Hockey Cures All Ills

I saw my first hockey game, and everything changed.

Adult Hockey

Listen to the Blog: Episode 3 “1980”

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The first hockey game I ever saw was an early morning adult league game at Kettler Capitals Iceplex–now Medstar Capitals Iceplex. I ran into someone I used to know.

In the second part of the podcast, “In the Locker Room,” I suggest some hockey programs adult learners might want to try and recommend hockey documentaries from the Russian perspective.

I also discuss how combining wisdom from William Blake and Ted Lindsay can take you far as an adult hockey player.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:32 — 22.7MB)

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Listen to the Blog: Episode 2

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With the possible exception of the 1980 Miracle on Ice, I knew nothing about hockey when I saw my first game in 2013. I discuss that nothing in this latest re-imagining.

Additionally, follow me to the locker room to learn more about Try Hockey for Free Day, Paul Newman, AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, and what Sleater-Kinney has in common with adult hockey newbies.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:18 — 25.1MB)

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Listen to the Blog

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As an avid podcast listener, I decided it might be fun to offer recorded versions of the blog posts.

You’ll find many of these recordings on the shorter side, vignettes, if you will. That may change as the project evolves.

Episode One is ready. You can read the original here.

Drop me a line. In the episode, I describe a few ways you can find me if you don’t feel like using the Contact form on the blog.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:26 — 7.5MB)

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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.

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.