Hockey Cures All Ills

I saw my first hockey game, and everything changed.

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Be Light

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Weather that hovered near 60 degrees at Christmas finished the lake sheen ice. On New Year’s Day, it once again reflects the sky, the water’s mirror rippling with a now-colde­­­r wind or with geese that glide through wavy liquid trees. I look for the misidentified duck among all the geese, a reverse of the childhood game that never failed to foster giggling fits.

Common Merganser (Credit: Frank Schulenburg [CC BY-SA 3.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

I think about losing Raconteur. And, I think about the loss that many feel this time of year and its heaviness. The pastor at the Christmas Eve service I attended in Leesburg, VA, touched on the peculiar balance of joy and loss that so many navigate this time of year and its acceleration as we age.

And, my thoughts turned to another friend, one from childhood, who is struggling with an ending, one he saw coming and had hoped to avoid given the sudden and severe losses that had already hit his life so many times. “Is it too much to ask that we can live our lives, however much we might have left, in search of joy?” 

Today I looked for the duck. She and her friends first showed up at the lake, to my notice at least, a few days before Thanksgiving, mere days after Raconteur had died, while I was still feverish and stressed from a cold likely caught at the hospital when I was there to see him for the last time. My sinuses and heart were heavy as family arrived to begin the season of celebration that I normally so truly love.

Even from a distance, this duck’s feathered head seemed more askew than the geese or mallard schooners usually populating the free water. Without binoculars, I thought she was a wood duck. With clearer eyes, she became something more interesting—a common merganser.

But she wasn’t common, at least to me, as I watched her and her compatriots moving among the geese on the mirror lake. I had never seen a merganser, common or otherwise, and soon realized that the redheaded feathers belonged to the female. A smoother looking drake—in a tux, truth be told—tooled around, and the females bobbed about with feathered heads that echoed every self-respecting rocker-chick ever, especially ones from the late 70s/early 80s, or my current hair once my hockey helmet was off post-game.  

Those bedhead-feathers won me over first. A party duck. These females looked like they could hold their own with the Go-Gos. And, as I watched one in particular, she showed me she was just getting started. No dignified floating for this one. She wiggled, she dove, she stretched her neck back to her tail feathers and shook them all together. The geese were giving her a wide berth. I heard the chunky, chimey guitars in her head—“We Got the Beat.”

The water was her playground, as the ice has become mine, and I could see how good it felt to her to be on it. The day after I last saw Raconteur, I had one of the most fun skating classes of my life. The heaviness of loss left me during it, and my choices were simple and much like the merganser’s: Do I frolic or fly? I smiled, knowing that Raconteur would have loved to hear about this merganser and the class. 

It had been days since I’d smiled, between the grief and the cough, the tears that made both worse and not better. I wanted so much to tell Raconteur about the merganser and about how 2020, whatever Chinese zodiac animal it might really be, was now the “Year of the Party Duck.”

But he already knew. I saw the smooth drake on the fading November ice margin, gliding among the ladies, singing “Summer Wind” in his head, and I knew Raconteur would never be far from those who loved him. 

When I First Met Him, We Talked of Ovechkin

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Peter Bondra ornament, Christmas 2018, from the Raconteur

In any sporting event, you have some sense of how long it might go. Of course, some legendary games defy the logic of space and time (the Caps’ “Easter Epic”; Nationals-Giants). But, in general, when we hear “one minute, one minute remaining” we know what that means. When the third period of a hockey game starts, we can guess with some accuracy when we might be home.

Such comparisons take on larger significance when you hear the word “cancer.” Your mind may wonder where the clock stands. And when you hear one of your dearest friends give you this news, if you are at all like me, you tell them that they are still solidly in the second period, and you don’t let your mind imagine anything else.

I am speaking in sports terms because I am writing on a hockey blog and also because I am talking about Raconteur, who graces the pages of this blog with his heart and wit and my life with a friendship based in joy, honesty, courage, and understanding. I can describe him in many ways: Evans to my Hewson, Spade to my Marlowe, Watts to my Richards, Elinor to my Marianne, Albini to my Harvey, Hemingway to my Dietrich, a steely-eyed center to my haphazard left wing.

Cancer survivor, though, is the best description I can think of at this time.   

And, I am far from alone in this sentiment. Despite his status as my go-to hockey companion, I generally find myself battling for ice time among the many game molls who love him and his insightfulness at sporting events about town. It gets particularly tricky when baseball and hockey seasons collide. I am certain hospital staff members have raised an eyebrow or two over the steady stream of lookers looking after him during his various hospital visits.  

He is named Raconteur on this blog for good reason, because he can veer our conversations from exclaiming over the edge work we see on the ice when our seats are close, to being hypnotized by Ovechkin changing out stick tape when our seats are behind and near the Caps bench, to veering into 1930s old-movie banter about any one of these situations just because we can. He does the best Cary Grant I have ever heard at a hockey game or anywhere else. When he can’t attend a game with me, I go by myself or stay home. When he does, we find ourselves in the hilariously Midwestern farce of writing a check to the other that we know will promptly get torn up. It all evens out, when you have a true friend.

He is one of the good ones. As whipsmart as he is compassionate, as funny as he is thoughtful, as joyous as he is disgruntled for comedic effect. The emperor of one-liners, the king of the dry aside, the prince of calling it like it is. My dearest, truest friend. The best writer I know.

Dear reader, if you have sway with the hockey gods or others, now is the time. We are in the third period with this one, but nowhere near ready to hear “one minute, one minute remaining.”

Hockey is Music

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My hockey helmet muffles sound much like the ear plugs I have worn for the last 30 years in live musical venues whether in the audience or on stage. The helmet covers just enough of my ears to dull the way I hear my skates scrape the ice, which can make listening for the correct sounds from my blades more challenging. For that reason alone, working on skating without full gear is helpful.

Although I will never, ever, in a thousand years venture into any hockey situation without my helmet and full cage, I get why lots of folks do. You are a bit more confined with that thing on your head, as are my ears when I lose a live show’s sharpest highs to the ear plugs. But, unlike many of my musical peers, I can still hear conversations in crowded rooms, and so far, my teeth and head have survived many a fall.

The more I watch hockey, the more I try and fail at various aspects of the game, the more I find the sport feels like playing a concert or writing a song with a rock band. I thought this was odd and wondered at first if music were just the filter I used to analyze anything new I tried as an adult.

But I didn’t see that connection in other pursuits. Pilates built a focused calm that never really sang to me. Neither did the design and coding programs I learned. Gardening only sporadically brought song to mind. The dance styles I practiced involved music, but they somehow remained separate from it. Painting sometimes had a lyrical quality.

So why did hockey rock?

The association for me between music and hockey suddenly clicked one day while I was re-watching a video I practically have memorized: Most musical endeavors in my life have involved others, a team, if you will, or a band, to be correct, and a rock band if you want to be specific.

And the way the sounds rushed through my ears, the energy I felt both in and near a game—it was the same. The maelstrom of the moment and of being entirely present within that moment. Of listening to yourself, and most important, to each other, and of knowing what to do next in split-second calculations based on those things.

Sure, players in other team sports do a bit of this, but plays happen so much faster in hockey, and that speed makes hockey more akin to a live song evolving than any other sport I have seen or done.  

In one of my new favorite podcasts, Cocaine and Rhinestones, Tyler Mahan Coe talks about the musical phenomenon of band telepathy, of the way groups who have been together a long time or are just perfectly suited can change up completely yet together in a way that moves beyond anticipation or practice to something more akin to mind-reading or fate.

You see this same thing with the best hockey teams—I once knew a twin who said the Sedin brothers were particularly amazing at this—but most of what strikes others as telepathy has a lot to do with listening, practice, and paying attention.

If you want a master class in what this looks like musically, you need look no further than a storied 1975 film shot of one of the best bands ever when they were legitimately on top of the world—and every bit of what they do in this video shows you why.  

“Led Zeppelin DVD” came out in May 2003, and it is not much of an exaggeration to say that I did not leave my house for the two weeks after. Led Zeppelin footage hitherto only rumored to exist and/or sometimes for sale in a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate found at large-scale record shows, such as the ones I frequented in Dayton Ohio’s Hara Arena, were said to be included.

The rumors were true about Earls Court 1975—yes, it existed, but way more than that, it transcended, especially the rendition captured of “In My Time of Dying,” one of the most perfect examples of musical—really any—teamwork ever filmed.

And you don’t necessarily suspect jaw-dropping collaboration as the camera zooms in on a barely shirted Robert Plant, who is chatting about soccer (no surprise there, as he was, and remains, a huge fan) and the band’s critical reception.  

But then the spotlight shifts to Jimmy Page, in full dragon regalia, again semi-shirted as the 1970s seem to demand, and it is clear he intends to take you somewhere. If you’re not quite sure about the destination, the way he slithers the slide along the guitar should remove any doubt, which slide guitars are designed to do.

The spaces matter as much as the notes, as many musicians have noted, and with his right arm in the air and his left ringing out the guitar, Page has the audience hushed and listening. He turns toward the drummer John Bonham, the band attentive for his cue, waiting for the conversation to continue. It is still just 30 seconds in.

With a subtle hi-hat tsk, Bonham brings in the band and takes the center role, kicking in or slowing time like Nick Backstrom. No longer in the shadows, he and John Paul Jones roll into the fray, just enough, teasing out their intentions, playing it cool because the entire situation under discussion could still go anyway or away entirely.

The camera cuts to Plant. No longer in friendly chat mode, he throws back his head, draws in air, and screams.

Then back to Page playing that suggestive riff from before, darker and dirtier now, propelled by Jones and Bonham behind him. After a few shifts of undulating intensity, Page turns slightly toward Bonham, then turns again center stage and crouches, his pick in the outstretched hand he sweeps across the crowd in front of him, his guitar ringing the quiet. 

Then Plant, his lips against the mic, slides into the vocal melody, Page mirroring or echoing every phrase, taking a liberty here, emphasizing a thought there, always listening, always changing, talking to his teammate, ringing his Danelectro through Plant’s voice as it drops lower before trailing off: “All I want for you to do is take my body home.”

Everybody waits, watching, listening, ready to strike once the tension can go nowhere else without every single one of the band kicking it up a notch, not yet to 11, maybe a 3 to 4, some restraint remains. There are still 12 minutes to play, and they have only hinted at what their chemistry together can do and where they plan to go. They may as well have been on skates.

They ebb and flow like this for the duration, each time starting and building from a slightly different intensity, shifting the structures as the collective energy demands, feeding off each other at all times, always in closely controlled chaos, always feeling as if at any moment the whole relentless thing could crash before getting anywhere because this sort of intensity doesn’t fade.

It gets channeled. It gets challenged. It morphs into something bigger than the individual, than any one part of any one song. The several solos have very different things to say, all made possible by what the others playing their parts do at any given time to support them, always with the goal in mind of where they are going, listing to each other for the next play, breathless and sweating, waiting for the score.

And you know they did. This was the 1970s. This was Led Zeppelin. And this energy they embody, this synergy, rolls through other venues as well. It was and always will be hockey.

Transitions

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When you have a stick you can work on hockey skills off the ice with a ball instead of a puck. I had a stick and a practice ball, but I also have a cat who would foil my attempts to stickhandle across my house’s hardwood floors. Poor Buster took a stick to his face for his efforts, and I ended up in the emotional penalty box. No Norris Trophy for Buster and lots of questions for me. I needed to take my stick to an ice rink to practice. But, to meet rink requirements, I would need something I dreaded: gear.

Lots of people like gadgets and equipment and fiddling with said and arguing about which of this or that is the right one, the best one, the cool one. I am not one of those people. Until very recently, my only approach to computers, cars, stereos, guitars, amps, guns, tools, and so forth was to ask a self-appointed expert that I knew to tell me what I should buy given my various idiosyncratic requirements and then I would go get it. “My guitar needs to sound like a Les Paul but weigh less than an SG.” Lo and behold one of my gearhead buddies knew exactly what to suggest.

I have done this forever for two reasons: It usually works extremely well and quickly, and more important, I hate fiddling with things that don’t work immediately. I don’t have a tinkerer’s temper. I angrily toss first and ask questions about the wreckage later. I am my father’s daughter in this regard; as age has mellowed me somewhat, I have gone from the one who could not work with him on projects to the only one who can. Our results in this new partnership have been good, even if the outdoor peacock house we built ultimately went up and then down in flames. Still not sure how that exactly happened, but all critters, humans, and other structures were spared because of mom’s quick thinking.

Like my father—and I am sure many others—I want to push play and have something work. I don’t need, want, or tolerate long conversations with new televisions. (It goes without saying that I am not an early adopter of anything except Fluevogs.) Although not likely to ever be an engineer, I did find hockey at a time when I had learned the value of process. Many years spent learning and teaching pilates had shown me the merit of getting lost in pursuits I could not control or fully understand, regardless of the outcome. For the first time, I was okay with working on and learning skills I might never master. Even so, my overall troubleshooting threshold is not high, although hammers and electronics fly less frequently.

So, it was endlessly amusing and confusing that I had fallen in love with a sport that required lots of fussing around with foreign objects. The skates and stick were bad enough, but I was getting the hang of their upkeep: the skate blade sharpening, the wax laces that initially required a pull to tighten, the continuing questions about my stick’s weight. I was concerned about the stick’s peeling tape, though. What was I supposed to do about that? I was ignoring it for the moment, unless given a good reason otherwise.

And, it got even more confusing on my first trip to the hockey store. I was dizzy. So many gloves. So many sticks. So many pads. A helmet that needed endless adjustments by an extremely helpful staff. I wanted to bolt when they had to replace the cage with a smaller one. More adjustments, screws, tinkering. Would this work? I had no idea. I bought kid-sized gloves. Did that make sense?

Excited but exhausted, I left with my initial loot and immediately emailed an expert. No way I could sort this out on my own, and I didn’t have to because the first woman I had ever seen play also was extremely willing to help me conquer the gear fear. I just had to ask. It was becoming a trend, this asking and receiving, this learning to wonder and not immediately press play, a trusting that whatever I needed would eventually find its way to me when it was time for the next question.

Lone Woo

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When discussing my attempts as a 40-something woman to play ice hockey, people, usually those who do not play, tend to ask if I like to fight and if I know how to skate. To the first, I can answer it depends; to the latter, I can say kinda, pointing out that I am learning that along with everything else. A common response is, “Oh, I could never do that,” followed by explanations of bad backs, long-ago/recent knee surgeries, potential broken bones, kid busy-ness, inability to skate, decrepitude, wrong gender, and so forth.

To those I sense might be interested but are intimidated, I counter these reasons: I have scoliosis; my skating coach had knee surgery; broken bones heal should they break at all; kids can skate with you; I’m older than you are; hockey is for everybody. The entire concept of hockey can be intimidating to anyone learning the game, especially to adults who have never skated before, don’t understand the gear, and are afraid of getting clobbered by unpredictable goons.

My success in encouraging the interested but skittish hasn’t been bad, probably because I totally understand the fear behind these questions. Being interested in hockey doesn’t mean I am not easily intimidated. I have been and continue to be intimidated by many things. But I have learned to go ahead and do most stuff anyway. This was much harder when I was younger and more concerned with looking dumb in front of record store boy, saying the wrong thing in front of comic book store guy, not understanding how my guitar pedals worked in front of other dude in the band, or answering questions incorrectly in front of hiring manager person.

We you get older and crankier, you also get used to finding a way through, sometimes by repeatedly handling it, whether job interviews or successfully picking out records, and sometimes through sudden epiphanies when what might have thrown you in the past instead holds you. Something like that happened for me on December 12 and 13, 2008.

One of my best friends, known here as Triathlete, has a schedule nearly as bad as mine. Getting to see her at all let alone attend a show with her that December 12 was in itself a small miracle. The fact that said show featured one of my musical heroes and was taking place in a Baltimore warehouse beautifully converted into an art space was more miracle. It was all getting to Holy See-documented by the end, when Ted Leo was as transcendent solo as in his band and when my friend and I had a chance to speak with him afterward. Seems her brother used to play in a band with him. Connections never hurt to start a conversation when you are prone to tongue-tied fangirldom.

That whole night could have been it and might have been enough, except for one thing: He did not play my favorite song. I emailed him about this the next day, because during his set he had talked about how challenging the previous year had been for him. I wrote that it had been intense for me as well, and I let him know that his album Hearts of Oak had been instrumental in getting me through it all, specifically a song called “2nd Ave., 11 a.m.” I thanked him for this and let him know I hoped to see his DC show that night.

There was a little problem with my plan: The show was sold out. It was in the club’s cozier Backstage space, and Leo has tons of DC ties and fans. Triathlete couldn’t join me, either. But, I decided to try anyway and got to the Black Cat right when it opened. I was reading Ulysses for book club, so I brought that along to keep me company, parked myself at the bar, and let the bartender know I was looking for tickets. He also was a huge Leo fan and had found himself in a similar ticketless boat at a Boston show that ultimately worked out for him. He was on the case, kept me well-supplied with Wild Turkey 101, and traded musical stories with me when he was free. Otherwise, I sat there reading, hoping, drinking, and finding the book making more and better sense.

The bartender did not let me down, and before I even fully comprehended my luck, I found myself Backstage, listening to Leo’s introductory patter. It was warm in that little space, as he tuned and then asked about the show the night before.

“So, was anybody in Baltimore last night?”

I was overwhelmed, a bit buzzed from last night’s magic, tonight’s ticket miracle, and the whiskey that was a more obvious factor now that I was standing and not reading. I let out one of the loudest “woos” ever in response.

I was the lone woo.

Now, maybe you are the sort of person who does this all the time, a bringer of show-going chaos who likes to yell “Free Bird” for no good reason, who banters with performers because you paid to be there, who never hesitates to throw the first punch.

I am none of those things. I felt at that moment that I was now the indie rock equivalent of a streaker. Was my face burning from the whiskey or the public humiliation? I didn’t know. I had belted out a response expecting it to be one of many, a cry echoed and supported by others equally enthusiastic in their adoration. Instead I heard my voice about as loud as it had ever been in a public place, all by itself.

Ever the consummate performer, Leo played it off. “Well, this is going to be the same set, so I hope you don’t mind.”

I was standing there trying to fathom how I could possibly be the only person in that room attending both shows when his comment wrenched me back into reality. Like Ralphie almost on his way down the Higbee Christmas slide, I had to salvage this. I had inadvertently made a spectacle of myself. I decided I wasn’t done.

“But wait,” I cried. Necks craned in the darkness, seeking the chaos-bringer.

I was undaunted: “Can you play ‘2nd Ave. 11 a.m.’?”

Leo stopped tuning, tapped his foot, put his right hand on his hip, looked into the audience shadows. “Did you email me?”

I was committed now. “Yes!”

He brought his right hand back to the strings, “You know, I was working on this earlier, trying to see if I could find a way. I’ve never done it solo, and I’m not sure. . .”

He stepped on a pedal, “Well, here it goes.”

And it did.

That ended up being just one of many highlights of two nights I will never forget, neither of which would have happened if I had been too fearful of looking foolish or of reaching out to my heroes. And that’s how this gets back to hockey. Setting aside the real yet manageable concern about getting hurt on the ice, I will translate what so many people who want to play but tell me otherwise are really saying: I am intimidated at the entire thought of making an idiot of myself out there.

That’s fair because you are partially right–learning how to play hockey is not pretty, and it usually happens in front of other people. No way around that fact. And I know players who make my head spin with their skills who cannot stand to watch themselves skate on tape. No matter how good we get, we will always look like idiots on the ice in our own eyes.

But you are wrong to let that intimidate you. Some of the best things that have ever happened to me have required me to get over myself, my fears, and my reclusiveness; to stop playing it cool inside my little walls, safe in the same, relaxed in routine; to choose to play the fool because sometimes that kind of vulnerability is the only way in and onto what you want.

As Leo says in my favorite song: “Oh, just open your door.”

And so years later, when hockey came into my life and I found that it was not going to be easy to do and that my critical, perfectionist self was going to be terrible for a very long time in front of many people, I knew better than to let myself get discouraged. I knew that however uncertain, confused, and exposed I might be as a new hockey player, like Molly Bloom in Ulysses, I would continue to say: “yes I said yes I will Yes.”

Clean Slate

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As a new skater, old ice rattled me. Every chink, every gouge, every line traced before me went through my legs like car tires over rumble strips. The sparser attendance at mid-day ice—another reason I sought it out when possible—meant I had more time before the wear and tear got to me. Once I felt the wobble, the teeth rattle in my head, I had to leave the ice, knowing I would come back when I could start over fresh.

I don’t know if other new skaters have had this same weird sensitivity. But it created an awareness in me of the changing nature of my new playing field. Of course, basketball courts get mopped after a sweaty fall and outdoor fields of all sorts are tended at regular intervals. But ice lived and breathed and changed throughout play in subtle and drastic ways.

After the Zamboni, the new ice is a clean slate, ready for whatever you can bring to it. You choose how you mark it, what history you carry to it, how you see it evolve before you. As the time moves forward, as the cuts add up, at a certain point they will be erased yet again: A chance to start cleanly each new period with only the score lingering, another fluctuation until it isn’t.

To my mind, no other game has this capacity for starting over entirely. The cuts, the marks, the blood all melt away. You do this because you love it, the beauty of it the first time leaving you breathless; now the exertion of it stealing through you, leaving behind the twins exhilaration and exhaustion. You do this because you can. Sometimes you do it for the process, sometimes for the win.

And if you forget why you do it, you need to remember those moments on the ice when it all felt right. You go back to that space and you decide that, yes, you do want this. The ice may be frozen in place, but you are not. You want it more than anything that could work against you. You decide. You believe. You make your mark in the now.

You got this, Caps.

 

Destination

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Now that I had a stick and a bag of pucks, I needed my hockey skates to fully commit to my plan to play. Having sailed through three sessions of adult skating lessons in my figure skates, I knew that I would finally find my footing and fly in my hockey skates. My return to hockey skates would be a day of triumph, my first true hockey strides forward.

Except it wasn’t. Not even close. The second my hockey skates hit the ice, my body nearly did, too.  Whatever balancing and stopping I had managed in figure skates had now evaporated. It was as if the past three sessions had never happened; I was back to the perilous pratfalls of the previous October.

I felt no connection to the ice; my skates slipped around as if they had clear tape on their blades. As an avid toe-pick cheater, as I then discovered, I was toast without it. For pure self-preservation, I found myself clinging yet again to the boards, like the newbie I should no longer have been. In a last-ditch attempt to salvage some pride, I left my hockey skates behind at the rink for sharpening, a Hail Mary to ascribe my vanished prowess to equipment and not operator error.

I was now more relieved than ever that I had enlisted the help of a friend who grew up playing hockey and now lived near the rink. However, my transition would not be smooth, and I would not soon be learning the fancy stuff like t-stops that I had anticipated.

To his credit, he tried the t-stops anyway, ultimately dissuaded by the wild-eyed terror on my face and my Vincent Price-like cackle as I attempted them. He kept doing them, often flying away from me to get some actual exercise. T-stops and speed were as natural to him as breathing, despite the many years he had been off the ice.

He now spent his limited free time on Motocross, and he deconstructed its various aspects as we weaved around the rink. The details were welcome distractions from my frenzied mind, which was sputtering on an endless loop, “Why can’t I stop? Will I ever be able to stop? Oh, shit!”

And then I would fall.

After a few of these tumbles, he said, “You keep looking at the ice. You can’t do that.”

I knew that. I had sailed through three sessions, hadn’t I? But, I didn’t realize I was doing it. Too much focus on dying can be distracting.

“It’s just like Motocross. Wherever you look is where you go.”

And he showed me, shifting his view, his shoulders, his body, never looking at the ice, always looking at the next place he intended to be.

My attempts to follow his lead were by no means perfect, but they did change my mantra: “Wherever you look is where you go. Wherever you look is where you go. Wherever you look is where you go.”

Walk Up

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One of my best friends, a diehard baseball fan, once called hockey the “AC/DC of the sporting world.” As a life-long AC/DC fan, I accepted it as the compliment it is. She was helping me out with my hockey problem by attending the occasional game with me.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, beat ‘em,” she stood up and screamed as a fight broke out during a bruising Caps loss. At another, we made the jumbotron because she was singing along to “The Hockey Song.” She’s even better at baseball games, her home turf. Never leave a game early. You will be rightfully and loudly scorned if she sees you slinking by.

When I think of her, I think about baseball, and I was reminded of both one day, when on my way to the rink, my shuffling phone popped out my walk-up song. My theoretical one, of course, given I had not held a bat in years, and hockey really has no analogue. Clever DJs can make musical commentary before face-offs, but that is not the same. You choose your walk-up song, not the DJ.

And you must choose wisely. I could go into a long description of how certain aspects of my life have had frightening parallels to the lives of the music nerds in High Fidelity, but I will refrain for the moment. In the arguments/discussions that preceded my ultimate choice, which I now heard blasting from the radio and which I had completely forgotten about, I had shortened my potential list to five songs and three artists.

My choices had much to recommend them in my mind, and several of the songs could be said to have changed my life. Leo’s album Hearts of Oak and Harvey’s Rid of Me cover all sides of a broken heart, whatever the loss cause. The Leo songs shimmer as they urge the listener onward against challenges interior and exterior. The Harvey hymns brim with swagger and intensity, two necessary ingredients for a song brandishing an ability to crush the opposition.

But I entertained a different kind of crush. For me, hockey’s intensity went beyond the braggadocio, its spark was bigger and scarier, its flash essentially what happens when you fall in love:

“As soon as I get my head around you/I come around catching sparks off you/I get an electric charge from you/This secondhand living it just won’t do.”

If I were honest, that was what was happening to me. It wasn’t with a person and it wasn’t even going all that well, but it was falling in love, to a soundtrack of great big chiming guitars and drum rolls that almost don’t stop, amid the ebb and flow of not knowing what the heck to do or why, an energy that just can’t settle, “something going on inside, makes you want to feel, makes you want to try, makes you want to blow the stars from the sky.”

I said, yeah, yeah, yeah.