Having already extolled the virtues of used equipment, I must confess that the rest of the equipment I bought was brand new. I don't know if this makes me a hypocrite, necessarily, but if it's any consolation, the budget element still played a role in my purchases.
As I already recounted, I was about halfway set within 24 hours of finding out I would be actually playing actual hockey for the first time in my life: shin/knee pads, pants , helmet, jersey, gloves, skates and a stick were taken care of, so I was left with a pretty short list that Sid and I set out to price on Jan. 2. So much for that, we completely equipped that night, but not without a few comical hiccups.
Before getting into that, I should take a moment to get back to the purpose of this blog: after setting the bar fairly high for myself and invoking Coleridge and all of that, the last entry and this one are kind of lists and may seem a little mundane, but as I already know how the next couple entries will turn out, I can promise you, they won't all come out this way.
So it was a Thursday night, and off I went to the Eaton Centre to meet Sid, as her office is there, which allowed us to start the night with a plan to work cheaply at Canadian Tire, and if there was any need or time left, to fill in the gaps at the presumably more expensive Sportchek. I mean, why invest a ton of money while learning to play. The day I suit up for my first NHL game, ok, I'll get the $300 composite stick...
When we got into the hockey department at Canadian Tire, it was such a disappointment: their hockey stock had been nearly completely decimated, and I started to fear the worst. Gone were the memories of an always-full hockey section: having grown up going to Strathroy's tiny Canadian Tire (just replaced about two years ago by a massive new one), as well as London's biggest one, on Wellington Rd. beside White Oaks Mall (on the fringes of the city and a required trip for most of the surrounding small-town and farm kids needing hockey equipment, some of whom even had to play on London teams to play at all), that was the first surprise. In my memory of not-so-long-ago years (up until I was 18 or 20, even), a common time filler on Friday night was to go into the CT in Strathroy with a few friends, grab sticks and shoot tape rolls at each other until we got shit for it... sometimes it got boring before that happened, while others, the staff members we knew joined the game.
Sticks weren't a problem at the Eaton Centre location, but pretty much everything else was in incredibly short supply. The elbow pads were well stocked, for example, though most sets appeared to be sold separately, as there was either a right or a left of most styles with their mate long ago shoplifted. Even the Canadian Tire I worked at for a year during university - London Masonville, pretty much the worst one in that city - was better stocked than this place: and even half-assing it all the time I remember having tons of over-stock equipment to stack on top of the shelving units; by March most of it would come down and be blown out, but all summer, we still kept a few of each item in stock, and remarkably, they still sold.
I guess right after Christmas (and Boxing Day) sales, it can be explained pretty easily: most kids could foreseeably have gotten new equipment as gifts... which I can't see going over as well as it would with adults, for example. I mean, let's look at this for a second: say it's August (ok, that was ten years ago... now, it happens in June...), and your child is going to start hockey camp. Just like "Back to School" shopping, parents need to go "Back to Hockey School" shopping, as inevitably, the rugrats have grown a couple of inches. So let's say the usual suspects don't fit anymore: shin guards, helmet, pants and maybe shoulder pads and/or skates. Junior is going to get those pieces in the fall, or otherwise, s/he won't be able to play this season. So it gets to be November, and the young hockey star inexplicably loses one of his/her gloves on the way home from practice (it's always inexplicable... usually accompnied by parents saying "Well, you just had it, where could it have gone?!?" followed by the classic child's "Ida know..."). Again, you can't play without gloves, so Mom and Dad shell out once more.
But let's take the case of my good friend Nathan. I love Nathan's parents, they are fantastic people who have been nothing but great to me and I trust that this story won't change anything, as he's called his Pop out on this one in front of me (and likely Chad) over a few beers at least once or twice. Nathan and I are both late birthdays, both winter babies, he the 30th of Decmeber and me, as you all know, the 31st. So one year, as Nathan tells it, in a game played about Boxing Day, he breaks his stick. Any other time of the year, he'd just get a new stick out of necessity... but guess what happens... Happy Birthday! Here's your present: a brand new hockey stick! Kids just don't understand practical gifts sometimes... but then again, getting a required tool for a fun sport is less like getting a toy than it is like getting batteries for all your "batteries-not-included" toys that you have kicking around from prior years.
(I will say, though, that I know from personal experience that getting a hockey stick for a gift at age 9 when you don't actually play is pretty much the most exciting gift you can get - and that poor old thing, early 90s neon-green tape and all, finally gave up the ghost in a road hockey game somwhere around 1995, when Marty Ryersee slashed it trying to get the ball away from me... a tactic I didn't think was allowed - or cool, as I remember some semblance of fisticuffs coming out of it all - but one which he of course had learned playing organized hockey.)
Now equipment as a gift to an adult is a little different - particularly when that adult has never played before! - but aside from my case, playing enough shinny I've seen some of the gear that kicks around in these basements, attics and closets year after year. Gloves are the worst, with no palms even left in many of them... and everytime, they're defended the same way: "Replace 'em? Hell, I just broke 'em in, I got 'em just the way I like 'em!" Skates that are barely even worth sharpening anymore, cracked helmets, black goalie pads that were white when sold. The first player to score 100 points in an NHL season, and two-time cup-winner Phil Esposito, is said to have worn the same black T-shirt under his uniform in every play-off game he played, and one of my all-time favourite players, the New York Rangers' Brendan Shanahan (and if you don't love this man, you don't like sports in general) is wearing the same shoulder pads he got when he was 14. Whatever the charm is in these old pieces, I'm sure I'll understand one day, but today, they'll all be fresh off the shelf for me.
As begrudgingly as a lot of older or younger players must accept gifts of equipment, it seems that there was lot of tooth grinding and false enthusiasm in downtown Toronto this Christmas, as this hockey section was bare. I did score a few pieces, though: in particular, a set of elbow pads that matched each other AND the shoulder pads too (blue, black and white Kohos if you're keeping score at home), a purchase that brought out an incredible assumption on the part of the store staff member.
A bit of background first: as I said, I worked at Canadian Tire for a year, and though I worked at different times in four departments (and ran the garden centre for the summer), none of them were sports. In the sports section, we had your typical staff assortment: among others, there were Mark, the high school jock type, a nice kid who played everything but might have been a little thick; the twins, Brian and Jamie, who probably still work there (well, at the new one, they closed that sinkhole down too about a year ago); and Tony, a Western student from Orangeville who was as excellent at his job as I was at mine, and who cared just as little about it as I did too. Here's a sense of Tony at work: one day he was helping a customer buy rollerblades for his kid, and this guy asked Tony question after question about these in-lines, about wheels and changing bearings, weight, physics and such, until he'd taken up about 40 minutes of Tony's time and finally had his unexpectedly last question answered: "Man, I make seven bucks an hour, ok? I don't know!" (The customer closed the box, turned, and bolted for the checkout... retail trainers should look at this as a sales "closing tactic"...).
But despite the lack of intelligence, enjoyment or even (in the case of the department manager) civility, everyone in that department in the Masonville store knew how equipment should fit, and I even picked up a little training on this from just e-manuals and being dragged out of hardware by lost customers; not enough to know how my own should fit, of course, which is why my equipment shopping even resembles a story worth telling. By contrast, the staff member at the Eaton Centre store, though very nice and supportive of my ambition, had no idea what he was doing. After I tried on the shoulder pads and the first complete pair of elbow pads that I found, I made a wry mention of how even more of my gear wouldn't match. Sid thought nothing of this (I think she just kind of wanted to go home by this point, as our staff person couldn't answer any of my questions about products they didn't really have anyway), but the clerk actually countered with "yes, you will be getting dressed and the other guys will see that you don't match and they say what is wrong with this guy." I could've guessed by looking at him (he was East Indian, I believe, with longish and seemingly straightened hair), or by his accent and syntax (see, I didn't forget to write when quoting him, that was exact!) that he wasn't born in Canada, but I have to say, that sealed the deal. Or did it? Could this man have been unwittingly tapping into my initial questions about mixing equipment brands, and status in the locker room? I don't think so - I think we're both guilty of the same ignorance... rookie mistake, if you will.
I guess at the corner of Bay and Dundas Sts. in Toronto, people don't judge the way they do in small-town Canada if you don't know how to wear the gear you're selling. Consumer education is probably at a much higher level in Toronto, and besides, to how many 25-year-olds do you actually have to explain how gear should fit? If you're playing at 25, in 99% of cases I'm sure that it's because you've played all your life. A 25-year-old player knows what s/he's looking for him or herself, or as a parent, used to play, and knows what their child needs without asking. That said, small-town Canadian Tires are inevitably staffed by small-town Canadian kids - where, as we've established, hockey is life. I suppose the point is just that it's ironic: where the least consumer education may be needed, the staff is most likely most knowledgeable. At a CT store like this one, in the end, selling hockey equipment is no different than blenders or tires, I suppose - so long as people come through the door when they need it, it's just one more product.
So in the end, we just took the safe route and ascertained that we could bring them back if they were wrong, and opted to ask one of our hockey-playing friends at a later date. We grabbed what we could find - shoulder and elbow pads; a second stick, classic black Sher-Wood I thought (though it's made in Russia these days); stick tape, and equipment tape. You know how you always save up Canadian Tire money, and never throw it out in case you use it one day? I'd like to note that I actually rid myself of over seven dollars worth, which must be a record - who does that?
Finished with the (apparently not-so) Canadian Tire - was that offside? More precisely, the Canadian-ness of Canadian Tire hasn't changed, but rather, it's the definition of a Canadian that has... the (modernly-)Canadian Tire is more appropriate I suppose - I talked Sid into hitting up Sportchek, and we were in and out of there in about 15 minutes. I got my face-shield (I went for plastic, not a cage - does that make me an effeminate European or Quebecker, Mr. Cherry?) for $20 less than it would've cost at CT, a $30 mouthguard (mouldable and insured for $12,000 worth of dental work if I still somehow lose teeth), and the final two pieces of equipment.
The socks had to be black, and only for one reason: all the gear that Dan had sold me was black, even the jersey, and he had told Julia about how awesome it would look to step out completely clad in black. The Johnny Cash of hockey, if you will... I trusted their instincts.
Now the second remaining piece was of course the one I feared most: the male athletic supporter. The jockstrap - the cup at the end of the adventure.
I should note that I actually feared two pieces of equipment, the jock and the equally awkward garter belt, with all the equipment tie-downs and all the rest, but it turns out that I was living behind the times: the young fellow working the hockey section that night - who I should note was only 16 or so, still wearing braces and had played all of his life, meaning that he answered every question I had with no trouble at all... he might've been named Chris - showed me this amazing new (cod)piece that's built into, effectively, a pair of gym shorts. Thank you, Itech, for taking the weirdness away... no straps, and what's more, the shorts have flip-down velcro patches for your socks, meaning no garters are required either.
If I'd known, perhaps I would've corrected the Canadian Tire staffer about what might be truly embarrassing: asking someone how to properly tie all the equipment down, or failing that, for help with these string-things. I mean, it was bad enough when, now completely outfitted, I rushed home and practically poured myself into all the gear at once, and had to get Sid to pull my jersey over my shoulder pads for me. I wish I had a photo of that - it captured my "now-complete" game-readiness.
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