"As Pops used to say, 'Life is for the living.'
Be mindful of the moments."
-Bob McKenzie, Hockey Confidential
Hockey's back. Technically, the first NCAA regular season game was played last week, and this week it began in earnest, though the Mercyhurst Lakers won't kick off their regular season until next weekend, when they visit a good Colgate team on the road. Last week, in their preseason game, the Lakers defeated University of Guelph 4-0. I get the sense that Guelph is a bit depleted by graduations, but I'll still take a win against the reigning USports Champion as a good sign.
My life has changed a lot since I started following women's hockey in 2017, just insofar as I had an infant and a toddler and other than work, I was pretty homebound, and constantly trying to get kids to fall asleep. In 2017 online fandom gave me a chance to read about and be inspired by the great things women in sport were doing. I was definitely struggling with the isolation that my life had at the time, and struggling to reconcile myself to some realities that had made themselves apparent. I really needed and benefited from what I found in the community of people who wrote about and talked about women's hockey. I didn't see enough CHA or college commentary, had things of my own to say, and wanted to indulge my creative side, so eventually I started writing too.
I actually found it really hard to just up and start a blog about hockey. As a child when I got into hockey I was oblivious to social norms. As an adult I have an awareness that not a lot of people write about women's hockey or their personal experiences with it. And so I was and often am, self conscious. Yet I wish there was more of this genre of writing. The only thing I knew how to do then, was start, and hope that somehow in the tiniest way possible, it might get more people to write too, if not today....years from now. I think about the Justin Bournes, the Dustin Fox's, guys that just started talking their sport after their playing days were done. I really do believe women's hockey would be richer, if we had more of that. For now, we are in a wonderful place with the voices who contribute, but there is always room for more.
I am definitely not done writing, and even want to keep recording my podcasts. I'm following hockey, and you'll find me here, probably in The Athletic comments (sometimes against my better judgement), and on the USCHO message board. I'm dialing back the twitter though. It's a wonderful servant, but a terrible master, and I'm just going to try to be mindful of that. I share this, because I value the friendships I've made there, and it doesn't feel right to just stop engaging, without comment.
It's definitely tough for me, making the time to nurture this creative side of me (especially in an environment of online distraction which makes me inefficient), but I really do love it. That said, I recognize that as my kids are getting older and less dependent, I am not tethered to the house like I once was, and that it is equally worth it for me to get out in 'the real world' again, and enjoy what life has to offer out there.
After years away from hockey, I got the bug to play sports again, and while it's not hockey, I was able to start up a mom's soccer group at the field just down the street, and I've been loving doing that the past little while. I have to say though, I feel old! Took me four weeks to get to a point where I didn't feel like I spent the whole week recovering. My body feels good now though, and don't tell my husband but I called our local rink yesterday and asked about pickup hockey... you know how it is, when the game gets inside you.
***
I wanted to leave you with one of my favorite passages from The Game, by Ken Dryden. It's long and the better thing is for you just to read the book, as I will leave parts out here, lest I be typing all day. But it's the part where he talks about hockey in the backyard, and how that compared to his game in the NHL where his brother happened to be in the opposing net, and their dad in the crowd. At first, Dryden couldn't figure out why it felt anticlimactic, like he'd experienced before. And then he figured it out.
I like this passage because it illustrates how are connection to the game can occur in any number of changing ways, over a lifetime. If you are paying attention, you'll also see that the existence of pros, whose names we know, matters, even for kids who might not end up in the pros. Further, right now for me, one of the most joyful connections I have to the game is with my children in our driveway, in our non traditional hockey market, no rink having hometown.
***
The backyard was not a training ground. In all the time I spent there, I don't remember ever thinking I would be an NHL goalie, or even hoping I could be one. In backyard games, I dreamed I was Sawchuk or Hall, Mahovlich or Howe; I never dreamed I would be like them. There seemed no connection between the backyard and Maple Leaf Gardens; there seemed no way to get to there from here. If we ever thought about that, it never concerned us; we just played. It was here in the backyard that we learned hockey. It was here we got close to it, we got inside it, and it got inside us. It was here that our inextricable bond with the game was made. Many years have now passed, the game has grown up and been complicated by things outside it, yet still the backyard remains untouched, unchanged, my unseverable link to that time, and that game.
(and then after the NHL game versus his brother, mystified at his reaction):
When the game was over, proud and relieved, we shook hands at center ice. A few hours later, I began to feel differently. What had surprised and disappointed me earlier, I found exciting and reassuring. It really had been no different. those backyard games, the times we stood at opposite ends of the yard, the times we dreamed we were Sawchuk and Hall, we were Sawchuk and Hall, there had been a connection - we just never knew it.
***
When I was in college, I remember thinking that a goal scored at Hobey Baker felt no different than a goal scored in a tournament at Chetwynd. It's incredible, but I guess that's just the game.
I liked your comparison of Hobey/Baker and Chetwynd. I think it works in the other direction, too. That is, even as we get older and play pickup hockey or, in my case, "old man's tennis", a goal, an assist, or a winning tennis shot is just as exhilarating as it was when we were at the top of our game even if, objectively, our performance is not what it used to be. That's what keeps us in the game.
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