If You Look Good - You Feel Good

A New Jersey and A New Year

All told, I didn't play hockey for about 6 weeks.  I missed it a great deal.  Sure, I went to the rink with John to watch our team play.  Sure, I went to the rink to watch Madie play (my women's team was playing on the rink beside her's).  But it's really not like actually taking part, you're not really part of the team.  Of course, that didn't stop me drinking with the team (my co-ed adult team, not Madie's house league team, I have some standards)!  I'm not a 100% yet, but I'm close enough that I'm out there trying.  Plus, our co-ed team got new jerseys and I had to get in on that!

There's something about a new uniform that gives you a sense of a new beginning.  It reminds me of choosing what to wear for your first day back at school.  Why it really mattered what you wore for the first day back somewhat eludes me now ~ probably it was a remnant of your mother choosing your first day of school outfit so that you made your best first impression.

Our new hockey jerseys are pretty 'stylin,' there not quite as impressive as my old team's Thrasher jerseys, but then again, they only cost me $30.00, as opposed to more than triple that for the Thrasher jersey.

we did look good!

The new team (which is called The Blues) is slowly coming together.  Like the Thrashers, we were a 'put together' team by the league.  It doesn't have the cohesiveness of the Thrashers yet, but at least we're starting to hang out together after the game having a few beers (which is really the whole point of adult recreational hockey).  I think the reason the Thrashers got along so well since the inception of the team, was because we went through the beginner program together and plus we had Anooj who made it very clear that the bar, not the rink, was the focal point of the team!

But I digress, yet since this is my blog, I guess I can digress as much as I like!

The new jerseys go extremely well with my gloves - the same dark blue, lighter blue and white.  The gloves I bought on sale ages ago, but it looks like I was trying to match things up and of course, looking good means you play good (I know it should say play "well", but as I said, it's my blog).  For one second of madness I considered buying a new stick to go along with my new 'outfit.'

this one has just the right shade of blue to match the jersey

Yes, it was only a second of madness, since the price tag of this stick was $269.00.  Sigh.  All the style magazines tell you that accessorizing is so important, but I don't think my level of play really justifies this level of stick.  Flex is rather unimportant to someone who can't for the life of them do a slap shot - plus I play in a league that slap shots aren't allowed! 

Hmmmmm, maybe I could do something with my laces .....

Exhaustion, The Boys & Booty

How I felt after two hours of shinny with a short bench

(I know they're stretching, but they still look tired)



On Saturday night, John and I went to play some shinny at York University.  We're lucky, in that we're a married couple who think that spending time playing hockey and drinking beer with friends, is the perfect way to spend a Saturday night.  Little did we know that this particular evening would provide such unique and interesting insights into the mating rituals of the North American university student, but before I digress into the bizarre, let me first deal with the shinny, which was incredible - in length, fun, intensity and laughs.

Our friend Anooj had booked the ice time, he managed to secure two hours of ice starting at a decent time (7:45 pm), which is a rarity in our hockey crazed city.  For $20, we could play for two hours, plus get a pitcher of beer and wings, heck, how could you turn down a deal like that?  Usually when Anooj books shinny time, he gets a pretty good turnout, yet for some reason or another we were short players.  We did have two goalies, but only eleven skaters which meant a lot of ice time, but a lot of ice time takes up a lot of energy, by the end of the two hours, everyone was pretty exhausted.

We played four on four, which allowed one team to have one on the bench and the other team to have two on the bench (that's the team I played on, hey I'm old and I need as much as a break as I can get).  Playing four on four is fantastic, especially when you're like me and just learning, it gives you more space and time to make decisions.  I had the opportunity to carry the puck and make some rushes, it wasn't pretty, but I'm getting better.  It was heartening to receive some compliments from Sunny & Dave over my improved abilities, Sunny even took the time to make some suggestions to better my play while we sitting on the bench (it was hard to hear him while I was trying to keep my lungs from collapsing).   Of the thirteen of us playing, I was the only female and was clearly the weakest player, but these guys were great.  They adjusted their level of play to my level when playing directly against me.  Some females might have taken that as an insult, insisting that they be treated as one of the guys, but I accepted their treatment in the spirit of goodwill of which it was given.   Let's be real, with all of 2 1/2 years of hockey under my belt and being a 48 year old premenopausal female, there's no way I could go one on one with a guy 20 years younger with ample playing experience.  The boys went at it hard when playing against each other, no quarter was given to my 52 year old husband, his advanced skills let him deal with the younger more fit guys, but even John was exhausted by the end and had a hard time recovering Sunday.

Two hours of hockey, with little time on the bench is exhausting.  My skills level went down as my exhaustion level went up.  Even the guys started to rely upon stretch passes and rarely challenged during breakaways that occurred in the last half hour.  We even left the ice before the Zamboni came out, there wasn't anybody on the ice afterwards, so we could have kept playing, but a body can only take so much!

Afterwards we went upstairs for the wings and beer.  The rink as I mentioned is located at York University, yet whenever we played there, we wouldn't see any students in bar, which seemed to cater exclusively to the hockey crowd.  This night was an exception.   They were carding for ID at the door (I was crushed when they didn't ask me for mine), and there was a DJ playing extremely loud bizarre dance mixes, he seemed to specialize in mixing vocals and underlying rhythms that didn't match.  To make it even more annoying the bar hadn't turned off their canned 'muzak,' so we had that emitting from a dinky speaker over our heads, though it was no match for pounding sounds coming from the DJ's speakers.  Now I live with a 16 year old female and watch Much Music every morning,  I know my Katy Perry and Taylor Swift - but there wasn't anything that this guy played that I recognized,  we all commented that we felt old and out of it.   When we first entered, there were only confused, somewhat sweaty hockey players in the bar, along with rather large security men wandering about and the only person dancing were the DJ and his assistant.  We would have left, but remember that our price to play hockey included beer and wings and though the music may have been annoying, we weren't crazy enough to walk away from beer!  As time passed a trickle of students started to enter the venue, I thought Jeff's head would swizzle off as he turned to watch the parade of scantily clad girls that entered the bar.  The unifying aspect of dress for these girls seemed to be an attempt to display as much of their bodies as possible in micro minis, short shorts and plunging neck lines.  Jeff didn't even try to be circumspect as he watch them saunter by, squealing as them met their friends, his attitude was that girls dress this way for attention and he was merely providing it!

It was quite the dichotomy, older sweaty hockey players and young exhibitionist females.  Sure there were a few university aged males in the mix, but they seemed to lack the desire to reveal as much skin as possible (remember I had just left the change room with a bunch of guys, I had seen as much male skin as I needed).  It was like entering a bizarre subculture where you thought you belonged (hockey bar), but you ended up feeling like Alice in Wonderland.  In a way it all made sense, since the hockey players clear out around midnight, the bar added to its income by holding a university event that would go till the wee hours.  I have a live and let live attitude, if the girls wanted to dress this way (and especially those that had the body for it), hey it's their lives.  I just wonder if they would have put the same wares on display, knowing that their audience would be an aging group of hockey players, who may have been shaking their heads, but enjoyed the spectacle none the less. 

I'm lucky that a lot of the guys I play hockey with read my blog ... I bet the next time we have shinny at York University we'll have a few more players.

Where's the Intensity?

It's not easy being a Leaf fan.  Back in October when the NHL season was dewy and fresh, I blogged about the Leaf winning streak of four games http://madwomanofhockey.blogspot.com/2010/10/jumping-on-bandwagon.html, and how so many people were jumping on the Leaf's bandwagon.  Now it's a month later and the bandwagon is getting rather lonely due to the Leaf's record of 5-7-3.  The Toronto media continually lambastes the team and its management, the fans bemoan the dearth of ambition and grit on the team and many people have simply shrugged and chalked it up to another typical Leaf's season.  Just today, the Toronto Star questioned where the leaf's intensity was.  The team may lack intensity, but its true fans do not.

There are very, very few true Leafs fans, but my friend Anooj has to be at the forefront of them.  Like a true love affair, it hasn't all been smooth sailing, in fact love affair with the Leafs is like trying to have a love affair with a skunk; sure they can be cute at times, but often they stink!

Anooj carries out his affair with the Leafs in the very public forum of Facebook.  Sometimes one has to wonder how his long suffering wife Jalpa feels about this other spectre in their marriage.  As you can see by the above status update he has also promised to love the Leafs "Till death do us Part!!!".  Actually that statement was made in uppercase letters, a technique that Anooj often employs.

According to "netiquette", writing in capital letters is akin to shouting.  Anooj shouts a lot. 

Anooj will vehemently defend his team, usually employing quite descriptive and visually evocative language, though frequently a comparison to some type of excrement is usually made as may be seen by the above reference to llama excretions or rhino turd.  In the interest of family viewing, I've chosen not to include any reference to human excrement, but yes, that finds its ways into his updates too.

The language may be puerile and adolescent, but you have to admit that it's really funny and amusing.  Frequently I find myself on Facebook during a Leaf's game, simply because Anooj's running commentary is more entertaining than the play-by-play commentary of the so called experts.  If I miss watching the game, there's no need to tune into TSN's updates, I simply have to log into Facebook and I have access to all the information that's pertinent to the game, plus emotional input such as the Billy Madison and a orifice reference with regards to the parking cone, as seen above.

A passionate love affair is never a smooth and simple process.  Anooj readily admits the faults of his team, but steadfastly remains loyal in his support.  One can only hope that the Leafs win a Stanley Cup in his lifetime as a reward for such staunch loyalty.

In Anooj's succinct reply to his own status update (a rather unique process that I've really only ever seen employed by Anooj, along with 'liking' his own updates), he tells the world that "HATERZ SUUUUK IT!!!!!!"  No matter what, he'll stand by his team, though it may require vast quantities of alcohol  to do so, though I do worry that if the Leafs ever do win the Stanley Cup, he won't now how to deal with such a popular girlfriend; right now it's easier to vehemently defend the honour of the girl who doesn't look like she'll ever win a beauty contest.  Somehow, you've got to like a guy like that, I know I do.

An Interesting Technique

Me (#11) playing defence with a rather off balance stance in front of Sean (#33)

Wayne Gretzky once said:  "If you can't skate, you can't play our sport.  Skating is an art."

If I could do it all over again, I would have stuck with my figure skating lessons.  When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s, boys played hockey and girls figured skated.  My parents didn't prevent me from playing hockey, it never occurred to them or to me, that hockey was an option.  What was an option for me was figure skating and I hated it.  My lessons took place on an outdoor community rink, thus every Saturday morning in the winter I was bundled up to look like the Michelin Man and carted off to the rink to 'shoot the duck' and 'choctaw' with other overdressed six year olds.  My mother sat inside the community centre chatting with the other mothers, while I slowly froze to death as I tottered around the rink.  That the lessons occurred at all, were a result of my parents trying to be conspicuously fair and because I think my mother always wanted to figure skate.  By the age of seven, I declared I no longer wanted to figure skate and since it was taking all of my mother's energy to keep me practicing the piano, she decided the figure skating lessons could go.  In retrospect I should have stuck with the figure skating and let go of the piano, but seven year olds lack foresight and I didn't like the cold.

Well here we are forty-one years later.  I can play a mean Clair de Lune by Debussy, but I can't do a backwards crossover to save my life.  When you take up a sport later in life, you learn the basics, but that's all you really get.  You learn to stop (both directions, but like most players I prefer one over the other), frontwards crossovers (both directions, but like most players I prefer right foot over left, since it's something you can practice while pleasure skating), basic backwards skating (the C cut), then you move on to basic stick handling. 

Anooj (#15) & Brad (#18) in front of Sean

Some of the beginners that I started out with, have more natural skill (they're also younger, and truth be told, they practice more).  Hockey requires each maneuver to be performed with speed, agility, mobility, power, quickness, explosiveness and efficiency.  Brad (#18) in the above picture, has a natural ability, his technique incorporates the mantra that John preaches "Shoulders over knees over toes."

If you look at Sidney Crosby's stance, it stands in stark contrast to my own at the top of the page.  Crosby has had the benefit of a lifetime of training.  Today's stars fly down the ice at speeds unheard of even ten years ago.  Players who are agile and explosively fast dominate the game.  Crosby learned correct skating technique from the get-go!  Moreover he practice and practiced and practiced until the muscle memory was ingrained within him.  He doesn't have to think about force generation, center of gravity, acceleration, momentum, inertia, velocity, centrifugal forces - he just skates!

I lack the strong foundations upon which I could build hockey skills.  I sigh when I watch John effortlessly (OK it appears effortlessly to me at the time) accelerate backwards with efficient crossovers.  He knows and utilizes proper positioning, whereas I feel like most of the time I'm on the ice I'm the chaser in a game of "keep away".  John can shoot a wrist shot that hits the top corner of the net, whereas mine slides ineffectually across the ice.  John has technique from years of practice, Jamie has technique from practice and instruction.

I can play Rachmaninoff's C Sharp Minor Prelude, but I'd trade it in for a good wrist shot or the ability to do a backwards crossover!