’t up for skating hard a night after Wednesday’s two hours of Intermediate/dev league and a 2 am sleep time? Is that what went wrong? I’m not conceding that. I pride myself on generally skating as hard as everybody 20 years younger and unless this proves a trend, I’m not factoring that excuse.

Although … if it wasn’t that, well then, shit, it was just plain embarrassing. I had hit the ice hard a couple of times the night before, including once where I rattled my helmet, crashing the goalie in a slot-battle late in the match, which left me bruised up my back and with a headache. But it wasn’t anything that should have left me unable to move my feet or balance on a blade the next evening.

A bunch of Melbourne’s hockey community are headed to Newcastle on the weekend for the AIHL finals (Go Ice!), which may mean slightly less crowded ice for those of us who stay behind. Maybe I can get a stick & puck session in on Sunday, to try and rediscover my mojo?

Or maybe I should just put on my old pork pie journo’s hat, and raise a glass or 12 to all the departing hacks from News Ltd and Fairfax, which is finally happening for real. A major piss-up is happening tonight, which will be the Melbourne media equivalent of a dead cop wake in Baltimore, as portrayed in “The Wire“. Toasts, speeches, laughs and memories as journos with 20 or 30 years on the clock walk out the door.

There’s a lot of fear in my industry at the moment. A lot of uncertainty. Dozens of people who have been incredibly skilled, intelligent, professional, loyal writers, editors, sub-editors, layout subs, photographers, graphic artists or other crucial cogs in the newspaper machine for decades are suddenly staring at an unexpected future. Hopefully it turns out to be a future of new opportunities and adventures.

Change is something some people embrace better than others. I’ve always been lucky in that my natural curiosity and sense of adventure has pushed me into trying new things and not becoming set in my ways and I was talking to a media colleague earlier this week about how highly I would recommend taking on a wildly challenging new activity (such as, say, hockey, or skiing, or scuba, or a martial art, or anything else that gets the blood pumping) for anybody in their late 30s/early 40s. It’s a great gear change to keep the rest of your life invigorated.

But that was a choice for me. It’s much harder when change is forced on you and you’re kicked out of the safety of what you know.

The Melbourne media tonight might not break into “I’m a freeborn man of the USA“, crowded around a body on a pool table, but there will be a sense of change and of the reality that things will never be the same.

But, fellow hacks, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Life can be better, and every day is a new day. Which is lucky, given a man’s skating can switch from encouraging to embarrassing in the space of a day. Skate to where the puck will be, not where it is. We have team training again on Monday. Watch me go.

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Monday notebook: Rookie triumph, the Jets and lockouts.

August 27, 2012 by 2 Comments

by Nicko

Friday night lights

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

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

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

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

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

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

Game winner: Aimee “Christmas Angel” Hough.

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

We get out to an 8-6 lead.

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

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

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

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

Ready for take-off

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

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

Nicko in flight, for the Rookies.

Well played, Theresa.

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

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

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

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

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

NHL lock-out looks likely

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

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

Monday question: Do Wolverine claws beat harsh advice?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brought to you by the letter S, for Snap!

 

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

 

 

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I heart hockey because …

August 9, 2012 by 11 Comments

By Nicko

From the past few weeks, in no particular order:

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

The Four Horsemen of the Mustang Apocalypse. Full respect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

Rookies invade the balcony for the Mustangs game.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’re teenagers again. I love it.

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

Goon: crude but funny.

One scene:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We lose by a goal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Mortality, old dogs and hockey players

August 7, 2012 by 1 Comment

By Nicko

Fly Dog The Magnificent just briefly woke. She’s curled up on her bed, to the right of my desk. Waking involved staggering to her feet, blinking at me through a tangle of blonde fur, turning in a 360 or two and then settling back down, with a contented groan. Along the way, I could see her dodgy back leg was a little stiff, slightly favoured on the turns. Now, she’s gently snoring.

Sleepy Fly Dog submits to photo, in return for tummy rub.

I can see her ageing, my beautiful pooch. That’s the thing with pets (apart from maybe a turtle or a cockatoo – which, sadly, I can’t condone because they should be wild); they age even faster than us humans. I’ve long believed the most important function of a good cat or dog is to a) give kids unconditional love without judgement or complaint, and b) to die. Because for most of us, facing the death of a loved one is bewildering and painful and, well, just enormous. I know it sounds grim but pets are pre-season training for children, for all the deaths to come.

Four decades into my journey, death and I are acquainted, more than I would like, but then again, where does that line begin or end? Both my parents remain alive, and my sister, my sons and those I would regard as my closest friends, so I really can’t complain.

The thing is, Fly Dog and I are old dogs together, which is a reality I live with yet have trouble accepting. It’s come to mind a lot lately.

Looking back, there have been so many incarnations of me. There was the son of a TV executive who literally grew up on the rehearsal stage of “CountDown“, getting TV into my blood. There was the schoolkid and the weekend dishpig and the teenager trying to surf, endlessly riding a Repco prototype of a single speed bike around the coast, living in imaginary worlds, which much later would turn into novel-writing. There was the runner (cross-country and 800m/1500 m), the schoolboy footy player (wide-running left-footed wing), there was the casual tennis player and golfer and indoor cricketer, and boxer (not competitive), and triathlete (once – fun, though), and scuba diver, and mountain-biker, and … I’ve probably forgotten others along the way.

There was the teenage journalist, and then the international sports reporter, and then the comedy writer, and the TV producer, and the magazine editor, and the film reviewer, and the short film writer and the wannabe novelist and then, shit, the actual novelist, and the media company director, and the film festival founder, and … well others I’ve probably forgotten.

There were friendships that ruled my world then drifted away, or others that have broken for reasons nobody could control. Other friends who have risen or returned. Ones I still hope will come back. Losses, and gains, through the years.

There is the close-up magician (amateur but wildly enthusiastic) and the unlikely scientific research assistant on Project Manta, and the successful husband, then the unsuccessful husband, and the often unsuccessful boyfriend, and now the French language student, and, of course, the hockey player.

The point of this? Only that I was confronted by a significant birthday on the weekend (not mine) and it made me reflect on how much and varied ground I have covered. People say to me, wow, you’ve done so many things, but it could equally be said that I haven’t been able to do what others do: one or two things extremely well.

The latest incarnation: Old Dog Nicko in something resembling flight.

Right now, my obsession is hockey and I finally feel that I’m reaching a level that is competitive at the range of competition available to me. No, I do not think for a second that the journey is close to the end – video of a game on Friday showed my ponderous, straight-legged, inside-edge-heavy skating yet again, goddamnit. I know that I still have a million things to learn.

But mostly, there is the realisation that I can only go so far in hockey. I’m deep into my forties.

The fact is I am not my sons, and I’m jealous as hell.

I am not The Artist Formerly Known as Kittens Place, now known as Big Cat, or his brother, Mackquist von Wookie. Less than two decades each on Earth, barely shaving, and therefore with years, decades, to push themselves, to improve, to see how far up the hockey divisions they can climb.

I do not have their youth and balance and natural energy and strength, to improve and to push and to be fast and to pick up difficult balancing acts on skates, such as transitions. To look back at 35 and laugh about how crap they briefly were as a teenage skater …

Yes, I have some old dog tricks, learned over many years and many sports and many life lessons, and happily I don’t think I’m in bad shape for somebody of my vintage. In fact, I feel better than ever, physically, and bless that fitness and energy every day.

And best of all, the idea of playing Dev League or maybe Summer League forever appeals to me. I don’t need to be a Premier A player to feel good about myself. Being a hard-working, decent player in a Summer League team, playing with my mates? Heaven. Give me that, please, for as long as my legs can stand it.

I just hope I have enough juice in my old dog body to keep learning, to keep improving, to be the best that I can be. Until I’m not. And I can’t anymore.

At which point, I wonder what incarnations are still out there, waiting for me? What, if anything, is my next blog? Nickdoeslawnbowls? Nickdoesarealjob? Nickdoestrugo?

I groan. I lift my weary body, recovering from a weekend of hockey, plus footy on a muddy track and in a stiff breeze, from my chair for a meeting. I need a fourth coffee. But then I think of former Red Wings, like Vladimir Konstantinov, a brilliant defenceman until a limo crash days after the 1997 Stanley Cup win that left him brain-damaged and unable to play again. Or Ruslan Salei, a victim of last year’s Locotomotiv plane crash disaster. RIP. None of us know how long we have got on the ice.

Maybe I’m going okay, after all.

I tickle Fly Dog under her ear and she sleepily lifts a big floppy paw to give greater access to her belly, which I rub. She groans again, an old dog groan, and I smile an old dog smile. She and I have a few trails left to run together, before we’re done.

Worlds await. And deaths. And miracles. And adventures. And friendships. And disappointments. Hopefully lots of hockey.

It’s called living.

I try not to wake Fly Dog as I leave the room.

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Meanwhile, whatever happened to that Nicko guy?

July 24, 2012 by 7 Comments

By Nicko

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

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

That, my whitecoated friends, is fucking cold.

The magnificent if chilly Oakleigh rink.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so it went.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life’s good and the funk is gone.

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