Hockey Cures All Ills

I saw my first hockey game, and everything changed.

Archives for November 2018

Flying and Stopping

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In the summer, a glorious thing happens for the new skater who is no longer laboring under any illusions about the length and sharpness of her hockey learning curve: ice time opens up. Although I had expected some difficulty at my first stick and puck, I had been stunned by my instantly evaporating skating skills when faced with gear and stick. From that reality jolt I saw a very long list of skills I did not have, most of which I had no correct terminology to describe: that puck thing, that dance stop thing, that stick push thing.

But I could describe one thing: my skating was slow and tentative, featuring lots of sliding around and falling down instead of intentional or controlled stops, my presence a mixture of furrowed brow, terrified exclamation, and maniacal laughter. I would laugh even harder when others sprayed ice with their skates and suggested I could do the same. Generally, I looked over my shoulder to make sure they were talking to me. They clearly had me confused with someone who had a clue and some ability. I knew I needed to be better, and I knew someone who could help.

My regular skating partner Motocross also sought more summer ice time, but for very different reasons. Having been on skates most of his life, usually and preferably as a goalie, he had a current goal more to do with burning off energy than with mastering mysterious basics. At those early morning public skates, we cut an odd ice partnership—his effortlessness, my clumsiness; his detailed explanations, my flustered questions; his fluid executions, my tortured imitations.

Every so often he had to tear away from me to fly at an appropriate speed. I couldn’t fault him and loved to watch him, his smoothness as inspiring as it was baffling, no misplaced edge, no unnecessary effort, no obvious calculation. His conversation with the ice was deep and longstanding; mine was a shallow cocktail party chat punctuated by bickering.

I learned something every time we skated together, and today would be no different. I told him all about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat from my first stick and puck, and he showed me things to practice based on what I said and what he saw. Our conversation that day centered on stopping, as it usually did. His advice and demonstration were always helpful and clear, even if my ability to capitalize on his expertise might have made him think otherwise. I found out “that dance stop thing” is known as a t-stop; that was the only thing I figured out about it that day.

Skaters speeding into various jumps dominated center ice; Motocross and I mingled in the next informal ring with those who had clear goals and some ability to achieve them; and the newest and most terrified clung to the boards and, much to my relief, flailed more than I did.

We were continuing to discuss the t-stop when suddenly Motocross yelled, “Look out!” and zipped forward. I turned and saw her back racing toward me. Possessing no zip, I tried to dig my skates in and brace myself for impact. It was a bad idea because you can’t really brace when you can’t really stop.

But, oh yes, I did stop—after I flew through the air. Several concerned citizens helped me upright, and I saw the skate guard sternly talking to the distracted diva and accidental instigator. She apologized, I was okay, no real harm and no intentional foul. (Note to newbies: I have never been flattened by a hockey skater or a child at a public skate, but I have been clobbered twice, and only twice, by distracted backward-flying figure skaters.)

Motocross is a hockey player, so after he made sure I was okay, he did not mince words. “You did that all wrong back there.”

I know I glared. I was bruised in body and pride from being bested in an unprovoked attack by a figure skater. I was the victim here. What the heck kind of pep talk was this?

“What do you mean?”

“Look,” he softened a bit. “I know you weren’t fast enough to get past her. But, in case this ever happens again, don’t just prepare yourself to take it.”

My brow remained furrowed.

He continued, “She was in the wrong, and you just let her take you out. Trust me, if she had come at me, I would not have been the one who went flying. You have to send that energy coming at you back to her. Don’t just take it.”

He was right. In so many ways. You can always count on a goalie, who surveys the entire expanse of ice, to see the bigger picture.
 

 

 

That’s Hockey

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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.”