The Game

It’s a conversation that sneaks up on you, and even when you feel prepared for it, it still leaves you a little breathless.

“Mom, dad; I don’t want to play hockey anymore.”

Every summer we’ve asked both of the boys the inevitable question; “do you want to play hockey this year?” For our oldest, now a high school junior, it was always a resounding YES, with the youthful eye-roll of feigned disgust that it’s an obvious answer.

Since he was a six-year-old Mini-Mite 1 in Rosemount the answer has always been the same. The same exasperated and mischievous why-wouldn’t-I-want-to look on his face. The same sarcastic tone in his voice. Until this summer. I asked the question and there was a pause. He looked me in the eyes, “dad, I’m not sure yet.”

Wait, what? I asked myself….this can’t be my kid….my kid would never give up hockey. He must have had a bad day at work, yeah that’s it. Sure. I’m sure that he’ll wake up tomorrow morning and want to rush to the rink.

But that never happened.

It had been the winter of 2004-2005 when we had first signed Stanley up to play mini-mite hockey in Rosemount.  I remember walking into the gymnasium of the Rosemount Community Center with my wife Brenda, and picking up the forms and signing the checks for registration and fundraising.  A former co-worker set me up with some of his son’s old equipment, we bought a stick and inherited some skates from another co-worker and away we went.

He’d skated before, typically a trip up to Jaycee Park in Rosemount, a bike helmet, and snow pants. What followed was 10 minutes of getting him laced up, and 3 minutes of him chopping his skates on the ice while I held him under his armpits while my back started to spasm. Ten minutes later we would be untying skates for the ride back home. I knew enough to know that trying to force him to skate when he clearly didn’t want to would be a bad idea. Before long came the days when we couldn’t get him off the rink.

When he started as a young player, hockey dreams filled his head. Dreams of playing for the Rosemount Irish Varsity team, then onto the University of Minnesota to play in front of the Gopher faithful in Mariucci Arena, and then onto Xcel Energy Center to star for the Minnesota Wild. Oh to have the dreams of a child.

When he was in Kindergarten he’d finish his lunch and pop in a couple of hockey videos. Being a budding goalie he’d put on my shin pads, strap on his helmet, gloves, and knee hockey stick and play along with his favorite players. One day I got an e-mail at work from my wife telling me that he finally did it – he fell asleep with the gear on. The picture that she got of him that day always makes me smile.

 

Our journey gained momentum through the Mini-Mite and Mite Programs, with weekend ice times and treats afterwards. Jamborees with medals and trophies and a growing love of the game.  We learned how to skate, to pass, to get up when we fell down. We still skated outside 3 nights a week, running back into the warming house when the temperatures and wind cut through the layers and pads. There were lots of naps in the cars back and forth to practice. I’d look back at him in his pads, sitting in his car seat, stocking cap pulled low over his ears, head lolled over to the side, dreaming of games won on shots that he took.

I felt a lot of pride when I saw him pull a traveling sweater over his head for the first time. Through Squirts and PeeWee’s we went, learning to forecheck and backcheck.  Learning how to play on the power play and how to defend short handed. Russian circles and stops on the blue lines. Tournament weekends in St. Cloud, and Duluth.  The Fargo International Squirt Tournament.  From Fergus Falls to Bloomington, Hopkins and Stillwater. Snack bags and tourney t-shirts. Door hangars and pin trading. Bag tags and swim time at the pool. Lots and lots of Subway and Buffalo Wild Wings. Dark blue Rosemount warm-ups hoodies and hats. Knee hockey in hallways. Driving miles and miles of highways through snow blanketed fields, getting to practice and games well ahead of time. Rival District 8 games against rivals Farmington, Eagan, and Lakeville. Good wins, and bad losses.

Coming into first year Bantam Irish Clinic showed a longer stride and confidence. Checking was back in play but the one-year of checking in PeeWee’s served him well.  The more I watched him the more impressed I was with his maturity as a youth player. He took it all in the same calm even manner he had always approached the game. Kids that had always seemed a stride faster weren’t as fast, and the game looked as if it were slowing down for him.  With no expectations we entered tryouts, and stayed up with the top pool the entire time. When he got called off the ice early during the last Farmington scrimmage, I had a feeling that he was going to end up on one of the top teams. He made B1.

He was in deep water for those first couple weeks of practices. The pace was frenetic, and the expectations were higher. Intensity. Commitment. Pride.  It became less about learning how to pass and stop, it was more about where you needed to be on the ice and what to do when you didn’t have the puck as much as was about knowing what to do when you did have the puck. Instead of being a player expected to carry a team, he was a player expected not to let the team down. He struggled early but started to get his skates under him. Our head coach, John, caught me before a practice and asked me if I could work with the goalies a couple of times a week and I agreed. Pretty soon I was on the ice for all of the practices and on the bench for games. Both the player and coach learned a lot.

We took the championship trophy in a tournament in Mankato, a consolation trophy in White Bear Lake. We wound being runner-ups in New Richmond, and to top it off: the District 8 Playoff Championship.

We had our final practice that year at Richfield arena. Inside I knew that it was going to be the last time I’d be sharing the ice with him in a coach – player relationship. We warmed up in the usual way, ran our flow drills, penalty kill and power-play. But at the end of the hour I remember feeling almost numb, as if wishing that the time would slow and stop. I knew I’d miss this time with him.

 The team fell short in the Regional playoff but collectively we were proud of the accomplishments. It had been a great season.

The fall of 2013 brought us to our final Irish Clinic and tryouts. As a returning second-year Bantam who had earned his battle scars on a successful B1 team the next logical step in his development as a player was with the AA team.

From a trip to Faribault to play powerhouse Shattuck – St. Mary’s, road trips to Moorhead, Bemidji, the NAPHL Tournament at the Super Rink in Blaine, the Bantam A/AA Tournament in Roseau, and finally ending up with the VFW State Championship in Fergus Falls, and every rink in between we went. But as the season wore on the fun started to leave. Playing third line center wasn’t as fun as he thought it was going to be.

He scored his last goal in Bantams during the waning minutes of a game against Duluth East with a wicked snapshot in the slot on the powerplay. Top shelf where mom keeps the cookie jar. Head up all the way just like we taught him all of those years. In that sweep of his stick I felt that it was all worth it. When his teammates surrounded and congratulated him I felt proud. But at the same time I felt sad. Sad knowing that this portion of his hockey career was over. The team lost that game.

We played one more game against Grand Rapids, a team that had won the State Bantam AA Championship the week before. We lost that game as well. As we collected ourselves after the game he asked for the car keys. He wanted to drive a few the first few minutes home. We started RAHA with a six year old boy still sitting in his car seat. We ended it with a fifteen year old teenager driving us home on the interstate.

The next step to take on the journey was into High School Hockey, to wear the colors of the Rosemount Irish. I picked him up after his first Captain’s Practice; body sweaty, and eyes big as saucers.

“So how was it?” I asked.

“Fast dad,” he answered back, “very fast.”

Through Captain’s practices he adjusted to the new pace, and wound up making the Junior Varsity team.

As the upperclassmen get picks of jersey numbers, most all of the lower numbers have been chosen. In homage to his Mini-Mite and Mite years he took his old number 34. I smiled when he told me.





One thing to get used too were the 5:30am practices; he was only late once, but they made for long days. He enjoyed the coaches and teammates, but would often ask to leave the Varsity games to head home to hit the books. As a team they won the JV Silver Division Championship at the Schwan’s Cup in Blaine, and for the season wound up with a winning record.

On Saturday mornings when there was a home game on the schedule, the Varsity and Junior Varsity teams would have a morning skate in home jerseys and sweats. Getting the legs and hands moving, an easy 15 minute skate with a team breakfast afterwards. On one occasion when I was there to bring in some food for breakfast, a group of mini-mites were waiting to take the ice, and the high schoolers formed a tunnel to give high-fives to the little ones as they came out to take the ice. It didn’t seem like that long ago when he was one of those mini-mites.

Early in the season he made it onto the stat sheet for a couple of goals against Apple Valley. Adjusting to the new speed and different expectations he played well. Some games when it was tight or if there were lots of penalties or short handed situations he would wind up doing more watching instead of playing. Later on in the season he worked with the penalty kill units and played well within the system.  His play suffered when asked to fight for pucks in the corners, never one to get deep in the zone and cycle. His limited minutes on the 3^rd of 4^th lines seemed to bother him but he knew what it was about.

 

We never got to watch his last JV game.  We were up in Breezy Point watching his younger brother play in his out of town tournament.

The air is crisp outside and the RAHA traveling teams have been formed. His younger brother is a first year PeeWee and starting into the season grind. High School Captain’s Practices have been going on for the last few weeks but the heart isn’t into it. The other night he told one of the varsity captains that he wasn’t trying out.

On his final night of captain’s practices I snuck into the arena to watch him skate one last time with the boys. The coach in me watched him run through a few drills, and paid close attention to how he played and positioned himself during the scrimmage. Maybe a step slow, maybe a little timid. The coach in me wanted to pull him aside and let him know where he could tweak his positioning or when he should have been a little more aggressive on the forecheck, after all, I’d been behind his bench for 9 years so I knew what his strengths and limitations were.  But the dad in me wore an inner smile, watching and enjoying the game. What started on a Saturday morning in November of 2004 came to an end on a November evening in 2015. I left before the session ended.

In the cold, sober daylight of reality I’m fairly confident he would have made JV, but maybe as a 3^rd or 4^th line player seeing limited ice-time much like it was last year. Then again, with the returning talent, and influx of young, hungry players, there was no guarantee that he would have made the team. So in a small way he went out on his own terms, knowing that he’d given his best to his coaches, teammates, and family.

His gear still hangs in the laundry room where we’ve always stored it. Soon we’ll probably ask him to finally put it away in his hockey bag. If anything we can use the space for his brother’s gear. But I can’t ask him to do that yet. Part of me still can’t come to grips that his hockey journey is over, and I take solace that his younger brother still loves the game and I have the opportunity to coach him this year. I still have my hockey fix, but there is still an empty feeling.

I’ll miss watching his long, smooth stride as he catches the puck at center ice, streaking down the wing, looking for a teammate breaking for the far post. I’ll miss seeing the bend of his stick as he leans into a hard wristshot. I’ll miss seeing how his left arm tucks into his torso when he’s tired after too long of a shift.

But I’ll also miss our conversations in the car back and forth to practices and games. Talks about what he wants to do when he grows up, what cars he wants to drive, what classes he wants to take in college. Silly jokes, and lots of laughs. I’ll miss the comradery of his teams, those 6 months together as our hockey families melded into villages to raise, cheer, and transport our burgeoning athletes from rink to rink. The end-of-the-year parties always seemed sort of melancholy. As Ken Dryden wrote in his book “The Game”;

“’The Game’ was different, something that belongs only to those who play it, a code phrase that anyone who has played a sport, any sport, understands. It’s a common language of parents and backyards, teammates, friends, winning, losing, dressing rooms, road trips, coaches, fans, money, celebrity – a life, so long as you live it…It is hockey that I’m leaving behind. It’s “the game” I’ll miss.”

On the front page of the RAHA website they had listed the pools for the Mites, Mini-Mites, and Termites as the Initiation Program in Rosemount swings into the start of their season. One of the names on the list was the son of his 5^th grade teacher. I couldn’t help but smile. 

The game ends for one. The game starts for another.