I got that point proven to me again on the weekend.
I played hockey for the first time in two years on Sunday, a tournament that demanded three games in a day out of me. I survived.
My team was made up of work colleagues. It's an annual ritual, one I missed last year on account of being in Mexico, that features teams from various media outlets in Toronto. Some teams take it more seriously than others. There was much scuttlebutt around the glass that the Toronto Star was liberally peppered with ringers. When we watched CTV and the National Post play before our first game, it was a sign of how the higher-rent teams handled themselves. They were both pretty good for a couple of pickup squads.
I used to play a couple of times a week, but it's been about three years since I've played regularly. I am fast approaching the age when it is increasingly difficult to just go out and play and not make an ass of yourself. No amount of knowledge, training, experience or even skill can compensate for a body that can no longer respond. Happily, that was not my entire experience.
I am slower, I am not as strong as I used to be and my vision is not as sharp. But since a good proportion of my teammates are similarly aging, we're all getting slower together. It's all relative.
The goal in my first game was not to embarrass myself and in that I was successful. I took all the necessary middle-aged precautions: Advil BEFORE taking the ice, a deliberate warmup, a bit of time with the puck on my stick just to remember how it felt. It felt good, even if kept sliding from my control like a drop of mercury on a piece of paper. And to skate again was a delight. I skate well, if a bit stiffly, I can still turn to the left and the right and stop without falling down.
But in pickup hockey, the difference between being a hole-filler and useful to your team tends to come down to speed and conditioning. Good puck handling is a bonus. Speed allows you to cover the ice: attack and defend. Conditioning allows you to do it for more than the first shift. I was pretty much resigned to the fact my puck handling would suck. Two years of rust will see to that.
My speed is not what it once was, so my ability to play in both ends was limited. But my conditioning, which is pretty good, let me be more-or-less in the right position most of the day.
We lost our first game in overtime and won our second in a shootout. By the time we got to our third game we'd all learned each others names and were playing on regular lines.
As the games unfolded, I noticed something: my hockey brain and hockey body were beginning to get reacquainted. It's the small things, taking a pass and moving the puck ahead quickly while pivoting 90 degrees and keeping your head up. Seeing the player you're supposed to check and staying on top of him. Finding yourself in open ice in a position to take a pass for a shot. It's a kind of muscle memory that was shaken loose through repetition.
We played the Post in our last game. I'd seen them play twice. They lost their first game in a shootout to CTV and they creamed CP in their second game. I watched a bit of their second game and it was obvious that a number of their players were familiar to one another. They moved the puck easily, wingers stayed in their lanes and backchecked. Defencemen didn't pinch in unless they knew they had a play. Against us, the game was over pretty quickly. I think it finished 7-1. Even though we were being thoroughly trounced, I actually felt pretty good. First of all my lungs weren't burning, neither were my legs. The running held me in good stead there. And the game started to slow down a bit. I wasn't handling the puck like it was a hand grenade. When it was over, I was pleased. My modest pickup hockey career is not over.
I got something else out of my day's exercise: a renewed appreciation for the pro game. The playoff games were on the TVs in the arena restaurant, and I was glued to the Rangers and Devils as I sipped a Coke after our second game. It seemed faster to me, the skill level beyond anything I had seen. Then came the subtle things; the footwork, close passing, the positioning, the use of the body. The scrums along the boards made sense, so did the cycling the in offensive end. And the routine failures of the greatest players in the world, the shots that went wide, the missed passes, the players out of position. A much faster, skilled and vastly better compensated version of our little tourney. And games that end with the same sorts of scores, 4-3, 3-2, and 7-1.
It's all relative. They play at their pace, we play at ours. The pleasure I take in playing with my peers lets me to appreciate the pros' skills all the more. (You just have to watch one of these guys going slowly to see what I mean. Watch the Alexei Kovalev stickhandling exhibition on U-Tube and you get the picture. Pros live in another universe, George Plimpton notwithstanding.)
It's a reminder, a happy reminder, that when you play the sport, you are not just a fan. You are part of it. You might not make a living doing it, but you're a big reason why the game lives in the first place. Take away the weekend hackers like us, and you starve the roots that let the pro game flourish. Why is it hard to sell hockey in Nashville? Not because the game is bad, but because there are not enough people like us, the ones who drag their gear to the rink, hit a clean sheet of ice and share the magic.
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