Hockey Cures All Ills

I saw my first hockey game, and everything changed.

Archives for January 2019

Next Stop

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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.

It’s Tricky

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I have never been to Smashville, but I am intrigued by it. During broadcasts of the Caps at Nashville, I see bands playing in the stands between periods, a brilliant idea for Music City and something I hope to see in person sometime.

Until then, I listen to what the DJs and organists offer during games around the NHL. Was someone unhappy with a penalty? Cue up “Misunderstanding.” Is the other team getting a little too confident in their play? “Take On Me” wafts through the speakers. Did a generational player just blow our minds? On Tuesday night, when hats flew toward the ice to honor Ovechkin’s hat trick, “It’s Tricky” played, and then played again.

Always keen to understand the method behind any madness, I decided to track every song played when the Caps hosted the Sharks in their last home game before the NHL All Star break. It seemed a simple thing to do—until I started to do it.

Thankfully, I had help from my go-to-hockey-gamer, hereinafter referred to as “The Raconteur” on this blog, for his ability to tell an amazing story as well as be a willing foil to my madcap hockey enthusiasm. Even with his astute assistance and our access to Shazam, we were scrambling and distracted from the game.

If I do this again, I won’t sit so close. Tracking the music kept pulling my eyes from the skating technique I closely watch when lucky enough to sit just five rows behind the glass.

Suffice it to say, play stops more than I thought, and I don’t know as many songs as I thought. Even limiting my analysis to those songs played between puck drop and buzzer overwhelmed me—several times I got lost in the game and barely realized in time that I needed to track the song.

At least three times, we or Shazam failed (and I know we missed/disputed several organ pieces). If you happen to be the Caps DJ or organist, please take pity and fill in those gaps.

At the end of this experiment, I was impressed by the thought that clearly went into everything that came over the loud speakers. As a casual listener at other games, I would occasionally note commentary coming from the DJ or organist and smile. As an active listener on Tuesday, it seemed to me the commentary never stopped.

Here’s to hearing Bustin’ Loose at the end of the next home game.

Caps Versus Sharks Set List

January 22, 2019

(Not complete by any means, so feel free to fill in the blanks. Omissions/confusions were unintentional and brought on by a very crazy game that I had to watch!)

*(I borrowed WL from Phil Rizzuto, although for me it stands for “wasn’t listening” because the game was so distracting.)

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.