Hockey. Hockey. And More Hockey.
I love hockey. Have I said that yet?
I think most people who read my blog are pretty tuned in to the fact that hockey is one of my most significant loves, right up there with coffee and hair products and my laptop (but below my family, friends, babies and boys -- although hockey-playing boys occupy a zone I can only identify as "Damn!").
I don't know that I've loved hockey my whole life, although I've certainly been exposed to it since birth. My dad used to play and referee for a league (in fact, I think he was the head official for a time) in the tiny prairie town in which I was born.
He actually played rec league hockey wherever we lived for a good portion of my growing-up years and followed the NHL, too -- still does. My grandfather was an NHL-calibre player when he was younger, and we also have a few family friends who were scouted to play in the league (or did, for a short time).
When I was six, my family moved to Edmonton, which is a hard-core hockey town if ever there was one. We arrived at the beginning of the dynasty years for the Oilers -- to this day, there is a special sign you see when you enter the area: 'Edmonton: City of Champions'.
They won five Cups in ten years -- more than fifteen years ago, mind you.
One of my student teachers in the fourth grade was Mark Messier's sister -- he played on the Oilers team at that point with Wayne Gretzky. I now refer to him as 'Satan' for his brutal ethics as a player, but his sister was lovely. One day, we got to pass around pictures of him posing with the Stanley Cup during Show and Tell in class!
But here's the twist -- in the midst of all that mania, I didn't like the Oilers. I liked the team my dad liked and still likes, the Vancouver Canucks. He'd grown up here, so his loyalties were set in stone.
And if you know anything about the relationship my dad and I share, you know that the things we both enjoy, we ENJOY. We are very similar and very passionate. And on this issue, we were 100% in agreement -- we were Canucks fans, and would be always, no matter where we lived.
This made me somewhat of a pariah in class when talk of hockey would come up -- Edmonton Oilers devotees bring new meaning to the term 'rabid'.
But it also gave me a solid dose of the underdog mentality that true sports enthusiasts require to transform them from passive observers to diehard fans.
By the time we moved back to BC in the fifth grade, the seed was sown.
It's been a journey since then; the Canucks are a brilliantly unreliable franchise in many respects. They can be the best, most exciting team in the NHL one game, and the most confusing, sluggish one you've ever seen in the very next contest. But I love them -- and I will continue to, unless they start using babies for pucks or something like that.
But it's not just about pro hockey.
I have many friends who play rec league hockey still, and I spent a good portion of my late twenties enamoured of one of them in particular. I trekked out to his games most weekends and would be one of the most volatile and vocal fans in the arena (usually one of the only, truth be told).
They were threatened with a couple of penalties for the stuff I'd yell at the refs, but the refs were clearly being oversensitive.
My dad came to a few of the games with me, and I think he was a bit startled by my ferocity (not that he didn't share it -- I just don't think he knew how close the apple fell to the tree until then). My dad's car was actually stolen from the parking lot during one of those games -- perhaps it was good that we'd gotten all of our aggression out in advance of that discovery!
It was much more fun later on in that era of my life when a few more of my guy friends joined the team on which 'the boy' played. I would sit with my girls -- who were the wives and significant others of the players -- and we'd cheer together. They'd keep my mouth in check, and we'd share thermoses of coffee and drape fleece blankets across our laps to ward off 'rink chill'.
Those are incredibly fond memories.
And today?
I belong to three hockey pools now as far as the NHL goes, and those add to my life in ways that I cannot describe. Well, I can describe it, but you'd mock the heck out of me if I did. Suffice it to say, one of those pools began not just as a celebration of the sport, but as an effort to keep me and ten or so of my best guy friends in touch.
And it worked -- we trash-talk one another to this day (lovingly).
So what do I really adore most about hockey?
What really draws me to this sport and makes me long for the return of my misplaced Trevor Linden bobblehead doll (give it back, Kirk)?
I love it because it has significant history in my life. I love it because of the mechanics of the sport -- I skate myself, so I can imagine the skill it takes to actually pull off what they do. I love it because I can understand and remember the statistics with detail and accuracy. I love it because it can be both insanely graceful and ridiculously clumsy in execution, like all good things in life.
I love it because people I love play it. I love it because I watch it with my dad and my grandpa. I love it because the players are freakishly attractive to me (not all, but some). I love it because I can yell and be obnoxious when I watch and no one really takes me seriously -- except a couple whistle-happy refs, but they had it coming ("Maybe you should take that whistle out of your ass so you can blow it now and then, huh?").
I know hockey isn't perfect.
I know there are moments of incredible violence that have occurred in the midst of play. I know that some parents of minor league hockey players are absolute bastards to their children. I know that some men watch hockey more often than they speak to their wives -- and vice versa. None of that is reasonable.
But to me, none of those things are the fault of the sport as much as they are a manifestation of inherent weaknesses and excesses that we exhibit as human beings. If those individuals who make an embarassment of the sport didn't act like asses in connection with hockey, they'd find another venue -- no doubt in my mind.
But that's not my hockey, anyhow.
My hockey is the one in which sweaty-headed players tell rink-side reporters --with incredible sincerity -- that they "just want to give 100% out there". My hockey is the one in which grandparents hold cups of Tim Horton's coffee and huddle under quilts to watch their grandkids play. My hockey is one of impossible shots and victory hugs and stick-twirling magicians and the tsk-tsk-tsk of skates on ice.
My hockey is the one that lives in the heads of kids playing street games all across my country ("Car!"). My hockey causes people sitting side by side in an arena to spontaneously discuss memories of where they grew up with complete strangers. My hockey is the one that embodies the more positive aspects of our national identity. My hockey is the one that gave us all permanent gold-medal smiles for a month after the SLC Olympics. My hockey is the one I see evidence of in the old, faded photo of my grandpa in his uniform, stick on the ice.
My hockey is the one I discovered from the vantage point of my dad's lap, cuddled in close, watching 'Hockey Night in Canada' more than 28 years ago.
It's just a game, sure.
But it's my game.
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