A Tribute To Masters Hockey

A while back, this column featured a primer on youth ice hockey. As I write this, the NHL Playoffs are just getting into full swing, and they will keep on swinging, landing some pretty good blows, until sometime late in June. With this in mind, I thought I'd take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about the grown-up side of the game.

All kinds of adults play ice hockey, including many who are my age and older. This is possible because as we mature and our bodies become more injury-prone, we also progressively lose our mental competence. By the time a player is as old as I am, it's a miracle if he can remember which part of the shoulder pads to stick his head through, much less have the good sense to stay off the ice.

Now in the column about youth hockey, I pointed out that there is a sort of "Talent Inverse-Square Rule" we use for naming player levels - the higher the skill level, the more demeaning the name. The biggest, fastest, hardest-hitting young players short of the professional leagues are called "Midgets."

Partly in deference to this Inverse-Square Rule, and partly because we are the ones who make up the names, we older hockey players are called "Masters."

Masters hockey games generally happen late at night, when ice time is cheap and when the rink manager overlooks the coolers of beer in the locker room because he is either asleep or thirsty.

People rarely come to watch Masters play, and for years I wondered why. After all, our games feature all the blinding speed of the NHL, coupled with the finesse that comes naturally to us as more mature, experienced athletes. Despite this, inviting our wives or long-term significant others to our games generally has about the same effect as inviting them to eat a bucket of gravel.

One night a few years back, my team actually did have a spectator. She was, predictably, the New Girlfriend of our only single player, and even more exciting than her presence, she had brought along a video camera.

What a night! Waiting for the opening face-off, I could feel the lens capturing my scowl of concentration as I watched the puck in the referee's hand, coiled to pounce like a panther the instant he dropped it.

All night long we flew up and down the ice like blazing comets. Every pass I fired across the rink cracked with deafening authority onto the blade of a teammate's stick, and every pass I received cracked with that same authority. Late in the game I even scored a highlight-reel goal, rifling the puck past the catching glove of the desperately lunging goalie.

And New Girlfriend got it all on tape.

After the game, and after we polished off all the beer in the locker room, someone pointed out that one of our favorite bars was still open, and that they had a large-screen TV... WITH A VCR!

Trembling with excitement we swilled the first pitcher or two while the bartender cued up our video.  Finally, following a few seconds of shaky footage of New Girlfriend's shoes and a few helpful shouts of, "Hey what's this crap?" from the other bar patrons, our sports epic began.

The opening face-off wasn't exactly as I remembered it. After the referee dropped the puck, the players up on the screen stood around motionless on the ice for what seemed like a very long time while the old guy wearing my jersey and the opposing center stood there and looked at it, apparently discussing what to do next.

Eventually we came to some sort of conclusion and began swatting at the puck, knocking it in the general direction of the penalty box. All ten players ambled off in that general direction, and the game was on.

After we all took turns asking New Girlfriend and the bartender if they were certain the tape was running at the right speed, and being assured that it was, the entire team settled back to let the cruel tide of VHS Reality wash over us.

Those blazing comets shuffled up and down the ice in glacial clusters, sometimes with the puck but more often chasing it. The deafening crack of those pinpoint passes never once made it to the sound track, completely drowned out by our wheezing and New Girlfriend's occasional giggles. And my highlight-reel goal amounted to the puck bouncing lazily off my stick and trickling past the goalie while he was looking at a loose strap on one of his pads.

Now I have to say that I think NHL players are among the finest all-around athletes in the world, and that watching them play hockey is to see the game as it was meant to be played. And I also have to say that until I saw my team up on that screen, I really believed that we Masters were just enjoying an ever-so-slightly more deliberate and cerebral version of the same sport.

Well, we do use black rubber pucks...


Copyright © 2006, Michael Ball