The romance of hockey

[Stoner]

This is how I feel about this board sometimes.

 

[Neo]

SabreJack, heart attack...

I had to edit my "spell-o"!

[French Collection]

Wow, Dokis. That's a pretty, out of the way place. I'm on Lake Nipissing that feeds the French River into Georgian Bay.

I don't know where Lake Baptiste is, I'll Google it.

Northern Ontario has some beautiful scenery, the shores of Lake Superior between the Soo and Thunder Bay is rugged and awesome.

There are warts here too, but I wouldn't leave because I'm not comfortable in cities.

Edited November 17, 2015 by French Collection

[Neo]

I've fished Nipissing ... Dokis, too. I love it

Edited November 17, 2015 by N'eo

[French Collection]

I thought Mongrain was from Quebec, never seen the name around here.

[Neo]

I thought Mongrain was from Quebec, never seen the name around here.

Yes, Kipawa ... I confused my fishing trips

[Doohicksie]

I remember my first game at the Aud.  I was young, I think it was the first or second year of the Sabres existence, so maybe 8 or 9.  I had to wear a coat and tie to the game.  My mom and dad both went.  We had dinner on the 38th floor of Marine Midland Center- the first time I had steak in a restaurant.  I have only vague memories of the game itself, but I do remember a Gilbert Perreault end-to-end rush for a goal.

 

I'm going to the Sabres game in Dallas on November 21.  It just occurred to me that it will be Sabres game I've been to in about 35 years.  Look for the big Polack in the white Perreault jersey.

[French Collection]

I heard Lindros bought an Island on Kipawa. Makes me laugh that he would have property in Quebec. I think his wife is from Montreal.

[Ogre]

I heard Lindros bought an Island on Kipawa. Makes me laugh that he would have property in Quebec. I think his wife is from Montreal.

I don't think his refusal to play there was due to anything more than the fact that the ownership sucked. Quebec is a great place to be. The day the NHL returns to QC is the day I change my avatar forever. Mission accomplished.

[French Collection]

He rubbed me the wrong way with that refusal. I thought it was because he thought he was too big a star for that small, French speaking market.

Keep in mind he also refused to report to Sault Ste Marie in the OHL. His family didn't want their baby in the wilderness. Gretzky went to the Soo.

I admired his play, awesome force.

Hated his selfish attitude.

[Neo]

I remember my first game at the Aud.  I was young, I think it was the first or second year of the Sabres existence, so maybe 8 or 9.  I had to wear a coat and tie to the game.  My mom and dad both went.  We had dinner on the 38th floor of Marine Midland Center- the first time I had steak in a restaurant.  I have only vague memories of the game itself, but I do remember a Gilbert Perreault end-to-end rush for a goal.

 

I'm going to the Sabres game in Dallas on November 21.  It just occurred to me that it will be Sabres game I've been to in about 35 years.  Look for the big Polack in the white Perreault jersey.

Awesome ... 35 years ...

[josie]

I just wanted to add a thank you for creating this thread. 

 

My social media life is just fraught with emotional and anger driven arguments at the moment. Everyone who isn't walking on eggshells is throwing proverbial eggs as hard as they can at everyone else. It's a total downer. Even I have found myself in a couple arguments online. 

 

This thread is a nice break from that. Hockey is a nice break from that. 

 

 

And I guess to add, more to the title of the thread than anything previously written, there is literal romance in hockey for me. I was fairly clueless to hockey's existence before I got to know d4rk. I went to high school games and knew the big stories (miracle, habs domination, red wings russian five, etc) but rarely tuned in.  I gave it a shot because I liked him. I discovered I loved hockey, probably before I loved him (ha, sorry darling). So, hockey's our thing. Our apartment is decorated in it. Our weekends are dominated by it. Our conversations are often fueled by it. When my leg heals, we get to play it together again. Hockey's pretty damn precious to me. 

[That Aud Smell]

Sweet.

[dudacek]

Awesome thread. Thanks for the opportunity to indulge in my some of my favourite hockey memories. Please forgive the wall of text:

 

1) As a peewee pup I played on a stacked team. We headed into the home stretch of the season undefeated. We were so dominant our goalie would get bored and beg the coach for a chance to play out. We didn't have a backup, but, for some reason, I eventually volunteered to give him a break. I had never before strapped on the pads. In my memory, it was packed house for my big debut. My uncle, a former junior player and nine-year-old me's hockey idol even made a special trip to come out and watch.

 

I got lit up like Red Light Racicot. We lost 7-3 and I'm not sure if I stopped more shots than I allowed. I remember the coach in the room after the game tearing a strip off the guys for not supporting me, even though every one of us knew who it was who had actually  spoiled the perfect season. I also remember my uncle unexpectedly dropping by a couple days later with a long tube. Inside, the poster Great Goalies featuring Tony O, Bernie and all the top stoppers of the '70s. That poster stayed on my wall for a long time.

 

2) A year or two later I was a rugged stay-at-home defenceman. I rode one of their stars hard into the corner boards, knocking him ass, as they say, over teakettle. He wasn't too happy and took a wicked chop at me. He missed and I never saw it happen because I was already skating away. But my grandmother did. She was watching right above the play. She reached down over the glass and clobbered him with her purse.

 

Saturday dinner at Gramma's was the best. No sitting around the table for her. We pulled out the TV trays and joined her for Hockey Night in Canada. It was a ritual that continued my entire life until she passed last year, at age 100.

 

3) Somewhere along the line my skating improved and I became a forward with a knack for garbage goals. But in my early days, at the time of this story, I was pretty much Mike Weber. My team was in a tight semi-final match tied at three in the third. For some bizarre reason I joined the rush on a play that ended up in crazy scramble in front of their goal with everyone hacking and whacking away madly. Suddenly the ref was there, furiously blowing the whistle in the faces of me and my centre. His eyes blazing, he spat out "which one of you last touched the puck?" Lying through his teeth, my centre threw me under the Zamboni: "It was him." But instead of waving me off to the penalty box, the ref pointed sharply to centre ice. "Six blue covered the puck with his hand in the crease. Penalty shot." I hadn't scored a goal all year.

 

My dad was never a hockey fan. Looking back, I am in awe of all the early car rides, cold arenas, pushy parents, and stream-of-consciousness hockey chatter he endured for me and from me in those days. I wonder now what must have been going through his head as his less-than-precocious son tottered out to centre ice, the eyes of the entire arena on him. But all I can remember from that moment is how my garter strap had somehow come loose and how, with every stride toward the net, I grew more terrified that my sock was going to fall down around my ankle. That and the solid clank of the puck slamming into the heavy metal base of the goal as I beat the goalie with a forehand deke. That story is probably the only hockey story I ever heard my dad tell.

 

4) Winter is in southern British Columbia is not hockey friendly. It is typically about water in the form that collects in buckets, not binds into a smooth glassy surface. For most of my teenage years and into my early 20s, hockey season consisted of Saturday morning phone trees organizing Saturday afternoon hockey games on the ashphalt courts of the local elementary school. I remember one cold morning in particular though, awakening to snow — a good eight inches of it, and still falling. I got on the phone anyway. And within an hour or two there were 15 or 20 of us packing shovels along with our hockey sticks. We cleared the court of snow that we used to build the boards we never before had and we played hockey until the sun went down. I can't recall a better day.

 

5) Unless it was similarly cold January morning a couple Januaries ago. I managed to turn my daughters into casual Sabre fans and my wife tolerates my obsession with a rare grace, but my family, including my sisters and their kids, never really caught my hockey bug. On this cold morning, however, I somehow managed to convince them to join me on a trek to the hills. We loaded up the 4x4s with firewood, hot chocolate, sticks and pucks and found a frozen lake. Between family and associated friends, there must have been 20 or 30 of us, ranging from my neice's two-year-old daughter to my dad in his early '70s. The ice was wet and slushy and the hockey was as rudimentary as chasing a puck into a snowbank, but I can't think of a way I'd rather bring in the new year.

 

It's the only time I've played in the past four years — since my mom died.

That has to change. I love the game.

[Doohicksie]

I never played serious hockey.  Our yard tended to flood so it was our skating rink.  One panel of chain link fence was the goal.  If you shot it over the goal you had to hop the fence (in skates) to retrieve the puck from the neighbor's yard.  It wasn't much better than street hockey though (which we played a lot).

 

When I got to college (RPI) I played on a D-league intramural team.  D-league was also referred to as the tripods for obvious reasons.  My senior year our fraternity played in C league.  I split between defense and goalie.  I liked playing goalie and was the better goaltender but another guy really liked to play goal to so we split it. 

 

My signature accomplishment as a defenseman was launching a slap shot from the point (probably the only time during game play you could say that about a puck that came off my stick) that rose steadily and was cup high when it got to the goalie.  I mean.... precisely cup high.  Everyone in the rink heard the hollow plastic POP! off the goalie's cup. He went down in a sorry heap.  We lost 5 minutes of ice time laughing at him.  :w00t:

Edited November 17, 2015 by The Big Johnson

[qwksndmonster]

Awesome dudacek.  :cry:  Thanks.

 

Saturday dinner at Gramma's was the best. 

:)

[North Buffalo]

Bucket list - a few weeks driving around Ontario and Quebec seeing OHL and QMJHL games, eating at diners and staying at small town motels. Just hockey. Reading the local papers and talking to the townspeople who've seen all the stars roll through for decades. I've never seen an OHL/QMJHL game. I visited the rink in Peterborough during a summer vacation on our way to Bancroft. My boys and I wanted to see where Steve Yzerman, Tie Domi, and so many more had played. I also detoured through Perry Sound on my to the French River to see Robert Gordon Orr's home a good twenty years after he retired. Hockey is romance.

There is a hall of fame on the harbour dedicated to him, spent my summers just north of there on one of the 30 thousand islands. worked for a commercial fisherman up there as a young teen, canoed and bushwacked North of Lake Nippising on lakes Tamigima and Wakimika as well as on the French River System. The Georgian Bay is beautiful and water still clean and Pike Smallie Wall Eye and perch fishing is awesome. Need to go back

[Ghost of Dwight Drane]

This thread is the heart of the matter of it all.

 

Great stories of childhood. I notice a lot of my favorites here chiming in.

 

There are questions to be asked.

 

How much passion for the game now from older fans is actual passion for the current product in general and team, and how much is out of habit and trying to recapture the buzz of an innocent youth?

 

I agree with pi and neo et al. There is no physical passion from players anymore. Fighting is gone. Guys are getting paid and have gone through 2 or 3 labor strikes together. The rules have gone soft with no red line, automatic icing, the instigator rule, leaving the bench, etc. I see few true rivalries.

 

The Sabres themselves have been a joke for a decade. Run to make a profit last group and with a self-serving weasel as the architect, bringing in a team full of marshmallows.

 

I can understand blind fandom from the 20 something and under crowd. Some are historians but many know no better.

 

This thread reminds me of my sanity.

 

Without the unique ability to hold your rival accountable on the ice through physical play, the nhl is no different than indoor soccer. Ut just costs 10x as much for a ticket.

[Doohicksie]

How much passion for the game now from older fans is actual passion for the current product in general and team, and how much is out of habit and trying to recapture the buzz of an innocent youth?

 

The league has codified what types of aggression are allowed.  The rules used to be simpler and there was an unwritten code.  With the adoptions of goalie masks, helmets, shields and other protective gear, that code has actually eroded.  Hits to the head, high shots, etc., are all commonplace.  So that romantic period ruled by the code of honor is over.  On the plus side, though, is a game of ever-increasing speed.  The players are faster, the shots are faster, the game is played on the razor's edge.  Technical excellence has replaced emotion out of necessity.  Keith Moon is dead but we have Neil Peart and while it's different, it's still pretty damned good.  Both can get you buzzin'.

[dudacek]

There are times I long for the blind naivete of my youth and wish my appreciation of the NHL game wasn't tarnished with knowledge.

But I still loved the Sabres last year when they were at their absolute nadir and I love this team; in their flashes, I find hope for the future.

 

Yes, the game has changed, but more importantly as far as this discussion goes, we have too. That is what age does.

It's a new world, but I find no loss in watching a new generation finding their place in it.

[Doohicksie]

In my wildest romantic imaginings, Weber and Kaleta get their turns hoisting the Stanley Cup for the Sabres.  Yeah, I know it'll never happen, but for some reason I think those two guys should get a piece of the future glory.... now.

[French Collection]

I've gone through the highs and lows with this team over the last 40 years, but I have always pulled for the Sabres. I am still hoping for that ultimate high.

I am a hockey fan first and some of my favourite players have come from other teams. Steve Yzerman, Joe Sakic and Jonathan Toews come to mind and I've enjoyed their success as well as the success of their teams. Perreault, Hawerchuk, Lafontaine, Hasek and Mogilny captured my imagination and made me love this team even more.

 

My 10 year old has gotten the hockey bug and has gone from a Crosby/Pens fan to a Sabres fan in the last 2 years. He moved over to the Sabres side of his own free will, through the tank years. I don't know what the draw was, maybe the chance to get in on the ground floor. Perhaps he wanted to take our bond to the next level. I really enjoy watching games together, even if His attention span is limited.

He has taken his game up a notch this year as well, making the local travel team. He chose number 15, which I thought was cool.

 

He is the same age I was when the French Connection captured me and I hope he remains a fan for the rest of his life. The game has changed and like a lot of things in life we get nostalgic. I don't want to be a grumpy old man, so I roll with the times and try and enjoy all of the hockey I can take in.

[bunomatic]

The romance of hockey for me was carrying my skates  and gloves and a bundle of dry firewood up to Scout lake just above Gold River where I grew up. Clearing the lake of snow with an old chunk of plywood if there was fresh snow and if we were lucky the ice was like glass if the freeze came before the snow did. Playing hockey till it got too dark to continue and cooking the freeze out of our toes and fingers by the fire afterwards. We never had video games to steal moments that we invented as kids simply cause there wasn't something to do that took less effort . Of course those were simpler times. No telling what I'd have missed if my parents were the type to let us laze around the house.

 

On another note that this topic reminds me of is that old joke about french Canadians favourite sexual ( romantic ;) ) position being doggy style so they can both watch the hockey game.

[darksabre]

The romance of hockey for me was carrying my skates and gloves and a bundle of dry firewood up to Scout lake just above Gold River where I grew up. Clearing the lake of snow with an old chunk of plywood if there was fresh snow and if we were lucky the ice was like glass if the freeze came before the snow did. Playing hockey till it got too dark to continue and cooking the freeze out of our toes and fingers by the fire afterwards. We never had video games to steal moments that we invented as kids simply cause there wasn't something to do that took less effort . Of course those were simpler times. No telling what I'd have missed if my parents were the type to let us laze around the house.

 

On another note that this topic reminds me of is that old joke about french Canadians favourite sexual ( romantic ;) ) position being doggy style so they can both watch the hockey game.

I admit that one of my sole motivations for wanting to own a home is so I can either put a pond in or build one every winter. There is nothing better than pond hockey. Nothing. Edited December 1, 2015 by d4rksabre

[woods-racer]

The romance of hockey for me was carrying my skates  and gloves and a bundle of dry firewood up to Scout lake just above Gold River where I grew up. Clearing the lake of snow with an old chunk of plywood if there was fresh snow and if we were lucky the ice was like glass if the freeze came before the snow did. Playing hockey till it got too dark to continue and cooking the freeze out of our toes and fingers by the fire afterwards. We never had video games to steal moments that we invented as kids simply cause there wasn't something to do that took less effort . Of course those were simpler times. No telling what I'd have missed if my parents were the type to let us laze around the house.

 

On another note that this topic reminds me of is that old joke about french Canadians favourite sexual ( romantic ;) ) position being doggy style so they can both watch the hockey game.

 

We always substituted Toronto-ins for French Canadians. 

 

I admit that one of my sole motivations for wanting to own a home is so I can either put a pond in or build one every winter. There is nothing better than pond hockey. Nothing.

 

Of  all my winter time outdoor memories (hunting, skiing, snowmobiling, sledding) pond hockey is what I want back. It was my *The Sandlot* of the winter. 

Edited December 1, 2015 by Woods-Racer