Ice Hockey Quotes

Exy was a bastard sport, an evolved sort of lacrosse on a soccer-sized court with the violence of ice hockey, and Neil loved every part of it from its speed to its aggression. It was the once piece of childhood he'd never been able to give up.

Suppose neutral angels were able to talk, Yahweh and Lucifer – God and Satan, to use their popular titles – into settling out of court. What would be the terms of the compromise? Specifically, how would they divide the assets of their early kingdom? Would God be satisfied the loaves and fishes and itty-bitty thimbles of Communion wine, while Satan to have the red-eye gravy, eighteen-ounce New York Stakes, and buckets of chilled champagne? Would God really accept twice-a-month lovemaking for procreative purposes and give Satan the all night, no-holds-barred, nasty “can’t-get-enough-of-you” hot-as-hell-fucks? Think about it. Would Satan get New Orleans, Bangkok, and the French Riviera and God get Salt Lake City? Satan get ice hockey, God get horseshoes? God get bingo, Satan get stud poker? Satan get LSD; God, Prozac? God get Neil Simon; Satan Oscar Wilde?

Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.

I love the smell of the ice... And the cold. The sound the puck makes when it's sliding across the ice or when hits the net for a goal... as long as it's our goal. I love the sound of sticks crashing against one another. The sound my skates make when I come to a hard stop. The roar of the crowd. The way I feel when i'm playing. I can do things on this ice that I can't do anywhere else.

I-"Fuck. "Well, I am angry at you, Nathan." "Good." "So fucking angry." "Perfect.

The idiots won’t say it was Kevin who killed Beartown Ice Hockey; they’ll say that “the scandal” killed the club. Because their real problem isn’t that Kevin raped someone but that Maya got raped. If she hadn’t existed, it wouldn’t have happened. Women are always the problem in the men’s world.

Canadian winters are long. Life is hard and so is ice.

The scrape of the skates on the ice. The smell of musty old equipment. The black puck stains on the boards. To the uninitiated they're nothing, but to a hockey player they're home.

God made ice for hockey and scotch, and that's about it.

Superstitions are pretty much the only thing I take as seriously as hockey. And this could be my last season. Yours too. I just wanna come out on top.” Or bottom. If he’d prefer it that way.

She had a hundred reasons: because Bear had carved a statue of her in the center of the topiary garden, because she could always make him laugh, because he'd let her return to the station, because he won at chess and lost at hockey, because he ran as fast as he could to polar bear births, because he had seal breath even as a human, because his hands were soft, because he was her Bear. "Because i want my husband back," Cassie said.

Hockey players can also brace pretty hard against the ice. A player skating at full speed can stop in the space of a few meters, which means the force they’re exerting on the ice is pretty substantial. (It also suggests that if you started to slowly rotate a hockey rink, it could tilt up to 50 degrees before the players would all slide to one end. Clearly, experiments are needed to confirm this.)

He sounded like he was used to people swearing at him, which made no damned sense, because he was gorgeous and a hero.

Aunt Claire, I apologize to you too, since you probably had to pretend you weren't my aunt." "Apology accepted." Aunt Claire smiled, which did much to lighten Skye's heart. "I must say your mad charge at Melissa was impressive. Perhaps you should switch to ice hockey or professional wrestling." "Claire, please be serious," said Mr. Penderwick. "I am being serious.

Kip nervously cleared his throat and said, "I didn't get into detail about our relationship, although the whole world knows we're a couple because of the on-ice meltdown I had when you were injured.

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.

Force, not persuasion, not discussion, is the legitimate instrument for influencing and policing the hockey mind. Fighting in hockey is one of the most magnificent and eloquent displays of refinement in all of sports.

We were hockey gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together off the ice, in the van, on the plank floors of reservation houses, in the truck stop diners where if we'd won we had a little to splurge on a burger and soup before we hit the road again. Small joys. All of them tied together, entwined to form an experience we would not have traded for any other. We were a league of nomads, mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks.

He sounded like he was used to people swearing at him, which made no damned sense, because he was gorgeous and a hero.

Unsure of what to say, I blurted hurriedly, “Do you want to be my friend? If you don‘t, it‘s okay. I don‘t want to waste any time, so you should tell me right away.

Yes. And yes, the carpet matches the drapes. I’ve only been asked that like three dozen times by hockey players, so don’t consider yourself original.

Like one of those permanently smiling animal heads displayed in a hunter’s living room, immobilized by the time and trauma of its death.

Talk show hosts like Oprah and Rosie O’Donnell had lied: a good family was not one that forgave, but one that could bravely endure ancient grudges.

Aaron Warner doesn’t like cussing so neither do I,

All the way from locker room to boardroom, the boys and men of Beartown Ice Hockey Club are brought together by a single motto: “High ceilings and thick walls.

I’m just saying that this whole process of getting a child’s outerwear on in the morning is a bit like trying to put an angry monkey who has just been dipped in soap and fed jalapeños into a complete ice hockey goalkeeper’s uniform.

Tomorrow, the Beartown Ice Hockey Club's junior team is playing in the semifinal of the biggest youth tournament in the country. How important can something like that be? In most places, not so important, of course, but Beartown isn't most places.

And when you got to the Trestle or the Vacant Lot or the Pond there would already be six hundred kids there. There were always six hundred kids everywhere except where two or more neighbourhoods met – at the Park, for instance – where the numbers would grow into the thousands. I once took part in an ice hockey game at the lagoon in Greenwood Park that involved four thousand kids, all slashing away violently with sticks, and went on for at least three quarters of an hour before anyone realized that we didn’t have a puck.

It was clear to everyone that day, and in the months that followed, that Patty’s greatest warming influence was on Walter himself. Now, instead of speeding by his neighbors in his angry Prius, he stopped to lower his window and say hello. On weekends, he brought Patty over to the patch of clear ice that the neighborhood kids maintained for hockey and instructed her in skating, which, in a remarkably short time, she became rather good at.

What did grown men see in the rattle of sticks, the slashing of steel over ice and hockey sweaters worn way beyond funk?

Love can't be found in a rule book. It's found in your heart.

All I want to do is go back to my apartment, cocoon myself inside a cozy blanket, and watch Love Island while eating a pint of cookie dough ice cream.

The most dangerous thing on the ice is being hit when you’re not expecting it. So one of the very first things hockey teaches you is to keep your head up, always. Otherwise—bang.

(Hockey) It's a slippery game played on ice.

the locker room,” Alex counters. “No way, it has to be on the ice. He’s going to take her to the rink tonight, flip on the scoreboard and play porn while he fucks her over the goal. They’re both wearing skates of course, porn everywhere, blaring through the speakers, there’s a hockey stick involved somehow, and he’s all veiny and sweaty and says things like my semen are scoring tonight.

All the way from locker room to board room, the boys and men of Beartown Ice Hockey Club are brought together by a single motto: "High ceilings and thick walls." Hard walls are as much a part of the game as high checks, but the building is solid and spacious enough to keep any fights that take place inside from spilling outside. That applies both on the ice and off of it because everyone needs to realize that the good of the club comes before anything else.

Oh my GOD! He’s coming over to your house, isn’t he? I can smell it. I can smell the promise of sweaty, hot hockey sex in the air.” “What’s hockey sex?” Alex asks. “You know . . . the kind where he rips her clothes off, lifts her above his head, and eats her out while spinning around the room like he’s on the ice.” “That’s not fucking hockey sex. That’s figure-skating sex. Hockey sex is more like she holds pucks over her nipples while he fucks her on the bench in

When you're making whoopee, it's most like which Olympic sport: marathon running, gymnastics or ice hockey?' When Cam came home from the station, she'd asked him what he thought. 'Hockey,' he had said without hesitation. And he was right – there was a fury to their lovemaking, as if they were punishing each other for being something different from what they each had hoped. Many nights after that game show she had lain awake, listening to the tide of Cam's breathing, wondering why one of the multiple choices hadn't been something slow and lovely, like pairs' skating or water ballet, something partnered in grace and beauty and trust.

The difference between the long-term average of the graph and the ice age, 12,000 years ago, is just over 3°C. The IPCC 2001 report suggests that the line of the hockey stick graph might rise a further 5°C during this century. This is about twice as much as the temperature change from the ice age to pre-industrial times.

Hockey wants them that way. Needs them that way. Their coach teaches them to go hard into close combat on the ice. No one stops to think about how to switch that attitude off when they leave the locker room. It’s easier to pin the blame on her: She’s too young. Too attractive. Too easily offended. Too difficult to respect.

She’d fallen in love with a man who risked it all to stoke the embers of desire created that first night and turn those sparks into flames of love. Who saw what she couldn’t because her heart was closed to the possibilities. Who respected and cherished all she was. Ford “Killer” Callaghan slayed her every time, and she was happy to die in his arms every night.

Mike should say no, should tell him to go fool around with boys his own age, his own size, should tell him to knock it the fuck off and find someone who doesn't play hockey, who doesn't care if he does like every other closet case in the league. But Fitzgerald's flashing his big blues and his hands are shaking, just enough for Mike to notice and Mike isn't a saint. He isn't even a particularly good person.

Needless to say, I personally don’t believe fighting should be banned. I don't understand why a relatively small segment of the hockey world feels obligated to ban extracurricular combat when it's so popular elsewhere in American sports. Additionally, the league shouldn’t be trying to ban fighting to save the enforcers from hurting themselves. Fighters realize the risks associated with what they do, and they are bound to accept these risks.

Fitzgerald still has that doe-eyed innocent look about him, but Mike's seen him on the ice, seen what he can do and he knows the kid's as vicious, deep down as the rest of them. He's got big blue eyes and hair constantly falling in his face and an ass that's spectacular even compared to the average hockey player and Mike wants him so bad, his teeth hurt, but Fitzgerald has no clue what he's playing with, so Mike keeps his goddamn hands to himself.

Hockey is a sport that rewards repetition. The same exercises, the same movements, until a player’s responses become instinctive, branded into his marrow. The puck doesn’t just glide, it bounces as well, so acceleration is more important than maximum speed, hand-eye coordination more important than strength. The ice judges you by your ability to change direction and thought quicker than anyone else—that’s what separates the best players from the rest.

One thing about packing depressed me a little. I had to pack these brand-new ice skates my mother had practically just sent me a couple of days before. That depressed me. I could see my mother going in Spaulding’s and asking the salesman a million dopy questions—and here I was getting the ax again. It made me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates—I wanted racing skates and she bought hockey—but it made me sad anyway. Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.

One thing about packing depressed me a little. I had to pack these brand-new ice skates my mother had practically just sent me a couple of days before. That depressed me. I could see my mother going in Spaulding's and asking the salesman a million dopy questions- and here I was getting the ax again. It made me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates- I wanted racing skates and she bought hockey- but it made me sad anyway. Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.

Hockey is a club that holds its members tightly, the bond forged by shared hardship and mutual passion, by every trip to the pond, where your feet hurt and your face is cold and you might get a stick in the ribs or a puck in the mouth, and you still can’t wait to get back out there because you are smitten with the sound of blades scraping against ice and pucks clacking off sticks, and with the game’s speed and ever-changing geometry. It has a way of becoming the center of your life even when you’re not on the ice.

Brooks wanted to abandon the traditional, linear, dump-and-chase style of hockey that had held sway in North America forever. He wanted to attack the vaunted Russians with their own game, skating with them and weaving with them, stride for high-flying stride. He wanted to play physical, un-yielding hockey to be sure, but he also wanted fast, skilled players who would flourish on the Olympic ice sheet (which is 15 feet wider than NHL rinks) and be able to move and keep possession of the puck and be in such phenomenal condition that they would be the fresher team at the end.

It's only a hockey game. An ice rink packed with people, two locker rooms full of players, two teams facing each other. Two men in a basement. Why do we care about that sort of thing? Perhaps because it clarifies all of our most difficult questions. What makes us shout out loud with joy? What makes us cry? What are our happiest memories, our worst days, our deepest disappointments? Who did we stand alongside? What's a family? What's a team? How many times in life are we completely happy? How many chances do we get to love something that's almost pointless entirely unconditionally?

...We hold ourselves to a high standard. Our country sets it even higher. They always want more... You can always give more. It doesn't mean what you're giving is enough. Take it from me, every time you defy expectations, they set the bar higher. That isn't failure. It's faith." Sophie takes some time to digest that. It's nothing new to her. Hockey has always been about reaching one milestone and looking toward the next. Settling leads to complacency, her dad tells her. And complacency leads to stagnation. He was always there to push her if she grew too comfortable resting on her accomplishments.

He knows how quiet it gets when hockey tells you you’re finished. How quickly you start to miss the ice, the locker room, the guys, the bus trips, the gas-station sandwiches. He knows how as a seventeen-year-old he would look at the tragic former players in their forties who used to hang around the rink going on about their own achievements in front of an audience that got smaller and smaller each season. The job of GM gave him a chance to live on as part of a team, to build something bigger, something that could outlast him. But with that came responsibility: make the difficult decisions, live with the pain.

Mike likes Texas. Texas means warm weather instead of the fucking permafrost of Edmonton winters and Texas means stake. To be honest, every road trip means steak; it's a pretty standard order when you're trying to keep the weight on despite the season's best efforts to bleed you, though that applies to most of the other guys than to Mike: Mike's job is to get on, throw some hits, maybe a few punches, depending on the game and get the fuck off the ice so the hockey players can play. That doesn't mean Mike's not going to order streak, though. He's sure as shit going to order steak: they're in Dallas, he's not a heathen.

It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones. Of no film was that more true than Wings, which opened on August 12 at the Criterion Theatre in New York, with a dedication to Charles Lindbergh. The film was the conception of John Monk Saunders, a bright young man from Minnesota who was also a Rhodes scholar, a gifted writer, a handsome philanderer, and a drinker, not necessarily in that order. In the early 1920s, Saunders met and became friends with the film producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s wife, Bessie. Saunders was an uncommonly charming fellow, and he persuaded Lasky to buy a half-finished novel he had written about aerial combat in the First World War. Fired with excitement, Lasky gave Saunders a record $39,000 for the idea and put him to work on a script. Had Lasky known that Saunders was sleeping with his wife, he might not have been quite so generous. Lasky’s choice for director was unexpected but inspired. William Wellman was thirty years old and had no experience of making big movies—and at $2 million Wings was the biggest movie Paramount had ever undertaken. At a time when top-rank directors like Ernst Lubitsch were paid $175,000 a picture, Wellman was given a salary of $250 a week. But he had one advantage over every other director in Hollywood: he was a World War I flying ace and intimately understood the beauty and enchantment of flight as well as the fearful mayhem of aerial combat. No other filmmaker has ever used technical proficiency to better advantage. Wellman had had a busy life already. Born into a well-to-do family in Brookline, Massachusetts, he had been a high school dropout, a professional ice hockey player, a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, and a member of the celebrated Lafayette Escadrille flying squad. Both France and the United States had decorated him for gallantry. After the war he became friends with Douglas Fairbanks, who got him a job at the Goldwyn studios as an actor. Wellman hated acting and switched to directing. He became what was known as a contract director, churning out low-budget westerns and other B movies. Always temperamental, he was frequently fired from jobs, once for slapping an actress. He was a startling choice to be put in charge of such a challenging epic. To the astonishment of everyone, he now made one of the most intelligent, moving, and thrilling pictures ever made. Nothing was faked. Whatever the pilot saw in real life the audiences saw on the screen. When clouds or exploding dirigibles were seen outside airplane windows they were real objects filmed in real time. Wellman mounted cameras inside the cockpits looking out, so that the audiences had the sensation of sitting at the pilots’ shoulders, and outside the cockpit looking in, allowing close-up views of the pilots’ reactions. Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, the two male stars of the picture, had to be their own cameramen, activating cameras with a remote-control button.

He found that when the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey team—once described as the national team of French Canada—got knocked out of the playoffs early between 1951 and 1992, Quebecois males aged fifteen to thirty-four became more likely to kill themselves. Robert Fernquist, a sociologist at the University of Central Missouri, went further. He studied thirty American metropolitan areas with professional sports teams from 1971 to 1990 and showed that fewer suicides occurred in cities whose teams made the playoffs more often. Routinely reaching the playoffs could reduce suicides by about twenty each year in a metropolitan area the size of Boston or Atlanta, said Fernquist. These saved lives were the converse of the mythical Brazilians throwing themselves off apartment blocks. Later, Fernquist investigated another link between sports and suicide: he looked at the suicide rate in American cities after a local sports team moved to another town. It turned out that some of the fans abandoned by their team killed themselves. This happened in New York in 1957 when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants baseball teams left, in Cleveland in 1995–1996 when the Browns football team moved to Baltimore, and in Houston in 1997–1998 when the Oilers football team departed. In each case the suicide rate was 10 percent to 14 percent higher in the two months around the team’s departure than in the same months of the previous year. Each move probably helped prompt a handful of suicides. Fernquist wrote, “The sudden change brought about due to the geographic relocations of pro sports teams does appear to, at least for a short time, make highly identified fans drastically change the way they view the normative order in society.” Clearly none of these people killed themselves just because they lost their team. Rather, they were very troubled individuals for whom this sporting disappointment was too much to bear. Perhaps the most famous recent case of a man who found he could not live without sports was the Gonzo author Hunter S. Thompson. He shot himself in February 2005, four days after writing a note in black marker with the title, “Football Season Is Over”:

SCENE 24 “Tiens, Ti Jean, donne ce plat la a Shammy,” my father is saying to me, turning from the open storage room door with a white tin pan. “Here, Ti Jean, give this pan to Shammy.” My father is standing with a peculiar French Canadian bowleggedness half up from a crouch with the pan outheld, waiting for me to take it, anxious till I do so, almost saying with his big frowning amazed face “Well my little son what are we doing in the penigillar, this strange abode, this house of life without roof be-hung on a Friday evening with a tin pan in my hand in the gloom and you in your raincoats—” “II commence a tombez de la neige” someone is shouting in the background, coming in from the door (“Snow’s startin to fall”)—my father and I stand in that immobile instant communicating telepathic thought-paralysis, suspended in the void together, understanding something that’s always already happened, wondering where we were now, joint reveries in a dumb stun in the cellar of men and smoke … as profound as Hell … as red as Hell.—I take the pan; behind him, the clutter and tragedy of old cellars and storage with its dank message of despair–mops, dolorous mops, clattering tear-stricken pails, fancy sprawfs to suck soap suds from a glass, garden drip cans–rakes leaning on meaty rock–and piles of paper and official Club equipments– It now occurs to me my father spent most of his time when I was 13 the winter of 1936, thinking about a hundred details to be done in the Club alone not to mention home and business shop–the energy of our fathers, they raised us to sit on nails– While I sat around all the time with my little diary, my Turf, my hockey games, Sunday afternoon tragic football games on the toy pooltable white chalkmarked … father and son on separate toys, the toys get less friendly when you grow up–my football games occupied me with the same seriousness of the angels–we had little time to talk to each other. In the fall of 1934 we took a grim voyage south in the rain to Rhode Island to see Time Supply win the Narragansett Special–with Old Daslin we was … a grim voyage, through exciting cities of great neons, Providence, the mist at the dim walls of great hotels, no Turkeys in the raw fog, no Roger Williams, just a trolley track gleaming in the gray rain– We drove, auguring solemnly over past performance charts, past deserted shell-like Ice Cream Dutchland Farms stands in the dank of rainy Nov.—bloop, it was the time on the road, black tar glisten-road of thirties, over foggy trees and distances, suddenly a crossroads, or just a side-in road, a house, or bam, a vista gray tearful mists over some half-in cornfield with distances of Rhode Island in the marshy ways across and the secret scent of oysters from the sea–but something dark and rog-like.— J had seen it before … Ah weary flesh, burdened with a light … that gray dark Inn on the Narragansett Road … this is the vision in my brain as I take the pan from my father and take it to Shammy, moving out of the way for LeNoire and Leo Martin to pass on the way to the office to see the book my father had (a health book with syphilitic backs)— SCENE 25 Someone ripped the pooltable cloth that night, tore it with a cue, I ran back and got my mother and she lay on it half-on-floor like a great poolshark about to take a shot under a hundred eyes only she’s got a thread in her mouth and’s sewing with the same sweet grave face you first saw in the window over my shoulder in that rain of a late Lowell afternoon. God bless the children of this picture, this bookmovie. I’m going on into the Shade.

SCENE 24 “Tiens, Ti Jean, donne ce plat la a Shammy,” my father is saying to me, turning from the open storage room door with a white tin pan. “Here, Ti Jean, give this pan to Shammy.” My father is standing with a peculiar French Canadian bowleggedness half up from a crouch with the pan outheld, waiting for me to take it, anxious till I do so, almost saying with his big frowning amazed face “Well my little son what are we doing in the penigillar, this strange abode, this house of life without roof be-hung on a Friday evening with a tin pan in my hand in the gloom and you in your raincoats—” “II commence a tombez de la neige” someone is shouting in the background, coming in from the door (“Snow’s startin to fall”)—my father and I stand in that immobile instant communicating telepathic thought-paralysis, suspended in the void together, understanding something that’s always already happened, wondering where we were now, joint reveries in a dumb stun in the cellar of men and smoke … as profound as Hell … as red as Hell.—I take the pan; behind him, the clutter and tragedy of old cellars and storage with its dank message of despair–mops, dolorous mops, clattering tear-stricken pails, fancy sprawfs to suck soap suds from a glass, garden drip cans–rakes leaning on meaty rock–and piles of paper and official Club equipments– It now occurs to me my father spent most of his time when I was 13 the winter of 1936, thinking about a hundred details to be done in the Club alone not to mention home and business shop–the energy of our fathers, they raised us to sit on nails– While I sat around all the time with my little diary, my Turf, my hockey games, Sunday afternoon tragic football games on the toy pooltable white chalkmarked … father and son on separate toys, the toys get less friendly when you grow up–my football games occupied me with the same seriousness of the angels–we had little time to talk to each other. In the fall of 1934 we took a grim voyage south in the rain to Rhode Island to see Time Supply win the Narragansett Special–with Old Daslin we was … a grim voyage, through exciting cities of great neons, Providence, the mist at the dim walls of great hotels, no Turkeys in the raw fog, no Roger Williams, just a trolley track gleaming in the gray rain– We drove, auguring solemnly over past performance charts, past deserted shell-like Ice Cream Dutchland Farms stands in the dank of rainy Nov.—bloop, it was the time on the road, black tar glisten-road of thirties, over foggy trees and distances, suddenly a crossroads, or just a side-in road, a house, or bam, a vista gray tearful mists over some half-in cornfield with distances of Rhode Island in the marshy ways across and the secret scent of oysters from the sea–but something dark and rog-like.— J had seen it before … Ah weary flesh, burdened with a light … that gray dark Inn on the Narragansett Road … this is the vision in my brain as I take the pan from my father and take it to Shammy, moving out of the way for LeNoire and Leo Martin to pass on the way to the office to see the book my father had (a health book with syphilitic backs)— SCENE 25 Someone ripped the pooltable cloth that night, tore it with a cue, I ran back and got my mother and she lay on it half-on-floor like a great poolshark about to take a shot under a hundred eyes only she’s got a thread in her mouth and’s sewing with the same sweet grave face you first saw in the window over my shoulder in that rain of a late Lowell afternoon. God bless the children of this picture, this bookmovie. I’m going on into the Shade.

The second season a tradition was born that became synonymous with town and team: playing Brass Bonanza whenever the Whalers took the ice or scored. DAH DAH DAH dadadadada… Over the years, that snappy fanfare has inspired many emotions. To true believers, it sent tingles down the spine. To naysayers, it was nauseating. “Bombastic,” complained Sports Illustrated.

Some of these kids are just plain trouble.” Grant glanced over at the boys sitting in the glass-walled box. Mac had been like that, all anger and confusion. He’d been in juvie too, arrested for possession after falling into a gang. Grant was gone. Mom was sick. Dad was a mess. Looking back, Grant wondered if dementia was beginning to take hold back then and no one recognized the symptoms. Lee had been the one who’d coped with Mac’s drug and delinquency problems, and Mom’s deathbed talk had snapped her youngest out of it. A program like this might have helped his brother. “Who knows what those boys have had to deal with in their lives.” Corey’s eyes turned somber. “We’re all sorry about Kate.” Reminded of Kate’s death, Grant’s chest deflated. “And thanks for the help,” Corey said. “These boys can be a handful.” “Is your son on the team?” “No.” Corey nodded toward the rink. A pretty blond teenager executed a spinning jump on the ice. Corey beamed. “That’s my daughter, Regan. She’s on the junior figure skating team with Josh’s daughter, the one in black. The hockey team has the next slot of ice time.” “The girls look very talented.” Even with an ex-skater for a sister-in-law, Grant knew next to nothing about figure skating. He should have paid attention. He should have known Kate better. Josh stood taller. “They are. The team went to the sectional championships last fall. Next year, they’ll make nationals, right, Victor?” Josh gestured toward the coach in the black parka, who had deposited the offenders in the penalty box and was walking back to them. “Victor coaches our daughters.” Joining them, Victor offered a hand. He was a head shorter than Grant, maybe fifty years old or so, with a fit body and salt-and-pepper hair cut as short and sharp as his black eyes. “Victor Church.

JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER young black child born to southern sharecroppers, I dreamed of playing professional ice hockey …

I value margins, for on the margins one finds room to grow.

... CEOs are the ghost writers of the political discourse ...

Hockey and cooking are similar in so many ways, especially if you are a player-coach, the guy in charge on the ice, a role I would closely relate to that of a chef in the kitchen - they are both contact sports. You've gotta keep your head up, keep moving and communicate well. Even though you might be the leader in the kitchen or on the ice, you need to understand that that you're part of a working machine and that machine stops working if one of the pieces isn't working in unison with the others. I learned from a very young age the importance of being part of this team dynamic and how hard work can take you to so many different places. (Chef Duane Keller)

A long time ago inside a local ice rink, 15 year olds went to battle to win a game of hockey.  They played for themselves, for their teams, for their coaches, for their towns, and for their families. It was a 0-0 tie in the 2nd period.     Both goalies were outstanding.  But one appeared to be somewhere else. Thinking.  The shot came.    The antagonist wasn’t aiming to break the scoreless tie.  He was living up to his agreement with the other team’s coach.  A coach who wanted his son to be the team's goalie.     He didn’t want a new goalie that could take his team where they have never been.  The playoffs.  A goalie that could secure his team at the top.  The coach watched the shot he bought.      The goalie could have shifted, dodged out of the way, but he was paralyzed.  He dropped to the ice when the puck struck his unprotected neck.     The player skated over to examine the goalie. He had accomplished his task.    And with the money he earned, he can buy the bicycle he always wanted.     The goalie’s father was standing amongst the other parents.  He was enraged that his son didn’t make the save.     He felt the hard work he put into his boy slowly fade, and quickly die out.  He knew how good his son was, and would be.  He knew the puck struck because the goalie let it.  He did not know why.   I groaned as the puck hit me in the arm.  I had pads, but pads can only soften the blow. I squeezed my arm.     My father stood and watched.     My friend fired another shot that whacked me in the throat, knocking me down.  I felt dizzy.      It was frigid on the pond in winter.     This is where I learned to play hockey.  This is also where I learned it was painful to be a goaltender.  I got up slowly, glowering at him.  My friend was perplexed at my tenacity.     “This time, stay down!” And then he took the hardest slap shot I have ever encountered.     The puck tore through the icy air at incredible speed right into my face.     My glove rapidly came up and snatched it right before it would shatter my jaw.  I took my glove off and reached for the puck inside.     I swung my arm and pitched it as fiercely as I could at my friend.     Next time we play, I should wear my mask and he should wear a little more cover than a hat.  I turned towards my father.  He was smiling.  That was rare.     I was relieved to know that I was getting better and he knew it.  The ice cracked open and I dropped through…      The goalie was alone at the hospital.  He got up and opened the curtains the nurse keeps closing at night so he could see through the clear wall.     He eyed out the window and there was nothing interesting except a lonely little tree.  He noticed the way the moonlight shined off the grass and radiated everything else.  But not the tree.  The tree was as colourless as the sky.     But the sky had lots of bright little glowing stars.  What did the tree have?  He went back to his bed and dozed off before he could answer his own question.   Nobody came to visit him at the hospital but his mother.     His father was at home and upset that his son is no longer on the team.  The goalie spot was seized by the team’s original goalie, the coach’s son.     The goalie’s entire life had been hockey.  He played every day as his father observed.  He really wanted a regular father, whatever that was.  A father that cares about him and not about hockey.  The goalie did like hockey, but it was a game.         A sport just like other sports, only there’s an ice surface to play on.  But he did not love hockey.     It was just something he became very good at, with plenty of practice and bruises.     He was silent in his new team’s locker room, so he didn’t assume anyone would come and see how he was doing.

The silence surrounding words highlights their importance, assures us that the word was weighed, polished, contemplated, and deserves the light of day. Words without such reins are excessively dumped in the sea of everyday life, such as one purges interior contaminants—dumped far away from us into an atmosphere that we unconsciously pollute and which we all share. Such words exorcise our private dementia but ironically saturate the art until it risks drowning in a bog of mushy cacophony.

It is rare to find a person who reads the silence with the fluency of stone angels ...

And the last thing I want is to be afraid the next time I step onto the ice, afraid of screwing up and being in his line of fire again. Fear doesn't make you play better. It's not a good motivator. It's a mental game killer.

As Remus stood there, helpless in a gas station parking lot, a very old urge came flooding back. Calf stretches before thigh. Two bottles of water on the bench. Right foot first to step onto the ice. Pasta and marinara before home games, chicken and broccoli before away. Eggs morning of, pancakes after a win. Drag the puck around the goal crease twelve times. Calf stretches before thigh, two bottles of water on the bench, right foot first to step onto the ice, pasta and marinara home, chicken and broccoli away, eggs morning of, pancakes after a win, goal crease, calf, thigh, two bottles, right foot first, pasta, chicken, eggs, win, goal, do it right, win, goal, do something— Remus sat down hard on the curb and put his head in his hands. He tired to remind himself that those were not the things that got him where he was today. But hockey was like that. Half control. Half commitment and work. And half chance. Half sheer dumb luck.

By June, if you’re a Leafs fan, the season is over. Truthfully it is usually over by December. Every year, the Leafs have a great team on paper, but, unfortunately hockey is played on ice.

rise above and stand out from those who merely get by. Not hard work as in showing up to the same job on time for twenty-seven years, which is a fine thing and absolutely an achievement (if you can find an employer that will keep you for nearly three decades without outsourcing you). I mean the kind of hard work that leaves you alone at night while your college peers are doing keg stands and your grown-up friends are taking a well-earned breather. I mean the kind of hard work that most people just won’t do.

His approach to influencing Farandou was inspired by the maxim of his Canadian ice hockey hero, Wayne Gretzky: ‘Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it was.’ It was Chaiblaine’s reading of how the game might play out that gave him influence with Farandou, who liked him for being clever, analytical and ‘synthétique’, for synthesising options from a sea of information:

If Mr. Bentavagnia has a large nose, you’d see a bent weather vane where the nose should be. Mr. Pukczyva has bulging eyes; really see those shivering hockey pucks flying out of his eyes, hitting you in the face. Or, his eyes are shivering hockey pucks. Mr. Antesiewicz has a noticeable cleft in his chin. See savages charging at you out of that cleft; you’re defending yourself against them—you’re anti-savage. Mr. Cohen has deep character lines (they used to be called “worry” lines) on his forehead. Picture those lines being dripping ice cream cones; or millions of dripping ice cream cones flying out of those lines.

Gunnar Bale was not only a soccer player, he was a pretty strong hockey player as well. There was one sport Slayton High was better at than soccer: ice hockey. It was the most prestigious sport in the town.

Just as everything in my life has changed, every new morning brings with it a fresh challenge. I have to think about something other than my illness. Every morning I spend a certain amount of time asking myself how I feel, if I have any new side effects, or if it looks like being a good day. But if I am unable to thrust aside such thoughts with a real ice-hockey tackle of an effort, the battle is lost before it has even begun. Then there is a risk that resignation, suffering and fear will gain the upper hand. What course is open to me in that case? To lie down and turn my face to the wall?

People talk about a 'winners mentality' because a winner has something that others lack, a special brain that takes for granted that it was born to be heroic. When a game comes down to the last decisive seconds, the winner bangs his stick down on the ice and yells to his teammates to pass to him, because a winner doesn't ask for the puck, he demands it. When thousands of spectators stand up and roar, most people become uncertain and back away, but the winner steps up.

For the past eight hours, I’ve been about as helpful as a fish out of water. Or a fish in water, because what the fuck do fish really offer to society? Every time I try to encourage Sabrina to do her breathing, she glares at me like I slaughtered her treasured family pet. When I offer her some ice chips to chew on, she tells me to shove them up my ass. The one time I peeked over Doctor Laura’s shoulder at Sabrina’s lady parts, she told me that if I did that one more time, she’d break my hockey stick and stab me with it. The mother of my child, folks.

I don’t think we’ve met,” he said in all seriousness, and her body’s reaction to that voice confirmed his lie. Her body knew that voice like a snake knew its charmer.

A nice note, Addy? You’re calling the best orgasms we’ve ever had nice?” She canted her head, wryness in the motion. “Speak for yourself, Callaghan.

He fell to his knees. Oh, that was good.

Had she mentioned she liked a guy with big hands?

We have gone zero days without a panties-dampening episode.

into art or music, how about that exhilarating moment when, during the 1982 Winter Olympics, the U.S. hockey team pulverized the Russians? Whether in front of the television, in the stands, or on the ice, we all became “one” in the euphoria of victory. My strong, he-man father once told me about a time he was standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking Yellowstone Falls—with tears in his eyes, he described how he became one with the deafening roar of the water. If you have experienced any of this, it’s an inkling of the joy that will overtake us when we take just one glance at the Lord of joy. We will lose ourselves in Him. We will become one with Him. We will be “in Christ,” we will have “put on Christ” at the deepest, most profound and exhilarating level. The Lord’s wedding gift to us will be the joy of sharing totally in His nature without us losing our identity; no, we shall receive our identity. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

The aforementioned “active stick”—besides being an essential achievement in the Eddie Olczyk NBC broadcaster drinking game—describes what the defenseman needs to do with his twig when taking on an attacker. It should always be on the ice, always in motion, always seeking to be as close to the shooter’s blade as possible.

The towns and the players are all different. But the game is always the same, its speed and power. Hockey’s grace and poetry make men beautiful. The thrill of it lifts people out of their seats.Dreams unfold right before your eyes, conjured by a stick and a puck on a hundred and eighty feet of ice. The players? The good ones? The great ones? They’re the ones who can harness that lightning. They’re the conjurers. They become one with the game and it lifts them up and out of their lives too.

It took a broken menstrual pad dispenser, a chance encounter, an inheritance, a failing company, a distillery, a rishta auntie, a hapless suitor, a spreadsheet, seven dates, a sword, extra-hot pork vindaloo, an Irish brawl, a sick dog, endless games of Guitar Hero, a hockey game, Shark Stew, a broken bed, a walk of shame, a quiz night, back-office shenanigans, a jealous ex, a motorcycle crash, a crisis of conscience, a break up, six pints of ice cream, four pounds of gummy bears, a partnership offer, a heart-to-heart, a family interrogation, a grovel, and a death-defying midnight climb to get them together.

A lot of people hate the almost year-round cold weather, but I completely love it. I embrace it with wide open arms. Long winters mean more time for me on my little iced lake rink and more time for ice hockey. More time for me to clear my head from the reality of my life, more time to escape.

For my son, and all the Canadian youngsters like him, minor hockey is a great experience—as long as we adults don't ruin it for them. But, to do that, it will be a constant battle to keep a watchful eye on what happens in our rinks—on the ice, in the stands and in the dressing rooms. The onus is on all of us to make Canadian minor hockey a safer and saner environment for future generations of little pucksters.

I dressed like a tomboy, no denying it, but I wasn't built like one, for sure. With long blonde hair and an hourglass figure, no one could mistake me for a boy even in all my hockey gear. There would be no hiding my obvious female attributes on the all-male hockey team. And starting that afternoon, right after school, I'd get a solid look at being the only girl on the ice.

As I leave the ice, I hear one of the kids call Jacobs Topher, and I am loving it. Until I hear his laugh. I spin to find Jacobs shaking his head, but he’s still laughing. Unacceptable. And so not worth a six-pack of beer.

I don’t get it. I am not unfit. I work out, and I plow down guys twice my size on the ice. The thing that kills me is apple picking? What the actual fuck?” Jacobs laughs. “You’re using muscles you don’t normally use.” “And your brother? The scrawny one? He’s like a machine. He can strip a tree faster than I can strip you.

I loved watching these old farts having a blast out on the ice. After the game, 'the boys' would enjoy a beer or two (thanks to a weekly designate who snuck the suitcase of suds into the dressing room in his hockey bag) and the laughs would continue a little longer before they were dressed in their civvies and headed back to real life.

A coach will set up the next three lines after the one that’s on the ice. But then, seeing what the other team puts out on the fly, he’ll tell players at the very last second that it’s their turn to hit the ice, even if they’re not the next line in the rotation. That’s because the opposing coach has done something—put out his top line, put out his bruising fourth line—to influence the line match. For some coaches, this is the perfect system through which to defeat an opponent. For most observers, it’s a handy way to unbalance your players’ ice time to their detriment.

The Fourth Line—Your home for muckers, meatheads, and misanthropes. This is the “energy line” that features checking pests and brawlers, whose task is to cry havoc, let slip the dogs of war, and collect penalty minutes. But for all the circus music they can orchestrate, a strong fourth line can frequently be an X-factor in a given playoff series. (6-11 minutes of ice time)

From a friendly exhibition hockey series, it became a war on ice! I found myself hating the Russians despite the fact I'd never met one.

Not just together. They’re practically engaged except for the pesky matter of your dad’s approval.” Layla grinned. “But you know what the two of them are like. They can’t get out of their own heads. It took a broken menstrual pad dispenser, a chance encounter, an inheritance, a failing company, a distillery, a rishta auntie, a hapless suitor, a spreadsheet, seven dates, a sword, extra-hot pork vindaloo, an Irish brawl, a sick dog, endless games of Guitar Hero, a hockey game, Shark Stew, a broken bed, a walk of shame, a quiz night, back-office shenanigans, a jealous ex, a motorcycle crash, a crisis of conscience, a break up, six pints of ice cream, four pounds of gummy bears, a partnership offer, a heart-to-heart, a family interrogation, a grovel, and a death-defying midnight climb to get them together. And now, apparently, it’s all up to you.

As for those forwards who remain on the ice for too long, we’ll pass the mic to venerable blogger Tyler Dellow: “Being on the ice after a minute is sort of like being in a bar after 1:00 am—there’s no guarantee that something bad will happen, it’s possible that something good will happen, but the odds are slanted heavily in favor of something bad.

Superstitions are pretty much the only thing I take as seriously as hockey. And this could be my last season. Yours too. I just wanna come out on top.

Thankfully, I feel like I’m starting to understand the rules of hockey. I know I’m missing a lot but I’m getting the basics figured out. Like - the puck goes in the net, the crowd freaks out. Goalie stops the puck, the crowd freaks out. The players do pretty much anything, the crowd freaks out. I know that goalie helmets are cool, but I have no idea what offside means. I think it’s bad. And apparently the term icing does not refer to the delicious stuff you put on a cake.

Mark my words, Grey. Your next first kiss will be your best first kiss. It might even be your last first kiss.

Montreal was the location of ice hockey’s first formal game (1875), its first published rules (1877), its first official club (1877), its first major tournament (1883), its first intercity league (1886) and its first national champion (1893).11 That occurred when the reigning governor general, Lord Frederick Stanley of Preston, presented his famous Cup, and a five-team league—three of which were from Montreal—settled on its winner.12 For much of this time, hockey as an organized sport had been marginal and largely unknown in Toronto.