Hockey Cures All Ills

I saw my first hockey game, and everything changed.

Adults Learning to Play Hockey

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.

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.

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.”