Hockey Cures All Ills

I saw my first hockey game, and everything changed.

Hockey Gear

Next Stop

by

It was summer 2014, and I could feel hockey decisions starting to loom. Did I continue with my informal training with various friends, old and new, or did I take a more serious step forward and find more formal training?

The benefits of training with friends are obvious: it only costs an entrance fee to a public skate or stick and puck; they support you thoroughly; you are not as concerned with looking foolish; and you can chat about non-hockey stuff as well.

On the flip side, they may not be as interested in or available for hockey as you are, and their support can lend a certain complacency. They are there to help and hang out—they are not arriving with a lesson plan or whistle. They may describe what worked for them or suggest areas for you to work on, but they are not setting up and running drills.

And, by this time, I had seen some of these drills. They generally confused the hell out of me and in doing so made me realize that it was getting to be put up or shut up time. Owning gear did not mean I was a player. I mean, I own a few guitars, and to adapt a quote from songwriter Tom T. Hall, “I started playing the guitar when I was 7 years old, and I’m just as good today as I was then.”  

In other words, I could very easily bail and chalk these past few months up to yet another interesting discipline that had no long-term traction with me. Buying the gear had committed me to nothing beyond a credit card payment.

But unlike my lifelong on-again, off-again relationship with music, hockey held no baggage for me—and by all rights, it should have had the most. (And, I don’t mean the biggest gear bag, which it definitely had.)

I never would have seen my first game if it had not been for someone I chose to never see or speak with again. That should have been enough to make me walk away from the game forever—people have walked away from long-term interests for far less.

And hockey never demanded less. Learning the sport required an investment in time and energy that rivaled anything else I had ever tried. It also caused a lot of pain—I was still staring at the bruise from a recent public skate figure skater collision as I was wondering about my next training steps.

Yet, I never doubted that there would be next training steps. For me, once I saw my first hockey game, it was never a question of if, but of when and how. Motivated purely by the game’s beauty, I had nothing to gain from its competitiveness. Sure, I wanted the Caps to win, but that’s a different thing and had nothing to do with me as a player. And, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to be and do better. I did.

As optimistic as I am, though, I am not blind. Watching the drills I didn’t understand made it very clear that I had a long way to go in my hockey journey. I understood nothing—and was only becoming vaguely aware of how much that nothing was.

That vague awareness, or truly ignorance, would work for me by giving me just what I needed to know when I needed to know it. There was no overthinking, just doing. Whenever I started to get confused, I found someone who had the answer. Whenever I wondered or worried about my next move, I got what I needed to make it happen, including the last spot in the hockey skills class at Kettler that was set to start at the end of June.

If you ever have a chance to be in this exact situation, to be so completely and thoroughly out of your element and understanding that you have nowhere to go or be than up and better, you must take it. You will never be so free. You will never be so protected. You will never be so awed by luck and beauty.

There’s a sentiment quoted in various ways that, “God helps three kinds of people: fools, children, and drunkards.” People who don’t understand the sport might put you in one or all of those categories when you take up hockey as an adult. Let them. It’s the very best place to be.

That’s Hockey

by

Athletes often are advised to visualize what they plan to do. This visualization is deliberate, an exercise, a means of controlling the narrative and outcome. I have benefited from this work, but I wonder how much more deeply I have grown from those stories I could not control, the ones that came to me in dreams or in unexpected scenarios—as hockey often did.

After a long night of watching the NHL Channel or a local Caps game, my dreams were glorious. Backstrom passed to Ovi over and over, Chimera flew, Holtby stalked the crease. Capitals, opponents, all shifted smoothly, swiftly, endlessly, their skating winding round my sleeping mind and soul. I thought of these dreams when I practiced my skating.

Sometimes, my hockey dreams were amusing mash-ups of other interests and loves. In one of my favorites, I am at a party. I am ready to go home. Frank Sinatra is at this party, and he volunteers to drive me. I look at him askance until I find out he also is a hockey fan. Then I say, “Sure.”

We spend the rest of the night sitting around my dining room table drinking bourbon and arguing about the only sport that matters. Who knew the chairman of the board liked hockey and Jefferson’s Reserve? I sure didn’t. We didn’t talk about music once, and we didn’t do anything else. (Even in dreams I have zero romantic interest in men with messy personal lives, but I do love to listen to their stories about their man-made disasters.)

Oddly, I dreamt easily of all things hockey, but not yet of myself playing it—perhaps because at that point I had not. I had used my stick off ice to work on passing and stickhandling, and I had skated at several rinks, doing my best to maneuver the baffling angles of the skates required by my new sport.

To finally combine those elements, I had bought the equipment necessary to put it all together at a very early morning stick ‘n’ puck at Cabin John Ice Rink. I had set my alarm for 5 a.m., slept very little, and was like a child again, ready for my birthday, staring at the ceiling in wonder and anticipation. I had tried all my gear on twice and so could mimic mastery, as long as nobody asked me questions about anything. And, I figured those nuts enough to get up that early on a lovely May day would be more concerned about themselves than my gear.

It turns out a handful of people had similar ideas, and when I went to the women’s locker room—they had one for women!—I noticed another bag in the room and realized I wouldn’t be the only woman on the ice, which was a comforting thought. I also was relieved to have the room to myself to unravel the gear post-dress rehearsal. It took me 20 minutes to put it on and then some to go over it all to guard against anything loose or upside-down. I blame most of the delay on the wrestling match I had with the sock tape. I narrowly prevailed.

I waddled out of the locker room. The door to the rink normally open for public skate was closed. I was confused about how to get on the ice but saw another person enter from an area with benches I had never noticed before. It was not nearby, so I had to waddle all around the rink, relieved that everyone already on the ice appeared too consumed with pucks to notice the newbie. I took my first tentative steps onto the ice, stick in hand, helmet awkwardly on head, gear so lightweight yet cumbersome. I couldn’t see much through the cage, and my peripheral vision felt blocked by the helmet.

I felt like a turtle in a tunnel. As I scooted tentatively across the ice, attempting to hold my stick as the Iceman had shown me, wondering how to balance in these skates and this featherweight exoskeleton, I found myself near a puck. I had been watching the four other people zipping around, shooting at a goalie in one of the nets, handling the puck all around the ice. I looked at them, I looked at the puck, and I replicated what I had worked on with the tennis ball on the floor in my living room until the cat got too involved in my practice sessions.

But here on the ice, my feet almost gave way from the force of my stick against the ice on its way to a seemingly stuck puck—heavy compared to the tennis ball, with no real give or bounce, unlike anything in my previous sport experience. It dawned on me that I had never actually taken stick to puck before, and I was astonished that my off-ice practice had no relevance whatsoever. I might as well have been hitting Twinkies with a fishing net for as much good as that tennis ball practice was doing me now.

As I struggled to get my stick somewhat back in my control and my feet firmly balanced, I decided to ignore the pucks for a bit and glide around holding the stick, trying to get the feel of the gear, the stick, the skates, the ice. Nothing felt right, but falling did feel amazing. Skating sans gear in figure or hockey skates had left me covered in bruises. I gave my hockey gear mad props for its unexpected no-bruise blessing, especially given I would be falling a lot more now that my balance was thoroughly confounded by the equipment and the stick/puck relationship. It was as if I had never been on the ice before for any reason.

And the skating. How did it get worse? How did I get slower—how was it even possible to be any slower? If I could see myself on the ice, would I appear stationary despite my earnest exertions? The gear wasn’t heavy, but it was awkward for someone whose previous sports had required at most a special hat or shoes—never body armor. Suffice it to say, my dreams and visualizations of how this would go had nothing to do with my reality.

That morning at Cabin John, as the full realization of the difficulty of what I was trying to do hit me, I heard the words of an older Sinatra, the one who had been through it and had come out the other side, the one not much older than I was then, and I found a way to smile. I am a late convert to his music. As a youngster, I didn’t like his smug demeanor, and as a lifelong Elvis fan, I didn’t take kindly to his dissing the King. But not long before I discovered hockey, I, too, had taken “the blows,” and his music had begun to resonate with me. “That’s Life” became and remains a regular cover in one of my musical projects.

“I’ve been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing/Each time I find myself laying flat on my face, I just pick myself up and get back in the race.” I knew that one thing, too, as well as another—as disappointed as I was on that day at the gulf between my dreams and my reality, I was going to love every exasperating minute of making them match.

And, I started to do so right away. Always an optimist, I also know how to turn disappointment into achievement. As I wrote to the woman who had helped me buy the gear: “I made it to a stick and puck last week, and I did not die or kill anyone else. So, a complete success, in my mind. Can’t wait to get to another.”

“But I don’t let it, let it get me down/‘cause this fine old world, it keeps spinning around.”

Gearing Up

by

Ah, the non-hockey smell of brand new gear (even the pre-owned skates were oddly innocuous).

Had I known hockey involved garters, I would have signed up years ago, if only for the beautiful incongruity of all those sharp edges and armor-like accoutrements offset by a throw-back item more likely to evoke a hitchhiking Claudette Colbert than Ranger great Rod Gilbert. But these bland, utilitarian hockey garters are needed to hold up your socks, which go over your shin pads. The alternative is a newer Velcro socks/shorts combination, a disappointing choice made by a distressing number of people. Honestly, where is the fun in that? I intended to fully embrace this exceedingly amusing contradiction, especially as garters were the only things besides the gloves and skates that I had tried on before.

Oh, there were so many things to figure out on that Saturday in the Rockville Total Hockey. Because I had help, it was way less stressful and far more successful than my previous gear near-meltdown. Within an hour or two, I had everything I needed in the right size and configuration:

  • Skates
  • Socks for skates (not everybody uses these—the choice is yours)
  • Shin pads
  • Hockey socks
  • Sock tape
  • Hockey garters
  • Hockey pants
  • Shoulder pads
  • Elbow pads
  • Jersey
  • Helmet
  • Mouthguard
  • Gloves

Amazingly enough, I even knew how to put it all on. Whether I would remember how to do so when I went to the rink at some vague point in the future was another question for another day.

On this day, I had answers for gear success:

  1. Ask around before you buy. You can get a sense of what will work best for you by asking other players what they prefer and why. Even people using hand-me-down gear can tell you if they like it or not. These insights are super helpful. Also, other players may have gear they are willing to give away or sell that is brand new or slightly used. I got my hockey pants that way—brand new with tags.
  2. Figure out how much and which borrowed/used gear you are willing to use. Especially if you are not sure you will stick with hockey, you may want to borrow gear or buy it used. If you are a germaphobe, you may want to buy it all new anyway. Keep in mind that “used” sometimes is brand new because someone figured out quickly it would not work but held onto it for whatever reason. Again, asking other players is the best source for this because you may find gear from them or they may suggest rinks, programs, or stores that offer used items.
  3. Take a friend with you who knows about hockey gear. This may seem obvious, but I know many people who just went on their own to buy gear the first time and ended up with items that did not work for them. That is the chance you take with any new endeavor when you don’t know exactly what you want because you have never used any of the equipment before. Having a female hockey player accompany me to the store stopped me from making several bad decisions because she knew the right questions to ask of me and of the staff. I cannot emphasize enough how much she saved the day.
  4. Try it all on again before going to the rink. If you are going to an early morning stick ‘n’ puck, you may be the only one in the women’s locker room and have no one to ask if you are confused. Or, you may be like me and not want to ask anyway because you don’t want to look like as much of an idiot off the ice as you know you will look once you are out there. Putting on gear becomes second nature, but at first, it can be confusing as anything. Most hockey players are super friendly and happy to help with gear questions. But, if you are the sort of person who worries about the one grouchy jerk who exists to make others feel stupid, then try it all on again at home before you try it at the rink.
  5. Figure out what to wear under the gear. I knew about this thanks to the female hockey player who went with me to the store. It never even occurred to me that this might matter, but I found a shirt cut for women that I loved that also helped my elbow pads stay in place. I decided to wear the leggings I wore for ice skating with this shirt, and voila! I could walk into any rink with any changing situation with no worries. All I had to do was put my gear over the shirt and the leggings and I was good to go, and the reverse worked perfectly, albeit with lots more sweat, afterward. Whether a rink had a co-ed locker room, no changing area, or a women’s bathroom, I was ready to arrive and depart in a way that was comfortable for me. Changing areas vary wildly by rink, and it is good to be prepared for any possibility. I mean, there are garters involved here—if you’re doing it the right way.