The Player’s Perspective: The draw of hockey

About a year and a half ago, I moved out of the city, to a small village some distance from many of the rinks that I play at. Whether for my regular pick-up games, or my league games, I now often find myself completing a 100 kilometre (60 mile) round trip at 11pm on a work night to enjoy a game. With travel time and a bit of socializing after the game, this often results in me not getting to bed until after 1:30, when I know I have to get up at 6:30 the next day.

A part of me has been wanting to quit this routine, reduce the number of games I play a week (normally 2-4), get some good sleep, and spend some more time at home. I do have other hobbies, and they don’t seem to be getting the attention they deserve. My wife – and my dog – want me home more.

For some reason, I can’t bring myself to do this though. So, I continue to hop in a cold car when it’s minus-30 outside, when there’s freezing rain falling, traversing country roads full of deer just waiting to hop across my path, burning gas that’s costing me nearly a dollar per litre, and putting way too much mileage on my vehicles.

Trying to come to grips with this insanity, I’ve been asking why I do it. What is it about hockey that keeps me going? Keeps me sustaining a routine and schedule that I know doesn’t make sense.

Glide and escape.

I think the biggest draw of hockey is, first and foremost, the glide. Skating gives a unique sensation that is not matched by any other activity. The g-force you feel on your body as you carve a long arc at high speed. The sheer speed at which you can travel on your own two feet. The wind. The sound of a skater going by, with the Predator-like racheting sound of each millimetre of their blades biting into and then releasing the ice surface.

The fluidity, the smoothness. Being able to stop moving your legs, yet continue moving faster than you could ever run.

As you nearly clip another player, you contort your body ever so slightly, feeling your mass being shifted from one different direction to another…there’s a millisecond where you are not balanced, and then you re-place your foot and continue on with or after the puck.

These are the forces keep me chugging back a coffee at a time when I should be going to bed, have me showering after midnight, yet still arriving at work the next day with hands that stink like hockey gloves.

And then there is the escape.

I’ve realized that when I’m playing, the world ends at the boards. No matter what is happening in life….work stress, family stress…for an hour at a time, it disappears.

In the game, there is a world of cause and effect...a world of simplicity and reduced variables.

The only issues you may have are with an opponent. Another person inside the boards, inside the limited world.

Score, and stop the other team from scoring. Drink water. Get off the ice before you get tired.

That’s it.

During the NHL lockout, the beer league I play in was able to book quite a few of our games at the Corel Centre, because it was sitting empty. This was quite a change, going to a 19,000 seat arena rather than an old municipal rink. It was here that I first realized that the world ended at the boards.

While, for the first game, I sat in awe for the first few minutes, this soon disappeared. As though there was a bubble over the ice surface, the Corel Centre soon became as small as the smallest ice surface in the city. All of the distractions of the facility no longer existed, and I wasn’t even thinking that we were playing in an NHL rink. It was just score, and stop the other team from scoring. Drink water. Get off the ice before you get tired. Hop back on, do it again.

When the game is over, this feeling moves to the dressing room. It’s not until I get in the car and start driving home that the rest of the world begins to exist again.

Glide and escape. They are both about simplicity.

So, with our increasingly complex lives, perhaps it comes down to simplicity. Maybe this is why I keep on doing it.

If my boss is reading this, I’m going to be a little tired when I get in tomorrow morning. I’ve got a late game tonight.