For The Love of The Game

I went to another hockey game this past weekend.

It was San Jose and St. Louis. San Jose came out on top, 4-2, in a spirited game that also featured plenty of hitting and a couple of good scraps. I always leave the arena feeling I got my money's worth whenever I see a game highlighted by a good skirmish or two. So this weekend's San Jose-St. Louis tilt fit all the criteria as a great night of hockey for Rocket- plenty of goals, hits and fisticuffs.

As the nearest local team, I’ve liked the Sharks since they came into the league in 1991, although their inconsistency over the years has driven me crazy. But I love hockey with affection that long pre-dates the Sharks.

I discovered the game as a kid, accidentally tuning in a CBS NHL Game of the Week one Sunday afternoon. It was a rainy day, I couldn't go outside and nothing else was on TV. But hockey’s speed, skill and controlled violence sucked me in from the outset and by the time the broadcast was over I was hooked.

Too small for football and hitting a curve ball would forever baffle me, but hockey looked fun and like a game I could play and I was ready to give it a go. But growing up in California left me with limited access to ice, and limited my opportunities to try. However, California suburbs, if nothing else, are paved with miles of asphalt and just about everyone could roller skate. And after turning some of the other neighborhood kids on to the joys of hockey, my friends and I were soon playing just like the pros- sans the frozen pond.

With a tennis ball for a puck and converted brooms for sticks, we skated on a ‘rink’ that was either the street, the backyard- where there was another large patch of cement- or the library courtyard at Kingswood Elementary School. And during the winter months, after school and on weekends, it was game on.

Like the hockey we watched on TV, our street adaptation also featured plenty of feisty play, hard body checks and of course, fights- all fake, of course. We were friends, so when brawling, all punches were pulled. This made our tussles look more like wrestling matches on skates than a hockey fight, and kept anyone from getting hurt. Can’t say the same about a few inanimate objects, though.

During a game at Kingswood, I took a slap shot one but lost the grip on my hockey stick and watched it tomahawk though the school library's front window. Fortunately, it was a Sunday, nobody was around and the stick didn't go very far into the building. So I pulled it back out and continued playing; no harm no foul…mostly anyway.

We got away with that mishap, but Dad finally banned us from anymore backyard games. The last straw was the last body check I threw at Rob Winter. Our momentum propelled us both through a section of our back fence, bringing the whole thing down. The game was halted for over an hour as we put it back up. But Dad came home that evening, saw the hap hazard reconstruction and said no-mas. A more professional repair job came out of my allowance.

So I grew up in California playing hockey on roller skates and held no illusions of ever playing in the NHL. Yet I always had a back-of-my-mind dream of someday getting to play real hockey on a real team on a real sheet of ice.  So I asked for- and received- a pair of ice skates for Christmas one year, then spent some allowance and free time in one of the local ice rinks learning to adapt my skating skills from wheels to blades. I even ended up working at that rink one summer too. And the ice skating came easier than I thought it would. Fast forward a couple years to my college days in Spokane. By then my skating was good enough to play in a recreational adult league. 

I was being allowed to play real hockey, on a real team, on a real sheet of ice.

Not to fool anyone though, I never got beyond "C" league, which was a level of play above the beginners but below the more advanced players. "C" level rec hockey is somewhere on par with slow-pitch softball: everyone knows how to play but skill levels run the spectrum from, not bad- to-why are you here? I was probably somewhere on the fringe between okay and not bad. 

But I played two full seasons, and one game in a third, was named captain of my team twice, our team won its division 'championship' once and during the second season I made "C' League All-Stars. Sounds kind of silly now and in the grand scheme of things doesn’t amount to much. But for a small kid from the sun-belt, who'd never been on ice skates before age 17, the hockey dream had come true.

It was also during this whimsical interlude that somebody called me "Rocket" for the first time and I got into my first and only hockey fight, which coincidentally came in the last game I ever played in.

It happened in the season after my All-Star year. It was the fall of 1980, I was working a couple of jobs by then too, including my gig at KGA radio, and wasn't sure I'd be able to fit hockey into my schedule anymore. The group I'd played with during the all-star year had pretty much broken up; all had quit playing or were scattered to the winds. Without any of them still around for support or camaraderie, I wasn’t completely convinced I still wanted to play. So it was only reluctantly that I went ahead and placed my name on the League sub-list.

The sub list included names of unaffiliated players- like myself- who were either looking to be picked up by a team permanently, or just wanted to sub in from time in time to help fill out a full roster on nights when squads were down a man due to illness or injury. I wasn't sure which camp I’d put myself in, and even less sure I’d play if called. Nevertheless, when the captain from the Beryl Tavern team phoned with three questions- Can you still play? Are you available tonight? Can you be here and ready to play by 8:20?- I answered ‘yes’. I must’ve had some lingering trepidation, though, because when the time came to gather up my gear and head to the rink, I almost changed my mind.

Knowing that wouldn’t be fair to the dude who called- or his team- I dutifully showed up at the Eagles Ice Arena on East Francis at the appointed hour. However, I was instantly uneasy. I'd been assigned to a team where I didn't know anyone, which quickly made me wish I’d stayed home. I hadn't had a chance to work out or skate since the previous season and was worried about being rusty. So I felt intimidated, out of place and convinced my new unidentified Beryl Tavern teammates would soon regret having me on their side.

I did recognized one person, though, the game’s referee that night, ‘Roundball’.  ‘Roundball’s real name was Doug Jamme. But everybody called him 'Roundball' because, well, he looked like a portly man with a substantial round ball under his shirt. But he was also a pretty good ref, had officiated many games I'd played in and I took some solace seeing at least one familiar face.

But after they loaned me a green and white team jersey (similar to the Minnesota North Stars; I wore # 12 that night) and I went through the warm up, it all came back to me- I felt like I a hockey player; felt I belonged. And once the game began, I was even more pleasantly surprised to find my skills were still pretty sharp, too. At least I wasn’t playing any worse than anyone else out there that night.

The game was typical of rec league hockey- a lot of choppy, back and forth play without a lot of flow or fluidity. But it was fun to be playing again. I got a lot of ice time and had started to develop some chemistry with the guys on my line. We were winning, too. I hadn't scored, but got an assist on one of the goals, and by the third period my team, Beryl Tavern, led the other team, Muffler Mart, 5-3.  It was all good. But that would quickly change.

The game hadn't featured much in the way of intensity either, so I was kind of stunned when one of the Muffler Mart defenseman hacked me on the arm as I passed him chasing down a puck. Not only had he slashed me, instead of hitting my gloves, his stick came down on the 2 inch window of unprotected arm between where the glove stopped and my elbow pad began. Immediately it hurt like hell… and I kind of snapped.

I snapped because I knew he'd done it on purpose.

You have to know where that very small vulnerable area of arm is and have to be aiming it. So I knew it wasn't an accident. The guy’s stick deliberately hit bone and it hurt as if I'd laid my arm on a table for him to smash with a pipe wrench. In a flash, I wanted to hurt him back.

This all seemed to play out in slow motion, but after he whacked me- and he had to know some sort of retaliation as coming- the puck was coasting to the end line and I let him get it first so I could take a run at him. Angry and in pain and with his black and gold number 8 as a target, I followed through with what- on the street- would be considered nothing short of an assault. I charged like an angry bull, leading with my stick and elbows held high, and just as he touched the puck near the end boards, mashed his head face into the wire screen surrounding the rink.

 

Then I dropped the gloves and began wailing on him. 

 

The guy was a head taller and probably outweighed me by 20 pounds and I knew as soon as he got his arms free I'd be in trouble. So I kept hitting him. Too late to back off, I kept pre-emptively punching him around the head and hoped the linesmen would stop us before he'd be able to fight back. The mugging had little effect though, and my shots seemed to just bounce off the big lummox like bullets off of Superman. He absorbed my blows like fending off a pesky little brother.

 

But I didn’t care. It was the most pissed off I'd ever been playing sports; he cheap-shotted me and, running on a charge of furious adrenaline, I kept swinging.

I wasn't hurting him; more like annoying him. And when the shock of my sneak attack wore off, he made pretty short work of me. Muffler Mart’s number 8 got my jersey up over my head, which immobilized my arms and then started pounding away with his other hand. Fortunately, as the jersey came up, my helmet slipped down over my eyes which protection my face.  I couldn't defend myself or see, but he was mostly hitting plastic.

 

Though the guy was much bigger and could've dished out some real damage if we'd been out in the parking lot, only one of his punches actually hit me. The rest bounced off my equipment. He probably hurt his hand more than he hurt me. However, helmet or no, he connected with my head seven or eight times before the refs stepped in.

 

The whole thing must've looked pretty silly, though. After tossing me around like a rag doll, # 8 had me practically undressed. My jersey had slipped down to my wrists, exposing my shoulder pads and undershirt. But surprise again-when we were finally pulled us apart- I was still on my feet and I wasn't hurt.

 

With the battle officially a draw, one of the linesmen held on to me- though I wasn't going anywhere- as my sparring partner was led away. Calling back over his shoulder, he suggested I do some unpleasant things to myself that I probably couldn’t accomplish unless I was also a contortionist. But skating away, he was kind of smiling too, like the whole thing was a lark. Then after he'd been dispatched to the dressing room, I was escorted from the ice surface too, wondering what the hell I'd just done.

In a league where fighting wasn't allowed, we were both thrown out of the game. But in addition to the five minute fighting and game misconduct penalties we both drew, they also gave me two minutes for high sticking and five minutes for boarding, So on one play I racked up 22 minutes in penalties. The ref completely overlooked- or completely missed- the slash #8 had laid on me which started everything in the first place. He only caught my retaliation. That's just the way it works sometimes. But my team was left having to kill off a seven minute power play. 

However, they only gave up one goal during all that time shorthanded, and when the game was over, Beryl Tavern had defeated Muffler Mart, 5-4. Still pumped after the final buzzer, the rest of the guys were all smiles and high fives and "way to go's" when they joined me in the dressing room. I hadn't contributed much, except a bunch of penalty time, and I’m not so sure they'd have been high-fiving me had we ended up losing the game because of it. But it was a team win and they made me feel part of it- and part of the group, too. It was a good feeling.

This was only Beryl Tavern’s second game of their season-they’d lost the previous Friday night- but now with a record of one win and one loss, they invited me to the tavern for a round of beers, and to play with them again the following Friday. At the tavern, Tony, Beryl’s team captain, told me the guy I replaced on the roster that game was an EMT who had to work swing shift that night. He didn’t know yet if it was only for the one night or a permanent change but if the EMT couldn’t continue playing, Tony said I’d be welcome to join the team full time. And after warming up to them, sharing a few beers with them and feeling like I was part of the group, I think I would have liked to.

However, before leaving the arena the game officials informed me that because I’d received a fighting major, I'd have to serve a one game suspension. So I wouldn’t be able to play the following Friday, even if Tony asked and even if I wanted to. But only a few days after that, my boss at KGA radio told me he was expanding my hours, from Saturday and Sunday to Friday nights as well on a constant basis. So I couldn’t play for Beryl Tavern anymore. And even If I got called to play on a different night for a different team, I still had a one game suspension to serve. So unless someone wanted to offer me a fulltime roster spot, and could wait a full game to add me to it, it was doubtful I’d be playing again that season.

And though I didn’t know it then, I never laced up my skates for another game again. At 25 years old, my playing days were over. Starting a career, working too many nighttime hours, too little free time, and simply real life just sort of took me away from the rink and never got back.

But had I known that night would be the last time I'd ever play an organized hockey game, I think I would've savored it more; for sure I wouldn't have let myself get booted out for fighting. I'd have wanted to go out on my own terms and been on the ice at the end. But it wasn't to be. The game I suited up for Beryl Tavern versus Muffler Mart at Eagles Ice Arena in Spokane on October 17, 1980 was my last.

But I'm happy for all the other games I got to play in, too, and will always be grateful to God He let me live out one of my youthful dreams. Some people give up and don’t even try, some never get the chance. I was lucky; I did. And I loved every minute of it; I loved being a hockey player.

* just for fun, I kept track of my stats for all 55 games I played in. Here they are--

Season	Goals	Assists	Total Points	Penalty Minutes
1980-81	0	1	1	22
1979-80	10	11	21	38
1977-78	11	8	19	24
Playoffs (78 & 80)	4	5	9	12
All-stars (1980)	0	1	1	4
Totals	25	26	51	100