Up with the Big Boys

It's a Friday night, Sid's out with a girlfriend re-living the vacation they recently took together, and I'm probably supposed to be attending a students' union alumni Christmas event; instead, it's just after 10, I'm relaxing, listening to Born in the U.S.A. with a Stella Artois in front of my blog after a good 90-minute shinny session with my friend Shimon, who went to school with Sid and has played hockey since he was - as he told me earlier, holding his stick horizontally somewhere between his knee and waist - "this high". Since I started playing last year - all summer long, too - we tried to set up a Friday game (he has friends in Forest Hill or somewhere who rent some ice late at night once a week), and when he called me at work today looking to fill his exam period with something fun, I was only too happy to get out.



As with all unorganized, open shinny games, tonight's got busy about an hour in, with two oversized teams being re-divided into three for the last few games we played, the first team to give up two goals leaving the ice and being replaced. There were eight of us to begin with, and on our last shift, we refused to sub for a new joiner by just saying "we're going home after this shift".



Shimon only got on the ice once last year, and though he showed no signs of rust, he was complaining of sore hands and wrists; I, meanwhile, having laid out on my front side in one play or another that I've already forgotten, had a couple of great chances in front of the goalie - nah, I didn't beat him, though he robbed me from a prone position with his glove hand once - despite missing a shift to take a good 10-minute washroom break...



...Why? I can't say I remember this happening last year, ever, but it was pretty cold tonight: just off the ice, the Weather Network site is actually reporting -10, wind chill to -16, and laying out on the ice tonight, I could've sworn I froze all my plumbing solid. It went away after a while (still couldn't go 'til I got home, if you're actually worried about my health), but yet again I discovered a new hockey experience. Layers upon layers upon layers. You can never wear enough clothing, clearly.

At any rate, we left the game as the group grew larger, 90 minutes of play behind us, and walked off into the night. We got a chance to speak with the night's goalie - he came in to get his gear off not long after we did, saying he got bored stopping bad shots caused by no one passing the puck - and he turned out to be the classic rent-a-goalie: not affiliated with any team or league, but if the phone rings he plays for free, or makes $50, or once in a while a case of beer. He advocated for us to come out Saturday or Sunday morning, when there would be two goalies and none of the "gotta hit a post and put it in the net" BS of tonight at either end.

His criticism struck a strange note: shinny is purely about skill development or maintenance, that is to say just to keep the hands, the legs and the stick going a couple extra nights a week to fend off the rust. The first shinny goalie I'd ever met, and using it to keep the skills up, it turns out that he kind of hates shinny. As the group got bigger tonight, too, there was a little scuffle between a latecomer and one of the guys - incredible player, wearing an 80s-style Leafs jersey with Keon's #14 on it despite probably only remembering it for Dave Andreychuk - who'd been there since we'd shown up, some argument about "going for the puck". Lots of following each other around the rink, chirping, and though it cooled off it looked like we might actually see gloves drop.

As Shimon noted too, on the way home, that it's evident who's played "actual" hockey - i.e. the would-be scrappers? - and who's just a good shinny player. "Yeah," I said, "it's called crossovers." I got a laugh, but his point was actually about one guy we played against tonight who was fast, skilled and really hard to mark: "he's always looking at the puck - if he played real hockey, he'd get so levelled" was Shimon's note. Good to know... I imagine that I'm always looking at the puck (yeah, I've been taught not to), but he made sure to pass on the bit about trying to stickhandle far enough from your body that you can see both the puck and the rest of the ice... though after a while, he said, you just know where it is.

Shimon was impressed, though, he said, which was a huge victory for me: "When did you start playing, again? Two years ago?", he asked, and I had the chance to correct him, stating that it had actually been January... of 2008. Nearly a calendar year. "You've got some skills," he said, telling me that for a new player I'd played quite well; and before we'd left the rink, when I tried to say I was among the weakest players out tonight (and yes, tonight I met the "Christie Pits Hot Shots" banned from last years shinny classes), Shimon stuck with "well, you're somewhere in the middle". He's always been such a nice guy. (Super dudes Neil and Pete told me at the end of last year too how much I'd improved, how they couldn't believe the progression and how from week to week I got better. That's why they're super dudes.)

I tried to sign up to play shinny again this year - thanks to our request, a "Level Two Beginner" was added at Christie Pits for 2008-09 - but when I emailed the instructor, I made the mistake of mentioning my hockey clinic, which led him to suggest that I only play the drop in at Wallace Rink (Dufferin and Dupont). Not that there's anything wrong with that... I just wrote back and said "hey, if you think I've progressed beyond these courses, then I'll take my banishment to Wallace as a compliment!").

As I told my boss this week, I figure I should be ready for the NHL around 45. Hey, never let the dream die. I am really looking forward to playing shinny again this year, with the kind of "grain of salt" approach: no slappers, one-timers, slashing sticks or anything that might go with pads, just a chance to try new things that might not work in a weekly game (should I ever get into a league that does those things!). Even if I have to play it without the same instruction, it should be a blast.

I felt a little shinny rust tonight, though, I have to admit: playing without the equipment, on the rough ice, no helmet or mouthguard to save me should I go down or the puck come up, wind in the hair (or toque), and no expectations that I will apply anything I've learned in my clinics (other than falling less often). Open shinny's a different game in a lot of ways: it draws out the douchebags looking to embarass goof-around artists like myself by dangling through eight or nine of us at a time, and there's no instructor to teach and simultaneously referee. If you fall, they might take the puck from you before asking if you're alright. And yeah, from week to week I'm sure a couple of guys will spend most of the night yapping and sticking each other. At the same time, though, I must admit: I kind of missed freezing my junk off, if having never literally come close to it until tonight, and I might just start playing with these regulars as early as this coming Sunday. On the whole, a shinny group will always be at worst a group of mostly decent guys.

The purpose of sitting down to write this post, though, was to comment on my first clinic of the 2008-09 season. The reason the whole thing's in italics, actually, is that it was going to be a pre-amble to the account of those six weeks. And with yet a separate long-form blog having emerged from it tonight's writing, I will perhaps save that for another time... once I've got the pictures uploaded. It's great to be back.