I'm not sure there's a hockey equivalent to three-strikes-and-you're-out but I may have gotten close to it this past Thursday night at my game. The good guys fell behind 2-0 early to the bad guys and I'm guessing we were a half dozen or more shifts into the game when my line headed out to …
7:28
That was the time staring back at me from the scoreboard clock at the end of the rink. 7:28 AM. It was this past Thursday and I was on the bench, well past warmed up in my 7:00-8:00 AM shinny, between shifts, and I remember thinking very clearly about whether I had had too much …
Love of Children
Yesterday's Friday shinny pre-game conversation surfaced an interesting measure of how much a parent loves their children. It started with some commenting about road trips and the miles that some parents drive over the course of a weekend, season or indeed, for the entire duration of raising children, when said children play rep level hockey. …
Not Quite The Flyers
Yesterday, in the Oval Office, Team Orange went full Broad Street Bullies 1973. The Orange King was playing the tough guy, but....no wait, I don't recall any of those Flyers ever skipping big games because of bone spurs. Maybe JD was the muscle? Trying to be as tough as Dave the Hammer, but looking like …
The World Within The Game
Being from southern Ontario, I will admit that my default team over many of my adult years has been the Leafs but that wasn't always the case. As a very young kid, I recall a brief dalliance with the Habs as I learned to ties shoes, read and fish (the big 3 of life skills) …
Ankle Burners
I started this blog many, many years ago, as a means of recording (pen to paper? keyboard to silicon?) my hockey memories from yore. Yore is getting further and further in the rear view mirror so when I circle back and read some of my own work here, I realize that perhaps the biggest beneficiary of …
Zeroes
Not zero. Multiple zeroes. Shaped a bit like a puck, but mostly not a good hockey number. Unless you're a goalie. Last Thursday was my annual old-timer league Christmas tournament. Over 2 hours, the 4 teams in the league each player each other, a 3-game round robin of 15 minute games. 6 games in total. …
The Code…No, Not That One, The Other One
Much has been written about "the Code" in hockey. That tribal, primal, element that is the secret sauce of keeping order in the hockey universe. At its simplest level, it's "beat up our guy, and we'll beat up yours" or "Hurt our guy, even accidentally, and you better be ready to answer the bell". But …
Raised by…Torts?
A couple of weeks back, as I sat in the dressing room post-game still in full gear, I lamented out loud the previous hour's blunders. A give-away here, a botched pass there, the habitual whiffed shot from the slot. I recalled my dad joking with me way back one night when I was really young …
Time for a Hair Cut
Sam Malone, that make-believe character for the ages, cagey Red Sox vet, survivor of the bottle, once suggested "Well, you know what I always say, there are no bad boys, just boys with bad haircuts." That's good writing, no? And he wasn't wrong. And picking up from my recent post from just last Friday, here …
Rink Tales 