Hockey Cures All Ills

I saw my first hockey game, and everything changed.

Hockey Newbie

Against the Glass

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The ticket options were extensive, more than I had ever seen and closer and cheaper than I would likely see again. The explanation was simple: snow. Lots of it. And the storm timing for those possessing tickets was awkward. For me, the timing was perfect.

My snow-driving panic instigated by teenage inexperience was gone, eroded by circumstances demanding self-sufficiency. It was me, the dog, the foster dog, and the cat. If I wanted to get somewhere in a snowstorm, I alone had to figure out how. I will never forget that post-divorce day when I glared at the water pouring in from the snow melting on my sunroom roof and thought, “I am the man in my life.” I got on the roof and shoveled. I now would get in the car with a blizzard threatening and drive. I had been raised to be like this and had only shifted into situational helplessness because my marriage had required it.

I now had new requirements, as I was developing what I politely termed a “hockey problem,” which was becoming a “Capitals problem,” which I justified as “seat reconnaissance.” Suddenly center ice seats right behind the Capitals bench were available for 70 bucks? I had to know more, because I was still unsettled on my preferred professional hockey vantage point.

Through much trial and error with online ticket markets, I knew to the minute how long I could wait on game day to get the best seat at the best price and still get there on time. I had to be willing not to go at all, which I was, because I have always been the sort of live event person who needs to see the whites of their eyes, the teeth in their smiles.

Far-away seats never sufficed. Why go to the trouble to be somewhere to watch a big screen? I would rather not be there at all. There are bands I likely never will see live for this reason, and I am more than okay with that. You will find me at general admission music venues such as the 9:30 Club and the Black Cat because I have always needed to be close to what I love and can always do so at these places with a bit of planning and resourcefulness.

What did all this mean for hockey? I found the 200-level food/drink packages not worth it for a beer-snob vegetarian but awesome for others. Sight lines there were decent in seats and suites, and I could watch and be civilized. Four-hundred level made me dizzy in a bad way, and I determined I would not buy a ticket that high and far. Sometimes I even politely declined free ones. I was suspecting myself to be strictly 100 level.

But against the glass? I will never forget that insider-view of bench politics and player passion during my February 2014 blizzard bonanza. I could see the sweat running down their faces, the blood, the energy drained and gained. I jumped in my seat, startled when an angry Jason Chimera smacked his stick so loudly against the bench glass that I feared for my hearing. The equipment guy tried to get out of my sight lines so I could take better pictures, but I didn’t want him to and got pictures of him as well.

Every game I attended as a newbie showed me time and again that hockey attracts the best people. They are real. They are strong. They are the best ticket in this town at any level (I freely admit that others don’t have the proximity character flaw that I do, and they are the better for it.) They make me want to learn more and to play this beautiful, impossible game.

And on one of those blizzardy February nights I wandered outside to a completely still city. I retrieved my car from a garage and watched the streets quietly glisten, thankful for everything that had taken me this far and for whatever was yet to come.

Doughnuts and Despair

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As a new skater, if you really want to experience equal parts inspiration and consternation, you can do what I did and sign up for lessons that put you one rink away from Washington Capitals practices. That way, once you have fallen and strained various muscles you didn’t know you possessed, you can wander on over, watch the pros in action, and start to question your recent life choices. The best thing about this particular self-doubt-inducing torture is that it is totally free, the Capitals promote it ahead of time (although it is subject to change), and you always can get a seat.

Actually, that last bit unsettles me. People pay thousands for season tickets to Capitals games, but their practice rink on a Saturday morning in a very busy part of Arlington, Va., often has at most 20 people watching. This is free. It is publicized. Why is there no line out the door? I fight more for the doughnuts at the German bakery up the street than I ever do to watch incredible players do what they do best FOR FREE. I get that this is not a game, but it is no less fascinating. And, I always see players sign for kids afterward. This best-kept secret needs to get out.

To some degree, because I have switched to figure skates, watching them skate confuses me. The blue-line-red-line drill that reminds me of the suicides I once did during basketball practice makes little sense to me at this point because I can’t even begin to stop with their precision. Watching them do various shooting drills makes more sense, but I don’t have a hockey stick yet. And, I wonder if I will ever get one.

In some ways, watching what they do makes the idea of playing hockey feel even more impossible. I don’t love it any less, but I cannot imagine ever being at the point where I could do what they do. I am starting to seriously consider ice dancing instead. And doughnuts—that German bakery is my next stop after their practice. I have planned my Saturday mornings carefully.

If I stop agonizing over how far behind I was before I even started and instead focus on the moment, I find I have not entirely lost hope. The way they stop so fully line to line almost in complete unison is like music to me, a song I feel even if I cannot yet play it back, the calluses on my fingers not strong enough to hold down the guitar strings. I decide to listen and watch and work and wait with sugar on my mind and music in my soul.

Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Badly    

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In general, my willingness to be publicly humiliated is extremely limited. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. And somewhat routinely. If there is coffee or beer to be spilled, I will find a way. Sudden pratfalls are another specialty. And, I excel at tripping both up and down stairs.

But when it comes to hockey, I am choosing humiliation—not just managing accidents—and my capacity for it seems unlimited—especially when it comes to learning to skate. Walk into any adult learn-to-skate class, and you will understand vividly what I mean.

Some Saturday mornings the classes were beyond perilous for the eight of us who looked and presumably felt like small horses do when they first try to stand up on their newborn legs. It didn’t help any of us to see the little ones taking classes nearby flying by at invincible speeds directly correlated to their lower vertical proximity to the ice.

Because of the anti-hockey-skate-talking-to I got from my teacher, I switched to a strange hybrid skate reinforced for use on cold ponds. They felt better balance-wise than the hockey skates I had tried before—it seemed I needed a flatter edge to get a sense of things. As the session wound down, my balance got better, and although my ability to stop was beyond miserable, other pieces of the skating puzzle slowly made more and more sense. Swizzles ruled, the concept of an inside and outside edge began to take shape in mind and muscle, and crossovers still terrified but also intrigued.

As the class progressed and we moved from swizzles to single-foot edge work, I began to question the wisdom of the new pond skates. At 70 bucks, they were a reasonable deal, but it was becoming clear that they weren’t truly figure skates, and they weren’t truly hockey skates. They worked great to help me get my initial footing. And I had come to believe my teacher’s assessment that for whatever reason I was better in figure skates.

Knowing that whatever chance I had to play hockey down the line rested on my ability now to get some understanding on and with the ice, I had a decision to make at the end of the session: Did I go back to my impossible hockey skates or commit to something that could take me farther from my goal now to get me back to it in a better way later? The circles kept getting bigger as did the figures in my dreams.

Ode on Crossover and Turn

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One of the simultaneously beautiful and frustrating aspects of being a new hockey fan is all that I don’t know. Beautiful because I am constantly surprised. Frustrating because I am constantly playing catch up. (You don’t even want to know how long it took me to understand offsides.)

Last week, as it usually does in general and especially with hockey, the beautiful won.

My dog, the foster dog, my cat, and I were watching vintage games on the NHL channel. We do some version of this almost every day. Last week, it was the 1996 final World Cup game between Canada and the United States. I love watching these old games. I get to know the players I hear mentioned, often see interviewed, sometimes see coach, but never saw play—Messier, Gretzky, Richter, Leetch, Lindros, Coffey, Modano.

I suddenly noticed number 27 on Canada’s team. He wasn’t at the center of the action right then, and what he did was small and quick—two back crossovers, turn, two front crossovers (whistle), stop. I kept rewinding to watch him. He wasn’t skating. He was floating.

He reminded me of my favorite dancers and demonstrated my favorite things about hockey—the flow, the ease, the smoke and mirrors way the players dupe us into thinking it is oh-so-easy. We are really seeing the hours, the injury, the perseverance, the luck, the natural gift, the grit. Yet, as with all truly beautiful things, we let ourselves remain duped. Because that is all we know on earth and all we need to know.

Hockey Matches, Ice Castles, and Missing Teeth

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I grew up a mere 120 miles from the Old Red Barn. Had I grown up in Guam, I couldn’t have been farther from hockey. A basketball player in a resolutely football town, I knew nothing about the sport my father affectionately refers to as “watching paint dry.”

Julia’s Hockey Knowledge Pre-April 2013:

Female figure skaters who face personal tragedy or compete in pair skating should enlist a former hockey player in their endeavors.

Wayne Gretzky’s wife ruined hockey by demanding that he leave an extremely cold part of Canada to move to LA so that she could continue to be an actress that no one had heard of before she married the only hockey player I had ever heard of.

Any sport with such low final scores must be really boring, at least compared to basketball.

Canadians, rather than Americans, were more likely to regularly participate in hockey matches.

I dated a guy in college who was missing his left front tooth because of a hockey-related childhood accident. He often left out the replacement tooth. *Sigh*

One of the few Paul Newman movies I hadn’t seen has something to do with hockey. Because of a secret desire to run the table on unsuspecting strangers, I have seen the ones about pool.

Most vegan cookies have the consistency of hockey pucks. (But not these, made at a true DC treasure.)

Ice skates were the same for everybody who skated, whether they were figure skaters or hockey players.

I rarely met people who paid any attention to hockey. The ones I did know, who usually played in punk bands, I liked quite a bit.

DC had a hockey player on its team who was Russian, a bit of a big deal, and had missing teeth.

In fall 2012, certain bars in Chinatown were struggling because of some kind of hockey strike.

And then in April 2013 I saw my first game. It wasn’t at the Verizon Center. It didn’t involve professional players. But, while I watched, I ran into someone I used to know.

Offsides Inside

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I don’t dream about sports.

But I dream about hockey.

A little over a year ago, I saw my first NHL game—the Capitals versus the Rangers, May 4, 2013—at the Verizon Center in Washington, DC.

And, that night, all night, I dreamed the game again.

Not that I could explain to you a single thing that happened. “Offsides!” was something extremely agitated drunk guys sitting nearby yelled with conviction and vituperation. I jumped out of my seat a bit when they did so, startled and confused by the sudden vehemence.

The guys skating around all looked the same, because despite 100-level center ice seats, I very much needed new contact lenses and hockey equipment hides everything.

To further confuse things, I was attending the game with a life-long Rangers fan, who now lived in DC and supported the Caps—unless they were playing the Rangers.

So, I decided now was not the time to ask questions. That would and did come later.

Now, it was time to get lost in the flow, in the grace, in the speed, in the joy, in the sudden score, in the swift loss, in the constant mid-course correction, in the blood, in the skate scrapes, in the ice sprays, in the shouting,  in ten men moving with and against each other in an ever-evolving eight-like shape over the ice.

I dreamed the constant motion, the endless pursuit, the relentless effort. Life but more so, a fast-paced peacefulness and purpose.

I would play.

But I couldn’t tell anybody that yet. I didn’t even own hockey skates.