Hockey Culture

“You watch him play. You sit in the stands with his mother, freezing, in an arena filled with echoes. He comes out without his helmet and stick, skating slowly around the rink. Others move around him deftly. He stares past them, disconnected, barely awake. They talk to him, call his name, hit his pads lightly with their sticks. He nods, smiles. You know he's had at least four cups of coffee. You've seen him, drinking, prowling the house frantically.

As the warm-up drills begin, he gets into the goal casually. Pucks fly over the ice, crashing into the boards, cluttering the net. He skates into the goal, pulling on his glove and blocker. He raps the posts with his stick. No one seems to notice, even when he starts deflecting shots. They come around slowly, firing easy shots at his pads. He scoops the pucks out of the net stick. He seems bored.

You shiver as you sit, watching him. You hardly speak. He ignores you. You think of the cost of his equipment. Sticks, forty dollars. Glove, one hundred and twenty. Leg pads, thirteen hundred dollars. The pads have patches. The glove is soft, the leather eaten away by his sweat.

The game begins, casually, without ceremony. The scoreboard lights up. The ice is cleared of pucks. Whistles blow. After the stillness of the face-off, you hardly notice the change, until you see him in goal, crouched over, staring,

You remember him in the back yard, six years old, standing in a ragged net wearing a parka and a baseball glove, holding an ordinary hockey stick, sawed off at the top. The puck is a tennis ball. The ice is cement. He falls down every time you shoot, ignoring the ball, trying to look like the goalies on TV. You score, even when you don't want to. He's too busy play-acting. He smiles, laughs, shouts.

You buy him a mask. He paints it. Yellow and black. Blue and white. Red and blue. It changes every month, as his heroes change. You make him a blocker out of cardboard and leg pads out of foam rubber. His mother makes him a chest protector. You play in the back yard, every evening, taking shot after shot, all winter.

It's hard to recall when you realize he's good. You come to a point where he starts to surprise you, snatching the ball out of the air with his glove, kicking it away with his shoe. You watch him one Saturday, playing with his friends. He humiliates them, stopping everything. They shout and curse. He comes in, frozen, tired and spellbound. "Did you see?" he says.
- Rudy Thauberger, Goalie

“Not to be confused with soccer or Little League moms, hockey moms are passionate, driven, speed-worshipping slaves to ice time and the art and aura of puck control.

There's a lot I've learned in the year of the hockey travel team. I've learned to help my seven-year-old son Lucas suit up, down to the last snap of the helmet and tightening of the laces in fifteen minutes flat, without swearing, pursing, panting, grumbling, whining or stalking out of the locker room in frustration at the amount of time required to get in gear.

I've become adept at heaving the 20-pound hockey bag over one shoulder while passing through narrow doorways with the agility of a Cajun dancer executing a two-step.

I've gotten accustomed to early bedtimes before games for which we must rise at 5:00 AM to be on the road by 6:00, in the locker room by 7:30 and on the ice by 8:00.

I've gotten good at fitting the demands of my job, housework, errands and my children's music lessons, homework and religious school around the practices and weekend games (as many as five during some big tournaments).

I've learned to shrug off the sidelong glances from Hebrew school teachers who clearly don't approve of, or understand, why my son misses school nearly every Sunday. I've begun, only half jokingly, to tell friends whom we barely see between the fall and spring equinoxes that we've converted from Judaism to hockeyism.”
-Tina Lincer First, In the Penalty Box: Confessions of a Reluctant Hockey Mom

Hockey Parents
In the last few years, hockey parents have been chastised for letting their major-league dreams overshadow their children's fun. Violence in the stands and off-ice psychological abuse prompted Hockey Canada, the governing body for Canadian amateur hockey, to launch an advertising campaign to get parents to cool it. You can view the ads here.

Despite a few poor sports, dark winter mornings and frosty arenas cannot hamper the dedication of most hockey parents.

Committed to their minor-league superstars, and the game, hockey parents dish out obscene amounts of money for skates and sticks, tote their kids to and from practices and games, and are there to cheer their kids on. It's all worth it to see another generation engaged in our national passion and, perhaps, that first triumphant goal.

For more on Canada's national obsession with hockey, read Roy MacGregor's story, “The Game of Our Lives”, in the November, 2003 issue of Canadian Living.

Want to learn more Canadian hockey history? Check out these links:

The Hockey Hall of Fame
www.hhof.com
Find out about recent inductees and current exhibits.

Hockey Canada
www.canadianhockey.ca
All the information you need on the Canadian hockey circuit.

CBC's Hockey Night in Canada
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey
Read the history behind a Canadian institution, Hockey Night in Canada, or find out what you missed in last night's game. Check out the CBC Archives for radio and television clips of Canadian hockey history.

The Hockey News
http://www.thn.com
The Hockey News' online edition has all you need to know about scores and NHL news.

Manon Rhéaume's Web site
www.manonrheaume.com
Learn all about the first woman to play in the NHL.