A couple of months after the first clinic ended, we got an email from the NESHL inviting us to sign up for the summer clinic, which would take place in a suburb slightly south of Boston, once a week. After skating in one pick-up game, I decided I wanted more organized hockey instead, so I signed up.
(As a quick aside, the reason pick-up games suck is because everyone out there thinks he's Gretzky. I had the misfortune of having some high school-aged kid on my team, and his shifts were routinely four minutes or longer. Players like that suck the fun out of it for everyone else. If you're sitting there saying, "hey, I don't have a guy like that at my games!", you're probably that guy. Sorry.)
I signed up for the summer clinic and had a lot of fun, but it wasn't really "blog-worthy" because it was only drills: no scrimmages, no games, just skating and practicing. There are only so many funny stories I can tell about crossover drills, or how many times I fell down trying to transition from forwards to backwards skating. We did do a few shootout drills (a poor goalie was victimized by my ferocious snapshot beating him five-hole...he was never seen nor heard from again), but it was mostly practice.
I improved a lot over the summer, mainly due to some equipment guidance from a coach who informed me that my loose skates were ruining my stride.
"You're not that bad of a skater," he said. "But they're so loose that you're ankles are bending all over the place out there!"
A new set of wax laces and some determined tightening helped me out, and he noticed a difference immediately (as did I).
The summer clinic was a good workout once a week, but I wanted to return to game action.
Enter the fall clinic, part two: return of the milk crates.
The new clinic is the exact same as the first one: one night a week at a Boston-area university. I spent 15 minutes at work that afternoon re-taping my stick, preparing it for maybe one or two shots over the course of the 20 weeks. Unfortunately, I ran out of tape after taping the blade...meaning I was stuck with a black grip/knob and a white blade. There wasn't much I could do, so I decided to deal with it and take to the ice as the hockey version of a swirl cone.
I got to the rink a little early to check in and get my jersey. Upon arrival, I saw two piles of jerseys on the ground: white and green.
"Jackpot," I thought to myself. "New colors to add to my collection."
After checking in, I was assigned to the white team and told to grab a jersey. I sifted through the pile until I found an XL, and turned it over to find myself sporting number 11. Clearly this was a sign: I was Gregory Campbell. I had to spend my clinic sliding all over the ice, throwing myself in harm's way. And then maybe after I stood up, I could try to block a shot or two.
This wasn't my first rodeo, so I knew the locker room situation at this rink was non-existent, meaning the locker rooms are actually cinderblock walls without doors. The room was already packed, so I decided to just put my bag down and get ready next to the rink. No shame.
I put on most of my equipment (excluding skates, helmet, and gloves), the first time any of it had been worn since September. Fortunately, I hadn't experienced any massive growth spurts over the course of a few weeks, so everything still fit.
After getting dressed, I prepared for my most difficult task: tying my skates. I don't know what it is, but I can't seem to do it. I don't tie my sneakers, barely tie dress shoes...I have tie aversion. The failure to correctly tie my skates is what led to a less-than-graceful skating stride (and that's putting it kindly) in the previous clinic, so I was determined to get these suckers tied.
I pulled on the wax laces like I was playing a game of "tug of war" with my ankle (I was losing), tied them up, and got ready to hit the ice.
 |
| Someday this jersey will sell for hundreds on eBay. |
The Zamboni left, and I hit the rink, taking a few strides for the first time in way too long. I took a couple of spins around the rink, stopping here and there just to prove to myself that I could. I even tried to stop on my left foot once or twice, failing miserably each time. By my fourth time around the rink, I couldn't feel my right foot.
"Shit, I have to go loosen these," I thought.
*WHISTLE*
"Alright, everyone line up down this end," yelled Coach Mike (he was a coach at the summer clinic too).
Not wanting to be the guy who gets on the ice late, I decided to suck it up and hope the skate thing would go away.
It didn't.
After some warm-up skates, I couldn't feel either of my feet. It felt like both of my feet were shoved into boots made out of granite that were two sizes too small. However, the coach who had helped me out at the previous clinic insisted that it just took getting used to, and that the feeling would ease over time.
I took his word for it and let them be, checking every now and then to make sure that yes, my feet were still there.
Our first drills were very basic: end-to-end skating, with and without the puck. Watching from the corner, I saw people stumbling and struggling to stay up, wistfully reminiscing on the time nearly a year ago when that was me, Bambi on the ice.
Shortly thereafter, I caught a rut and fell right on my chest. What kind of drill was it?
It wasn't. It was just "skating up the ice with a puck."
Bambi, checking in.
 |
| And I don't even have an adorable rabbit to skate with... |
The format of this clinic is set to be practices for the first two weeks, followed by game-practice-game-practice, etc. until the end of the clinic (more or less). The drills were simple: skating up and down the ice, skating up and down with the puck, skating up and down backwards, etc.
I handled all of these pretty well (go me!), and we then broke into two groups for more drills: one group was going to do the "chase" drill (a puck is shot forward and two guys race after it; the first one to get it takes it in on net while the second guy backchecks), while the other group did simple 2-on-0's in on a goalie.
I was the second guy up for the chase drill, and the poor bastard facing me didn't know what he was up against. The puck was shot ahead and off I went, leaving him in the dust wondering "what happened?"
Of course by that I mean that I beat him to the puck by three or four strides (thanks, long legs). My shot was turned aside, but I was undefeated, unafraid of all challengers. I chose the backhand side for 2-on-0's and feathered a couple of wobbly-at-best passes to my partner before letting him shoot.
I won my next race and beat the goalie five-hole with what I intended to be a laser wrister, but it turned into a broken-bat dribbler instead. Beat the goalie with the change-up!
The next 2-on-0 was standard fare, but then things got interesting: for whatever reason, the lines started getting messed up, and there was a long wait for the 2-on-0's when I left, but none for the chase. The roles reversed when I got to the line for the 2-on-0's. Basically, because of the way the lines had been split up, every time I got to a station, I was second or third in line.
This meant pretty much continuous sprinting on skates for about five minutes straight, probably not the best idea after a month or so off of the ice.
Undaunted, your heroic blogger soldiered on. I won every puck race, only failing to get a shot off when my partner got me with a sneaky stick lift. Shortly thereafter, Coach Mike told us to take a lap. I decided to take my lap off of the ice and over to my water bottle, silently wondering if anyone noticed how excellent my conditioning was.
Next, we were to do "whistle stops", which are exactly what they sound like: stop on the whistle, facing a predetermined direction to ensure that everyone practices stopping with both feet. Up first was stopping on the left foot, or in my case, "not stopping."
Believe it or not, a month off of the ice didn't, in fact, make me better at stopping on my left foot. Who knew?!
After a series of stops and skitters, I was mercifully facing the other direction, stopping on my right foot. This drill continued for a while: embarrassing myself one way, embarrassing myself slightly less the other way.
Still the official "Milk Crates" anthem!
After that, we had two drills left: turns and crossovers. Crossovers came last, and I actually did fairly well. I didn't fall at all, stumbled maybe twice on four tries, and only really screwed up when it came to doing them with a puck.
The turns, however, were the night's humbling moment. Towards the end of the summer clinic, I was able to turn OK. Nothing glamorous, nothing smooth, but...OK. With that surging confidence, I headed into my first turn and promptly stumbled, came to a complete halt, and barely avoided falling.
"Surely that was a mistake," I thought to myself. "I've become the TurnMaster."
The next time up the ice, I was able to turn fairly smoothly, but again stumbled coming the other way. And again. And again.
I'd spent much of the summer telling people who asked how hockey was going that it was going well, that I'd improved a lot and was getting pretty decent. And it's true: I have improved, and improved a lot.
But it took just two drills (stops and turns) to be "Humbled by Hockey" again, and to realize that I've still got a ways to go.
Get the Icy Hot ready.
No comments:
Post a Comment