Week 2 (Oct. 22nd)

Week 2 of the clinic started with a little bit of a wrinkle: we were going to be broken up into three teams instead of two, as there were too many players for just two sides.

The good news: hey, smaller teams means more ice time in games!

The bad news: shit, smaller teams means more ice time in games!

I got to the rink early enough to watch a bit of the game that was going on before our session. One team was called the BoozeHounds, and their jerseys were based on the Chicago Blackhawks' Winter Classic sweaters. In other words, they were awesome.

During this game, two players started jawing at each other for some reason or another, leading to a gathering of the clans. (Keep in mind, these are basically beer league games, so fighting isn't tolerated.) Numerous blown whistles failed to quiet the masses, so finally a referee shouted, "IF YA DON'T CUT THA SHIT NOW, WE'LL JUST SHUT THE GAME DOWN AND WALK OFF RIGHT HERE!"

Apparently the threat had weight, as all of the players immediately returned to their benches. It was pretty weird to hear a ref threaten to end the game with ten minutes left in the third in order to end a scrum, but hey, it worked. For those curious (I'm sure there are tons), the BoozeHounds scored with five seconds left to tie the game at one. Riveting.

Much like the first week, things were way too crowded at the rink to get a seat in the locker room. Your faithful hockey playing hero was forced to get dressed next to the rink again, probably catching four or five different colds in the process.

Thanks, hockey rink.

I tied my skates as tightly as possible again and managed to set a new record in the process: I couldn't feel my left foot after just under two minutes, shattering the previous record of ten. After a few warm-up spins, it was time to begin. I had noticed the coaches giving maroon jerseys to a few guys before the warm-ups started, and we were subsequently all ordered to gather by color along the boards: white, green, and maroon.

I wasn't exactly married to my white team, but I knew a few guys from the first clinic, so I kind of wanted to stay. One of the coaches asked "are any of you playing alone, without any buddies?"

Being the one-man wolfpack that I am, I started to raise my hand. The coach then finished, "if you are, come out here and grab a maroon jersey."

SCREEEEEEECH. No thanks. My hand went back down and I tried to inconspicuously skate away. I managed to escape, and was left with my white teammates (awkward). Speedy and Joe, linemates from my first clinic, remained on my team as well. We should put up around 1,399 points during the clinic.

We started things off the same way as we did in the first session: end to end, end to end with a puck, end to end backwards, end to end backwards with a puck, and finally...stops and turns.

We meet again, left-foot stops. My first few left-footed trips up the ice were, predictably, disastrous. It went something like this:

1. Fail to come to even one complete stop, instead spinning like a top each time.
2. Kind of stop, but instead nearly do a split.
3. Repeat number one.

However, on the magical fourth run, I had a mini-breakthrough: I managed to skid to a bit of a stop on my left skate, barely dragging the right one. It was the first time I'd ever been anything close to successful on the left, and I was brimming with confidence.

In fact, I had so much confidence that I sped up a bit to try my last left-foot stop, approached it without hesitation, and...spun around like a top again.

Back to square one.

Hey, who took a picture of my trying to stop?!

Turns went in a similar fashion: spins, spins, spins, kind of turns, spins, kind of turns, and spins. I'm nothing if not consistent, and by consistent I mean "consistently not succeeding at doing anything on my left."

The chase drill/2-on-0 drill was up next (it was a chase drill on one side of the ice and a 2-on-0 on the other, alternating sides). My first chase was predictably successful: I smoked my poor competition, leaving him in the dust.*

*Dust here means "by one or two strides, at most."

The 2-on-0 was going OK until I got to the faceoff circles, at which point I tried to unselfishly backhand a pass to my partner. My partner was already at the goalline, so it probably wasn't the best idea. The puck skittered into the corner, and I skated away in shame. Oops.

My second race was against a new guy, JOFA Helmet. JOFA Helmet had on all old gear and old looking glasses, so I thought he was a newbie and would be easy to beat. 

Wrong. I lost by about four strides, and learned a valuable lesson in the process: if a guy's gear looks to be as old as the rink you're skating in, he's probably been playing for a while.

I got a laugh at JOFA's expense in the next drill. It's a simple shooting drill involving three skaters at once and three items on the ice, spaced evenly: the first person curls inside the first item and takes a shot, second curls on the second item, third curls on the third. It's a pretty simple drill.

JOFA struggled mightily, skating past his target and then compounding the error by skating into the next group of three to go, earning a thundering "WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!?" from Angry Coach.

I can only assume JOFA's struggles were punishment from the Hockey Gods for daring to beat me in a race. He won't make that mistake again.

Old school JOFA!

The last drill of the night was a passing/shooting drill. The person with the puck passes it to a skater at the point, then skates to the point. The point guy passes it to someone on the other point, then skates to his spot. The guy who received the second pass skates in and shoots. (It's a lot harder to explain in words.)

I watched as the new-ish players struggled with the drill, making the wrong passes or failing to skate to the right spots (I fear what's going to happen when we try the weave drill in a couple of weeks). As the failures mounted, the zone started looking like the Expressway at rush hour.

My turn was up, and I confidently stepped up to the puck and fired a pass to the point, a pass that promptly was in my teammate's skates. Oops. 

My three shots in this drill? Saved, saved, and saved. Oops again.

Hey, sometimes it's good to be humbled. I've certainly made progress in the last year, but am occasionally reminded that there's a long way to go. There are definitely guys (and girls) in the clinic who are worse than me, but there's no point in comparing myself to them.

No, instead I've made not of who they are and will harass them when they have the puck in the games next week. Strategy!

I'm Back: Week 1 (Oct. 15th)

At the conclusion of the first clinic session back in March, I knew that I'd had a ton of fun and wanted to play again. The only question was when I'd get back on the ice, and whether or not it'd be in a formal setting (like another clinic) or something more informal, like pick-up games.

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.