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My Story |
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September 15, 2005, 5:33 PM ET
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I am really just a hockey fan. As a kid hockey held a certain
magic to it. I put it on a pedestal above all else. When I was
really young I remember taking a big cardboard box and cutting off one
side to make a goal in the living room. The flaps I cut off
I taped to my legs as makeshift goalie pads and I made a waffle.
I took a brown paper lunch bag and made a catching glove out of
it. My mom threw tennis balls at me in the living room.
When she was busy I threw the balls up the stairs and caught them on
the way down.
I remember listening to the Flyers win the cup in
74' on my old big dial am radio. I was only 6, and I wasn't
supposed to be listening or up so late. The volume was so quiet I had
to press my ear against the plastic grate that covered the speaker to
hear at all. I remember how my ear would ache after hours of
this. I remember bruising my ear I pushed so hard.
Back
then you couldn't buy hockey jerseys in the states. I remember I made
two out of two of my dad's big white undershirts. One Flyers, #1
Parent, and one Bruins, #1 Gilbert. The Flyers were never on the
TV when they were home in those days. The only time I saw their
white jerseys were when I could tune in a very snowy version of channel
9 and see the Rangers broadcasts. Seeing them in white was
surreal. You couldn't come close to seeing the puck the reception was
so bad, but it was the greatest thing in the world to be watching a
home game!
It was way too expensive to play ice hockey back
then, in the seventies, so I played street hockey like a lot of kids in
the US. I had a close friend who was an ice hockey goalie, so he
gave me his old stuff. They were all waterlogged and heavy but I wore
them because they were ice hockey stuff. Sure the Mylec stuff was
lighter but it wasn't nearly as cool. So I lugged my legs around
in old brown pads. I was a good street hockey goalie, but I
probably would have been great were I not carrying so much weight. I
was the goalie on a team that dominated the streets.
I could
afford to play baseball, but I played catcher because I got to wear
stuff that was similar to goalie equipment. I made kick saves to
block pitches in the dirt. I was a tall kid, but I always wore
#1, which was the smallest jersey in the box. I didn't care if I
was uncomfortable or not, because of Parent.
My friend, the ice
hockey goalie, once snuck me into the Coliseum, the only ice rink
around and the place the Flyers practiced. I remember sneaking
into the door out back where all the snow was from the Zamboni.
When I walked in there was a puck lying on the bench of the
arena. I still have it I think. I remember the smell, and
the cold wet air, I was in heaven. I remember Bobby Clarke walked
past me. Or at least my friend said it was him. I remember
asking my friend if I could touch the ice. I remember asking
where the lines were, and him telling me they were hard to see when you
were close to them. He then told me they were painted below the
ice. That blew my mind. I went home and built a miniature rink
out of cardboard. I filled it with water and left it outside
overnight in an attempt to have real ice.
When cable TV first came
out, I found out that a friend of my parents, who lived in another
neighborhood, had PRISM, the cable channel that televised home
games! So I offered to babysit for their three year old. I
still remember how cool it was watching the Flyers on Prism. And
no commercials either. The theory then was you were paying for
cable so you didn't need commercials. That idea faded fast!
Then
my friend, the ice hockey goalie, got a big screen TV! And PRISM made
it to their neighborhood. At that point forget about it. My
schoolwork became optional. A few years later cable made it to our
neighborhood. A few years later we got PRISM.
I used to
make my family take a trip to Montreal every summer so I could be in
the city where hockey was king. To me the Canadiens and the
people of Montreal understood me. They understood the
passion. They lived it too. And you could buy hockey
jerseys! Now it is amazing to me that I get to go on Montreal
radio twice a week and talk hockey.
Finally, I actually went to
a game. A pre-season game, at the age of 9, in 1977, Flyers
verses the Cleveland Barons. 13 rows up in the corner. It
was like I was in Santa's workshop. I never wanted to leave.
In
83-84 my family got season tickets two rows from the top in the
Spectrum. I went to almost every game for twelve years.
Most with my mom who to this day knows hockey better than most. I
saw some classic games indeed.
Then in the mid eighties, I
convinced my dad, in a well written out report, why buying a big
satellite dish was better than cable. And after all he would be
able to watch Red Wings games. My dad is still a Red Wings fan to
this day. When they beat the Flyers in the cup finals in 97 a
part of me died.
Once we had the dish I became the popular kid
and we watched feeds of Canucks and Kings games late into the
evening. Those were the days before ESPN carried the play-off
games. The dish was fun, because you never knew what channel the
feeds were on. When you found one we'd all cheer. We played
hockey in the basement between periods. A game I had made up in a
makeshift rink that I had built down there.
And then there were
the Strat-o-Matic Seasons. Countless nights, playing countless games of
Strat-o-Matic Hockey. Still the best hockey game on the planet,
bar none.
The after college I finally got to fulfill my dream
and play ice hockey. I played for several years in a men's league
until I was replaced due to injuries to my back. But I loved
every game. I loved skating onto a new sheet of ice.
My
career had nothing to do with hockey after college. I made my own
fame in a completely different world until the lockout came and I
started the blog when I felt the sport I worshipped was being thrown to
the dogs. And people responded. My few contacts quickly spread to
hundreds of others. People from a sport that had imploded on
itself. Now I have become part of it. And it still holds a
certain magic to it.
