Fiction, reality, and hockey ideals

Although Seeking the Center is a novel, my motivation for writing the story was, initially, a desire to understand what hockey is. What the hockey life is. Although I made up most aspects of the story—the teams are fictional, the towns are fictional, and the characters, of course, are fictional—I tried to root every made-up detail in reality.

But writing a novel isn’t about reproducing reality, and I’ve come to realize that my need to understand, address, and critique reality sometimes means that my novel’s details aren’t entirely realistic. The character of Claude Doucette (“Deuce”), a Métis enforcer on a minor league hockey team, is a good example of this.

Claude’s family has suffered some recent misfortunes, and he feels obligated to provide them with financial and emotional support. To do so, he often leaves his fictional team in its fictional town in central Saskatchewan and drives north across the prairie to his hometown several hours away. He does this during hockey season, even when he has only one day off. It’s not at all realistic. The distances are huge, and one has to assume that the physical and mental demands placed on pro hockey players would make a trip like this—which Claude does on a fairly regular basis—nearly impossible. 

Although unrealistic, these frequent cross-province road trips address at least two topics that I encountered during my research. First, they highlight the fact that professional sport schedules are set up to maximize revenue, while de-prioritizing the personal lives and family relationships of players. Second, there’s the expectation that players should be willing to sacrifice themselves for their team.

In hockey the role of the enforcer represents the extreme of this notion. As an enforcer, Claude’s literal role is to defend his own teammates by fighting the enforcer on the opposing team. Luckily, the harm that this causes to the players involved has become more widely acknowledged in recent years, and actual “enforcers” are much fewer than they were in the ‘90s when Seeking takes place, but the glorification of “taking one for the team” and of fighting itself, persist.

“… I know how much you admire him—how much you admire that kind of player. You know, that big, strong warrior type.”
“I do,” she said.
“The way he’s always, like, camped out in front of the net, taking all that abuse. The way he never turns down a fight. He’s really tough.”
“He is… He’s awesome.”

In Claude’s case, this team/hockey role is echoed or amplified by the roles he plays within his family and community. 

“Claude,” asked Agnes, “what did you mean when you said that hockey’s a tough game, but also a tough life?”
“I meant it’s lonely. You’re on the road a lot. Away from the people who care about you.”
She didn’t say anything.
He continued. “You asked about Vin. He’s a good kid, but even if he could get his game back, if he has trouble when he’s living at home, with his family, it’s going to be real tough when he’s away, playing for some team in Alberta, or B.C. Real tough. Trust me.”
They were quiet for a while. Then Agnes said, “you don’t really want to play pro, do you?”
He shrugged. “It’s working out okay so far.”

At one point, Agnes compares him to a (First Nations) chief: 

…it didn’t seem like they’d only just met. And the light that washed across his upturned face seemed to shine both inside and out. She felt safe with him. He was just like those old chiefs.

In the character of Claude, the role of enforcer meets the trope of the nearly superhuman First Nations chief, a figure of tremendous character, of mental as well as physical strength, a leader who is there for his people, defending and providing for them no matter the cost to himself.  (I wrote about different contexts of “Chief” in an earlier post.)

Agnes thought of Vin, trapped somewhere in the cold maze of hallways, and the old stories flooded her mind, stories of Riel and Big Bear and Poundmaker, the leaders of her people, and how they’d been imprisoned, trapped outside the sun, the cycles, and the seasons —outside of life as they knew it— until they withered.

As a novelist, my goal is neither to hold up this notion of self-sacrifice as the ideal, nor to tear it down completely. I’m not a judge or a philosopher. I’m just trying to portray what I see, to put it out there for consideration, hopefully in an entertaining way. 

At five the next morning the sun rose over the horizon and Vin looked out his window to see Claude’s red pickup towing a wooden fishing skiff on an aluminum-frame trailer. Vin stepped out of the door with his hockey bag over his shoulder, his stick in his hand.
“We going fishing?” Vin asked.
“Nah. Already been out.”
“Jesus, Deuce. Do you ever sleep?”
“Sometimes.”

People rarely live up to an ideal. I think this is where my love for Claude, and all my characters, comes in. They are just people, barely bounded by reality, with idiosyncrasies that straddle a wavering line between character and caricature. 

I saw Stanley!!!

On June 7, my team, the Washington Capitals, won the Stanley Cup, the National Hockey League's championship trophy. It was the first time the team has won it in its forty-four-year history. It was a big deal. 

The Stanley Cup itself is amazing. It was originally commissioned in 1892 as the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup by Lord Stanley of Preston, then Governor-General of Canada, making it one of the oldest, if not the oldest, existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise. (Incidentally, the championship trophy of the National Women's Hockey League, the Isobel Cup, was named after Lord Stanley's daughter, who played the game herself and encouraged her father to commission the Stanley Cup. The Metropolitan Riveters won the Isobel Cup this spring.)

Another thing that makes the Stanley Cup special is that the league does not make a new one each year. Instead, the winning team keeps the trophy over the summer, and each player gets an opportunity to bring it to their hometown or another special place to share and show off with their fans, friends, and family. In addition, the names of the winning team members are engraved on the Cup, so they are forever part of its history. Adding all these names - and the silver to accommodate them - means that the trophy is quite large: about three feet high and thirty-five pounds. The Cup is legendary - the chants "We Want Stanley!" and "We Want the Cup!" are de rigueur among NHL teams. During the playoffs this  year I saw fan carrying a sign that read, "My cup size is Stanley." Uh, LOL.

The Stanley Cup is extremely difficult to win. After a grueling 82-game season, the top sixteen teams duke it out in the playoffs. The winners ultimately make their way through four best-of-seven rounds, or up to 28 additional games, in order to win the trophy. After all that hockey, most players are injured to some degree. 

When the Washington Capitals won the Cup a week ago, they carried it around the city to share it with fans - on sidewalks, in bars, on rooftops, in fountains. Yesterday the team paraded down Constitution Avenue and I was there, with, I don't know, probably 100,000 or so of my closest friends. Weather-wise, it was an uncharacteristically gorgeous day for DC in June. Here are a few photos.

DC looked amazing! The streets were festooned with banners and flags.

Um, a lot of people showed up. Most of them were wearing jerseys or t-shirts in the Caps' color, red. Or as we say, they were "rocking the red."

Fatima al Ali, a hockey player from the United Arab Emirates, was befriended by Caps alum & former star Peter Bondra and has come to Washington more than once as part of the Capitals' "Hockey Is for Everyone" program.

There were Capitals dignitaries, including beloved television play-by-play announcer Joe Beninati and color commentator (and former Caps player) Craig Laughlin. These guys make every broadcast a treat!

Philipp Grubauer, one the Capitals' goaltenders, hopped off one of the busses and ran a lap draped in the District of Columbia's flag, high-fiving fans.

And finally, bringing up the rear, the save-the-best-for-last bus. Seems like we waited forever - you could see the tantalizing gleam of silver when it was still blocks away.  Atop the bus: (L to R) Capitals defenseman Brooks Orpik pointing at the crowd, beer in hand; center Nicklas Bäckström; and Captain & winger Alex Ovechkin holding Stanley above his head in iconic fashion. Caps owner Ted Leonsis is visible through the crook of Ovi's arm.

A game that "really" matters

Writing Seeking the Center was both fun and agonizing. Some of the plot lines seemed to resolve themselves without my intervention, while others were harder to manage. The central question was the most difficult to answer: How can Agnes, excluded from her ideal of "playing for points" in "real" games because of her sex, find a way to play hockey that satisfies her?

In solving this problem I had to work within the constraints of reality. A "Disney-esque" ending, as my editor put it, wouldn't be believable. Seeking was never meant to be one of those sports stories climaxing with the protagonist's victory against all odds in the "big game." Instead, the final game becomes a pitched battle between Agnes and her own fears.

Ultimately, Agnes does find a new way to play the game she loves. And although this new hockey exists outside of the "real" game to which she once aspired, it satisfies her need to play a game of consequence - a game that "really" matters.

Unwomanly sports

Photo from Hilary Knight's July 19 tweet announcing her Reddit AMA ("Ask Me Anything")

While idly perusing twitter a couple of days ago, I saw that professional hockey player (Boston Pride) and U.S. National Team star Hilary Knight had taken part in a Reddit AMA. Someone I follow on twitter reported that, during the session, she'd been asked why she chose hockey over figure skating.

Implicit in the question, of course, is the assumption that, rather than hockey, figure skating is the skating sport that girls and women would/should naturally pursue. You'd have to be a strange woman indeed to choose hockey over figure skating. Not only strange, but also, quite possibly, difficult, contrary, subversive - even unwomanly (!!!).

The question also brings to my mind some of that Title IX-derived "separate but equal" rubbish. (I hate to bash Title IX, which has obviously been important and beneficial, but it does have its downsides.) For example, during the fall season in high school we have football for the boys, so we need a sport for the girls. Let's say ... volleyball? That works -- the boys won't need the gym because they'll be out on the football field. Okay, volleyball it is. But here's the thing, and it's nothing against volleyball, but let's face it: playing volleyball is unlikely to satisfy a girl who really wants to play football. Likewise, playing football isn't going to satisfy the boy who really wants to play volleyball. And figure skating, my friends -- as amazingly beautiful and athletic as it is -- is unlikely to satisfy the person of any gender who really wants to play hockey.

I often get the same question that Knight got. I'll be at the rink, lacing up my hockey skates, and someone will ask, out of the clear blue sky, "why aren't you doing figure skating?" Often it's one of the very first things someone will say to me.

I always answer nicely, but honestly, people! It's 2017! Can't we move past this ridiculous stereotyping, which only serves to keep people trapped in little boxes and make them feel bad or embarrassed for who they are?

(And in case you're wondering, when they asked Hilary Knight why she chose hockey over figure skating she said, "my choice was between skiing and hockey.")

I just posted an excerpt from Seeking the Center...

...right here! Let me know what you think!

The real-life hockey heroes of the U.S. National Women's Team

It's an eventful time for women's hockey. Both of the North American professional women's leagues have had their championships, as has the NCAA. And in culmination, the Women's World Championships will begin at the end of this month in Plymouth, Michigan. But, although the event is hosted by USA Hockey, the U.S. National Women's Team may sit this one out. 

Why? 

Not because the team is inferior, that's for sure. According to ESPN, it's been the jewel of the U.S. Olympic program. Ranked number one in the world, the team has won seven world championships, including the last three, and have medalled at every Olympic games since the women's game was first included in 1998, when they won gold.

Rather, they are essentially striking for better pay and for the respect which is long overdue. They'd rather play than sit on the sidelines, of course, but as two-time Olympic silver-medalist, six-time World Champion gold medalist Hilary Knight says, "[the decision not to play] just came about because USA Hockey didn't take our group seriously...we train every single day to represent our country with already limited programming in terms of games. It's something that we look forward to. It's a huge deal. To have to sacrifice that means a lot."

Why do they feel they need to make this sacrifice? Because for fourteen months, the women of the U.S. National Team have tried to negotiate with USA Hockey's leadership for fair wages and a commitment to supporting girls' and women's programs in the sport, but have nothing to show for it.

Being on the Women's National Team is a financial hardship. Members of the senior women's team receive $1000 per month for six months leading up to the Olympic games - for a grand total of $6000 every fourth year. During the other 3 1/2 years they receive nothing.  Many of them remain on their parents' insurance and cellphone plans, and most work second or third jobs, all while training year-round for Olympic and World Championship participation and coping with constant financial insecurity and stress.  

Men's National Team players play in the NHL, earning multi-million-dollar salaries, enjoying insurance and medical care provided by the league and teams, and, during the Olympics, perks such as luxury travel and lodging negotiated by the NHL. The women aren't asking for financial rewards even approaching these.

"We're not asking for millions of dollars. We're not even asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars," says Monique Lamoureux-Morando, a two-time Olympic silver medalist and five-time World Championship gold-medalist, "I work as a strength and conditioning coach, and then I also run hockey camps...so I have second and third sources of income that I rely on as well. To be able to train full time and not have to worry about paying bills would certainly be nice."

But even more disturbing than the lack of financial compensation for the women, is the lack of respect for girls and women by USA Hockey in every facet of their operation. Here's a partial list of the slights that have been circulating in the media since the women's team announced their strike:

• For the Olympic jersey unveil in 2014, the Men's National Team was invited, but none of the women were. And while gold medals previously won by U.S. National Teams were listed inside the collars of the jerseys, the women's gold medal win in 1998 was omitted.
• The Women's Under-18 team has won five World Championships since they started competing in 2008, but they have never received a Championship ring, even though the U18 boys "get rings...a couple of months after they win," says Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson, who, like her sister Monique, is a two-time Olympic silver medalist and five-time World Championship gold-medalist. "If the senior women's team gets a ring - if we do - it's a couple years late. It just goes to show, oh sorry, we forgot about you, here's your ring from two years ago."
• To no avail, the women have repeatedly requested that USA Hockey schedule them to play more than the current nine games per year in Olympic years. Meanwhile, the teenage boys' national development teams play at least 60 games per year and often train in residence in the posh new training center in Plymouth, MI.
• The women consistently endure travel and lodging accommodations that are inferior to the men's and boy's. They remember waking up with spider bites during a residential training camp in Blaine, MN. Players who lived in the area actually brought their own bedding in an attempt at self-defense!
•  Teammates have watched as their goaltenders were forced to wear their (unmatching) college gear for tournaments, while the boys U18 goalies were kitted out with entirely new equipment for their events.
• And the final blow: USA Hockey currently spends $3.5 million annually on their development program for boys. They do not have a comparable program for girls.

USA Hockey has refused to promote the women's team, and refused to promote the sport among girls. Unlike the federations that control women's gymnastics, soccer, and figure-skating, over the years USA Hockey has actively discouraged victory tours by the women's team after successful tournaments. (Read U.S. women's soccer pioneer Julie Foudy's thoughts on this here. "There are a number of times we travel to different areas and people don't even know that the U.S. National Team, the U.S. Women's Olympic Team, is there, because nothing was made of it," says Knight.

The Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act requires sports' governing bodies - in this case, USA Hockey - to "provide equitable support and encouragement for participation by women where separate programs for male and female athletes are conducted on a national basis," as is the case in hockey. USA Hockey has clearly failed in this regard.

The women of the US National Team have finally said, enough is enough. They're going on strike. Not just for themselves, but for the younger women and girls who love the game and want to play - or who might want to, if they only knew it was an option for them. As team captain and two-time Olympic silver medalist, six-time World Championship gold-medalist Meghan Duggan says, "all of us consider it a privilege to put on a Team USA jersey. None of us wanted this day to come but we feel that we owe it to women players who came first in our sport, we owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to women in future generations."

The final final blow, in my opinion, is that USA Hockey, when faced with the players' de-facto strike, actually threatened to field a different team for the upcoming World Championship tournament. The players essentially dared them to do it, asserting that the women's and girls' programs were united down to the lower levels, and that none of them would play, even if asked. Captain Meghan Duggan reportedly made around 100 phone calls to women around the country to thank them for their support. "Everyone knows this is the right thing to do," said Duggan.

Information for this post came from:

U.S. Women's Hockey Team Plans to Boycott World Championship Over Pay Dispute

Women's Boycott Highlights Opportunity for Major Change at USA Hockey

U.S. Women's Hockey Team Willing to Risk Everything for Respect  

U.S. Women's Hockey Team Threatens to Sit Out World Championships  

U.S Women's Hockey Team Threatens to Boycott World Championship  

It's Time for USA Hockey to Wake Up and Support the Women's Team (by Julie Foudy)

Update: Yesterday the Women's National Team and their lawyers had a lengthy meeting with USA Hockey. There is hope that they will reach an agreement and that the team will play in the World Championships, scheduled to begin on March 31. See U.S. Women's Hockey Team Sees 'A Lot of Progress' Toward a Deal, via the New York Times.  

Some notes on ‘Chief’ as a (hockey) nickname

In Seeking the Center, there’s a scene where Claude is referred to as “Chief” by an opponent:

Good thing you got ol' Chief there to look out for you, eh MacKenzie?

It's not meant as a compliment, either for MacKenzie, who, it is implied, is not man enough to stand up for himself, or for Claude, whom the opponent tries to belittle by referring to him by the racial stereotype “Chief.”

Hockey nicknames are known for their unimaginative-ness, and while researching Seeking, I quickly learned that “Chief” is, or was at one time, the go-to for First Nations/Native American/Métis players of hockey - and other sports as well. According to Don Marks, author of They Call Me Chief: Warriors on Ice, “almost every Indian who played in the NHL or anywhere else has been called ‘Chief' at one time or another.”

Jim Neilson, who played in the NHL in the 1960s and 1970s, told Marks,

I’ve been called Chief all my life, everywhere else I go. In hockey, you know that your teammates were calling you Chief in a friendly, natural sort of way. But then you would play guys from other teams and you knew it wasn’t so friendly. Most of it was just during the heat of the battle and they were trying to throw you off your game and you just ignore it.

Stan Jonathan, Mohawk/Tuscarora NHL forward from 1976-1983, said, also to Don Marks,

They called me Little Chief and I didn’t mind that. It was when they called me ‘wahoo’ or ‘F#$%’n little Indian’ that I didn’t like [it]...

Judging from Neilson’s and Jonathan’s comments, the context of the name-calling could influence players' feelings about it. But also, as Jonathan indicates, the term “Chief,” while intended to isolate, belittle, and ridicule a person on the basis of race, might have been different, in some sense, than other slurs.

Year in Nam is Leroy TeCube's memoir of the year he served as a G.I. in Vietnam. (I also wrote about it in an earlier post.) Like Jim Neilson and Stan Jonathan, TeCube, a Jicarilla Apache man, was given the nickname “Chief” by his "teammates," i.e. the soldiers in his platoon.

When I joined the platoon it consisted mostly of white GIs, followed by blacks and Hispanics. I was the only American Indian. Someone asked, ‘What race are you? You look like an Indian.'

TeCube describes how he discussed his tribal affiliation with the guys, until finally one of them says, “In that case we’ll call you ‘Chief.’” TeCube answers him, “In my traditional way the title of chief is earned and shown respect.” He then recalls: 

Most of the guys would call me Chief from then on, although a handful of individuals called me by my real name. Up until that moment throughout my training no one even suggested calling me Chief. I wondered why that was so. Perhaps because as trainees we were used to being treated as animals and were addressed by our last names. Now here in Vietnam everyone had an identity. 

Regardless of how the name was intended, TeCube chooses how he will take it - he re-appropriates it - and throughout his service in Vietnam he works hard to live up to the name “chief” and what it means to him and his traditional beliefs. He writes:

I also thought of my new responsibility from my Jicarilla Apache way...the short translation of Nahn Tahn is leader. A more indepth translation, however, describes it as someone who is also an orator. He tells his people what happened in battle or what is about to happen to them next...being Nahn Tahn was something to be feared. Only the very strong took on the responsibility. One had to set a good example and ensure that the needs of everyone in his group were met before he thought of himself. He must never be corrupted or gain wealth from his position. The main criteria were that he never retreat in battle and he show a lot of courage. He had to be the first one into a conflict, and if need be, he would fight single-handedly with an enemy leader…

Towards the end of his time in Vietnam, TeCube recalls “meeting a fellow soldier who was Navajo...as we talked I realized he was also a leader within his platoon and was also called Chief. This gave me a good feeling, knowing that another individual lived up to the name.”

Finally, TeCube is awarded sergeant’s stripes. He writes: 

That day I felt a great sense of pride and accomplishment. I never expected to be a sergeant when I entered the army. Now I had orders in my hand stating just that. I also knew that I had earned the rank….It took a little time before I got used to being called sergeant or sarge. Some called me Sergeant TeCube. Most of the time I still went by Chief or Sergeant Chief. This had more meaning. According to my traditional beliefs, I had now earned the right to be called Chief.

TeCube - along with all of his platoon-mates - quickly recognizes the futility of the Vietnam War, but, having no choice in the matter, he takes it as an obstacle to overcome, just as he takes the moniker given to him, "Chief," as a personal challenge. And while I didn't know about TeCube and hadn't read his story when I was writing Seeking, I like the way that, without knowing it, the player who calls Claude "Chief" unwittingly points to certain facets of Claude's character and aspirations, facets that don't come to light until later in the story. Claude feels that he has little choice but to play what he thinks of as "this white man's game," and while, like TeCube, he is certainly aware of racism and the obstacles it places in his path, he soldiers on, keeping his identity, self-respect, and dignity intact.

Update: I’ve written another post about Claude and the idea/ideal of the Chief.

Guys playing sports: an early passage from Seeking the Center

I wrote this little piece several years ago, when I was just starting to work on Seeking the Center. It's about young guys playing sports.

By the end of the lazy summer I'm glad to get back to town. To the cool of the rink, the smells of moldering, wet wool and sharp sweat, the sling-shot jocks, the jostling of us guys packed together in our stalls, buzzing and slamming like too many molecules, loud with joking and laughing and trash-talking. Where else would we go? What other place is left for us? The big, slick ice, the dark tunnel, the dank, crowded dressing room: they’ve made those places for us.

Outside, they’ve taken down the goals. Like a fish out of water, my form seems unsuited, my strength, outsize. It’s like when I was a kid and my mamma would say, what am I ever going to do with you? I was too fast, too heavy, too hard, too strong, too loud, too coarse, and too excitable to have in the house. It couldn’t hold me. I didn’t stop when she said stop. My words grated on the ears; my shirttail fluttered. Not fit for civilized society. That’s what she’d say. She was only joking, but I think it might be true.

I’ve heard that in the old days, they set the goals a town apart, fields apart, forests apart. That would’ve suited me great. Back then the earth was our playing field. One goal was just over the hill, far side of the schoolhouse; the other, across the stream and through the muskeg. We’d run through the brush, our feet on fire, our battles real.

But somehow it got too small for us out there, and so they’ve put us inside. Kind of funny, eh? Maybe it’s for the best; maybe it’s for our own good. Now we’re a show, a museum piece, and people pay to see us. They don’t have to have us in the house, or in town, or terrorizing the schoolmarms, or trampling the fields or trudging through the muskeg, getting mud on our shoes. Now we’re contained. It’s cleaner this way. 

Photos from a weekend of Badger hockey

A men's hockey game at the Kohl Center.

Pep band plays before the start of men's hockey game.

UW players on the bench.

Break out.

Screening the goalie.

View across the arena.

A couple of weekends ago I visited Madison, Wisconsin. I had hoped for a winter wonderland - snowshoeing in the woods, skating on an outside rink or even on a lake - but the weather didn't cooperate. However, I did get to see three (3!!!) hockey games at the University of Wisconsin. Watching live hockey is fascinating - you can see the plays unfold and check out the behind-the-play mayhem. When you watch a televised game, you can only see what the cameras show you.

On Friday evening the men's hockey team ("Badgers" is UW's nickname) suffered an overtime loss at the hands (paws?) of the Golden Gophers of the University of Minnesota - an epic duel of rodents. The men play in an arena about the same size as those used by professional NHL teams, with various food options, a pep band, and a large, very active student section.

On Saturday and Sunday I saw the women play. UW is the top ranked college team in the country and they didn't disappoint, beating the University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks both afternoons. The games were close, hard fought, and a ton of fun. The Badger women play in a new arena that seats close to 2300 extremely enthusiastic, emotionally invested fans. Attendance was good - even on Sunday, when the game overlapped with the Green Bay Packers' do-or-die playoff football game. I came away extremely inspired by these young women, on both teams, who battled it out with at least the ferocity that the men displayed. I wish that everyone could see them play!

The Kohl Center concourse features display cases related to athletics at the University.

This display portrays Brianna Decker, a UW alumna who, in 2012, won the Patty Kazmaier award for best female NCAA Division 1 hockey player. She currently plays for the Boston Pride in the NWHL. She is also on the U.S. national team. 

Introductions.

Going back the other way.

Some sports writing by Jack Kerouac

I haven't had much time for blogging lately, but with the Super Bowl approaching, I thought I'd share a piece of my favorite writing about football - a passage from Jack Kerouac's 1950 novel The Town and the City. What I've quoted below is part of a much longer scene describing a high school game between fierce rivals on a blustery, autumn New England day. 

They saw the Lawton team across the field in a huddle of great captains, standing in the wind in their dark uniforms, helmeted fantastically, all grotesque, wild, and ominous; they saw the officials in white placing the new yellow football on the kickoff line; they saw the whole mob-swarmed terrific stadium in a gray windswept blaze of vision. Whistles were piping in the air, silence was falling over the multitudes, the game was ready to begin.

And then when Peter saw the ball up in the air, wobbling and windswept, and saw it bouncing down before him, he was mortified with fear. Then he lunged for it, picked it up, snarled and ran straight downfield with all his headlong might, crashing and stamping through a confusion of hard bodies and falling finally on the icy midfield beneath ten others, and the game was on....

Down on the field the teams lined up, the linemen digging in low and glaring at each other, the backs crouching, the quarterback calling out numbers with his whole body jerking behind each shout, the officials waiting expectantly nearby, and all of it windswept on the dark field to which all eyes were fastened excitedly. The lines collided, biffed, scattered, long rangy youths sprawled, someone ran and ducked into a pileup of bodies, and it was no gain...

The crowd suddenly roared as someone ran wide around end, around reaching hands, arching his back and waving one arm, cutting back suddenly on dancing feet, wavering, darting aside, plunging on a few yards and pulling along to a stop under a pile of bodies. The crowd's roar surged away into droning chattering sounds, cowbells and drums rang in the sharp air...

And now suddenly the crowd rose to its feet with one roaring cry of surprise, explosive and vast, as a Galloway player swept wide around the end, leaped into the air, twisted, and shot the ball several yards over dark helmeted heads, as another Galloway player paused, twisted, reached out for the ball, barely grasped it in his fingers, turned and went plummeting downfield along the sidelines. The roaring of the crowd surged and grew thunderous, the Martin mother jumped up on her seat to see, and she saw a figure racing down the sidelines, shaking off tacklers with a squirming motion, plunging through others with a striding determination, tripping, stumbling, staggering on half fallen and half running, straightening out once more, plodding, faking, yet suddenly approaching the goal line in a drunken weary run, staggered aside by another lunging figure, momentarily stopping, then carrying on again, striding to the line falling, with a dark figure smashing into it, now wavering on bent knees, now finally diving over and rolling in the end zone triumphantly.

A momentous race, at home and in 'Nam

A few summers ago, while researching for Seeking the Center, I read a number of books about sport in Native American/First Nations cultures. (If you're a member of Goodreads, you can follow me there and see what's on my bookshelf.) American Indian Sports Heritage by Joseph B. Oxendine, in particular, stresses the centrality of sport to Native life and belief, as does Tom Vennum in his American Indian Lacrosse: Little Brother of War, which I wrote about here. 

I'm reading Year in Nam, now, Leroy TeCube's memoir of his experiences serving as an infantryman in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. TeCube is Jicarilla Apache, and in his book he often reflects on the role his heritage played in his actions and ultimate survival. In light of my earlier research, I found the following passage especially interesting. It weaves together TeCube's memory of a traditional tribal relay race with a life-or-death race to cross a bridge under enemy fire in Vietnam.

Published by University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London. Winner of the 1996 North American Indian Prose Award.

As I ran across the narrow bridge I had a flashback to my youth. On September 15 of every year my tribe has a traditional relay race between our two clans. The outcome of the race determines the type of year ahead. Depending on which clan won, there would be more wild game or crops. This race gives my people an idea of how to plan their activities for the year to come.

The relay race is on a racetrack three hundred yards long and about ten yards wide. Head runners are determined at a preliminary race the day before. Before the race starts, elderly men paint the runners in an aspen kiva, conduct prayers for them, and run down the track blessing it. When they finish the race starts with the head runners running at a full sprint down the track. When they reach the end of the track another set of runners runs back. This goes back and forth until a clan gets ahead by a full length of the track. When that happens the clan in the lead wins the race. If the runners from each clan are evenly matched the race could take several hours.

I had participated in the race several times. It could be very deceptive, especially going in an easterly direction. That is because in that direction about three-fourths of the way down is a slight rise that looks like the finish line. If you are not aware of the illusion your energy is expended when you reach this point, and you have to continue on with heavy legs. Elderly men holding aspen branches give you words of encouragement and whip you on the legs with the branches for added strength. It works. You find the burst of energy needed to take you to the finish line

I was now about three-fourths of the way across the narrow bridge. My legs were heavy from carrying my pack. I thought of the elderly men in our traditional race. In an instant, just that thought gave me the encouragement to continue. I ran off the bridge on the other side and took cover next to the trail. After catching my breath I fired toward the wood line. Out of the corner of my right eye I could see the others running the same race. Eventually, we all made it across without a casualty.

As TeCube describes, the ritual relay race has spiritual and practical dimensions, but also serves as a way to build and inspire courage and determination. It would be interesting to know whether, traditionally, the race was in any way considered to be, like American Indian lacrosse, a "little brother of war," or if it just worked out that way for TeCube in this instance. In any case, it was a treat to, unexpectedly, come across this intriguing recollection.

Rink air vs. outside air: an early passage from Seeking the Center

I wrote this passage, I think, in 2010. Or maybe 2009. It was some of the first writing I did related to Seeking the Center (although it is not in the published book). At the time, I was thinking about the cyclical nature of a hockey life - a nomadic sort of existence where you move from place to place with the seasons. You earn money playing during the winter, and then return to farm or factory to earn your keep during the summer. I was thinking about these two modes of existence, equal parts of your livelihood - and your personhood. How are they different from one another? 

During practice the sounds pinball: the digging and scraping of steel blades into the ice, the rattling fright of the puck against the boards, the clattering of sticks, the whoops and calls of the boys. But as soon as we turn to go, and our skate blades sink mutely into the rubber-mat path that leads to the dressing room, the sounds cease their ricocheting and hang quiet like bats in a cave. Because the hard rink air is as empty as an icicle. There's nothing in it but itself.

    When the season is over I go home. There the air is full. It holds the scents of grasses and flowers and animals and dirt; it holds bird songs and wind rustlings and ghost rustlings. Yes, ghosts - in the air and even on the ground. Because there, every mark ever made, every footfall, every poop leaves its trace. Not like in the rink, where every hour or two a machine comes to clean up and scrape away. In there - it's like Coach says - let yesterday's game go, play today's game. But outside the rink there's no machine to scrape it all away. Outside, every trace remains.

    It’s slow-going at home. Instead of the slick, easy surface of the ice there are stones and tall tangled weeds and gopher holes. But there is solace in the slowness: there is space to slip away, time to remember. My legs swish through the hayfield and the grasshoppers make way. In the afternoon I retreat to the thick shade that lines the river and I cool off in the murky water, a big, naked muskrat with a trailing, sliver wake. I add my heavy step to the scurried histories of my brethren, impressed on the mudflat. From my fleshy prints they know me, and take me as their own.

Winning

Last weekend my favorite hockey team won two games. The first was a strong offensive showing with a final score of 6-2, and the second was a nail-biter, in which they hung on to win 2-1.

Everyone loves to see their team score a lot of goals, of course, and it's much less taxing to watch a game in which your team has the lead throughout, especially a sizable one which, at a certain point, makes a comeback by the opponent virtually impossible. But I think it's actually more thrilling to win those close games.

When a team is down by one goal, it will, during the last two minutes or so of the game, "pull its goalie." That is, the coach will call the goalie to the bench and replace her with an extra skater. This gives that team six skaters against the leading team's five - a definite advantage.

There's a risk involved: with its net empty, the trailing team is more vulnerable to being scored on, which, when it happens, will likely put the game out of reach. But if its players can maintain control of the puck, keep a cycle going in the offensive zone, batter the goalie with shots and generally create mayhem, they can significantly tire their opponents, take advantage of their own greater numbers, and quite possibly tie the game up.

When your team is the leading team, and is able to hold off this onslaught until the final horn sounds, it is extremely satisfying. If your team has played solid defense, heroically blocked shots, and if your goalie has repeatedly thwarted the opponent's best scoring chances, then your team has not only taken the standings points, but it has frustrated the opposing team. Maybe even crushed their spirit!

That's what you wish on the other team. That's what makes winning so much fun.

Loud buildings

So, here's something interesting.  Today I've been reading an article titled "Acoustics and ritual in the British Neolithic" by Aaron Watson.* His idea is that Neolithic structures were built not only as tombs, or as a type of "calendar" in which, for example, at Newgrange, the structure is aligned so that at the winter solstice the rising sun shines down the passage into the central chamber - but that these structures might also have been deliberately constructed to achieve certain acoustic aims.

I read about sound and ritual back when I was doing research on Scandinavian religion in the Viking age (which is, of course, considerably more recent than the Neolithic). During that time, they used sound - for example chanting or the beating of swords on shields - to create environments conducive to various rituals. And speaking of beating swords on shields, the noise of battle, at least poetically, was also part of its identification as a distinctive environment to which spirits such as the valkyries are drawn and during which supernatural events may take place. 

Now, Viking battles always remind me of hockey (that's just the way my mind works), but where was the connection to Watson's ideas about ritual in Neolithic megastructures? There was nothing obviously hockey-like there. Until I came across this:

Neolithic communities were constructing places within which the propagation of sound was artificially bounded and controlled to a greater extent than had ever been possible before. Schafer has even proposed that most ancient buildings were constructed not so much to enclose space as to enshrine sound.

As soon as I read that, the phrase a loud building popped into my head.

Hockey players and coaches will sometimes describe an "enemy" arena as being especially loud, i.e., the fans are very vocal in support of their team, and they fill every seat. This loudness is, in theory, anyhow, supposed to carry the home team a good distance toward victory. Especially during the playoffs, there can be competitive boasting about whose building is the loudest. It's a big deal.

I'm not sure that the arenas themselves are built to maximize volume, but they are equipped with monumentally loud sound systems and jumbotrons that, at key points in the game, urge fans themselves to get loud!

Am I going way out of my way to link Neolithic structures with hockey arenas? Quite possibly I am. But the role of sound in creating a certain environment, conducive to certain activities, hopeful of summoning the spirits of victory...it just reminds me of hockey arenas. I'm sorry, but that's just the way my mind works.

*Watson's article is part of The Archaeology of Shamanism, edited by Neil Price.

Some questions the game reveals

In researching Seeking the Center, I listened to a lot of post-game interviews with hockey players. I became interested in the very scripted language that they use to describe what happens in the games - including a whole category of phrases emphasizing their deep engagement - and uneasy relationship - with luck and fate.

When a player is able to score or make a good play, she might say, "I got a good bounce." This might be nothing more than the typical hockey-player modesty. On the other hand, it might be a kind of superstitious acknowledgement of fate's role in her success.  Because above all, we want to stay on fate's good side.

If a player had some chances to score but just fell short of getting that puck into the net, he might shrug it off, rather fatalistically, by saying, "They just weren't going in for me today." Because we wouldn't want to tempt fate to make it even harder for us the next time, would we?

There's also the commonly expressed notion that "we have to make our own luck" - which points to an interesting relationship with that important but elusive commodity. It would seem to be a paradox: Isn't it in the very definition of luck that it's something outside of our control? Hmm.  Making one's own luck seems related to the oft-repeated sentiment, usually shared in the case of a less-skilled, grinder-type player who scores what is, for her, a rare goal: "She works so hard, it's good to see her get rewarded." I.e., she works so hard that fate itself was ultimately forced to yield to her determination. When you really think about it, that's some serious shit!

Fate and luck are central to our concerns as humans. We confront them constantly, but in everyday life the stakes tend to be higher, our roles less certain and causation more difficult to determine. I wonder whether playing a game like hockey allows us to engage with fate in a way that is easier to grasp, that might seem to be less bafflingly random, where the illusion of some measure of control is stronger, and where, therefore, the experience is more gratifying, more ennobling to us lowly, insignificant humans.

Just as hockey is a "game of inches," so is life, in a way, a series of situations in which, if only something had happened slightly differently, at a slightly different time, the outcome would have been vastly different. And it's comforting to think that things will even out over time. For example, remember that goal that Williams scored - the one that was waved off because the puck slipped over the line a split second after the clock hit 0:00? He got it back when Vrana's shot glanced off him and into the net. Right?

Cosmic payback? Making his own luck? Or the law of averages? These are some of the questions the game reveals.

Jack Falla and "A Death in Montreal"

One of my favorite writers on hockey is Jack Falla, a Massachusetts native who covered the NHL for Sports Illustrated in the 1980s and taught sports journalism at Boston University. Sadly, he passed away in 2008 at the all-too-young age of 64, but I almost feel that I've had the the opportunity to know him through his essay collections Home Ice: Reflections on Backyard Rinks and Frozen Ponds and Open Ice: Reflections and Confessions of a Hockey Lifer.

Falla's short essays make the sport personal. They describe the many ways that hockey enriched, inspired and even, in certain ways, created him as a person.

"A Death in Montreal," the first essay in Open Ice, is a good example of this. Here, the death of hockey great Maurice "Rocket" Richard in 2000 unexpectedly connects Falla to a lost part of his childhood, allowing him to grieve, finally, for his mother, who had died forty-five years earlier, when Falla was eleven years old.

It's a beautifully constructed essay that somehow draws together, in twenty-seven simply but elegantly written pages, many seemingly disparate worlds. There's the world of Falla's childhood in 1950s Massachusetts: "I don't know why I wasn't told the truth [about my mother's ovarian cancer]. Maybe I wasn't supposed to know about ovaries." There's Maurice Richard: "more than a seething and driven scoring machine. He was the fleur-de-lis made flesh, a human flag for the simmering resentments of French Canadians." And then there's Falla's maternal grandmother schooling his Boston-bred, hockey-fan father: "It's Mohr-riss Ri-sharr, Nana said. I know. I'm French."

In the end, Falla's subtle prose links his belated tears of mourning on a Vermont interstate to Nana's exploding bottles of root beer some forty years earlier, illuminating the layered and entwined webs of meaning that our minds create out of elements widely scattered in time, place and context.

Slumping

Ugh, my team is slumping. Even with a couple of the best scorers in the league, they've lost three games in a row. Which shouldn't be so bad, because like everyone, they know a slump is just a slump (hence the name) and that it will end.

But the problem with slumping - the very thing that makes it a slump rather than just a lost game or two - is that you don't feel like it will end. When you're slumping you've forgotten how quickly the weather can change. You've forgotten to have faith that it will. You're just on this endless run of thinking and over-thinking and, worst of all, trying not to over-think.

It probably doesn't help that every question a reporter asks you is about the slump. You can't get away from it. And although players, coaches, reporters and fans alike offer every possible cliché, unlike the situation with the weather, no one knows what forces will ultimately be responsible for the end of a slump.

No one knows.

Hockey for everyone!

Do I play hockey? Not yet. I'm still learning how to skate. Trust me, this is difficult enough.

I love my skating lessons, though, and I'm pretty sure my teacher is the best teacher ever, even though what she calls my "process of self-discovery" often seems like nothing more than the discovery of my total inability to process that crazy move she just showed me!

Seriously, though, I could start taking some learn-to-play classes anytime now. You don't need to be a great skater to play in a novice league. What you do need is time and money. Your time - those slivers of the day that aren't already spoken for - needs to align with the time the classes are held and the games are played (often late at night for adults). Your money must be plentiful enough so that you can buy the gear (you need full gear even to just learn to play - those pucks are hard!) and to pay for the classes and, eventually, to pay league fees or dues.

Still, I could learn to play if I made it a priority. Unfortunately, though, a lot of people can't. Especially in places where playing hockey depends on artificial ice - which, thanks to global climate change, is pretty much everywhere these days - hockey is a very expensive game.

Luckily, there are forces in the sport that are working for more inclusivity, trying to "grow the game," as they say, by giving away time and money (i.e., volunteering and donating equipment and ice time) to programs that teach kids who otherwise wouldn't even have the chance to try hockey.

For example, check out this photo montage of one such program in Washington, DC, on a day when NHL players Donald Brashear, Wayne Simmonds and Willie O'Ree came to work with the kids. It must have been seriously inspiring for those young people!

You can't fall in love with the game unless you have the chance to try it. And the game won't thrive without the influx of thousands of young people, inspired to devote countless hours of skating and sweat to playing this awesome game!

P.S. Because ice is so expensive, and because government funding for recreational facilities is often hard to come by, we turn to creative solutions. But they aren't always perfect. Here's an interesting update on the situation at Ft. Dupont, the rink pictured in the photo montage noted above. 

Depends on who's here

I wrote earlier that a sport can have different meanings for different people. But it can take on different meanings for a single individual, too. In Seeking the Center, Agnes, who prides herself on never playing hockey "just for fun", discovers different facets of the game she thought she knew. In some ways her journey parallels my own research.

Hockey in one form or another has been around a long time. Just how long, no one really knows. The rules of the modern game started to solidify during the late nineteenth century as, like baseball, hockey became part of a trend toward standardization that seems to have been inherent in modernization.

Historically, organized sports including (at times) hockey have been promoted as a way to keep young men "out of trouble" when they weren't working - a way to keep them in order and physically fit. It has often been described in decidedly nationalist and capitalist terms.: a quasi-militarist marshaling of masculine energy in the service of the state and the status quo.

The upside is fitness, teamwork, leadership skills. The downside is, among other things, an assimilationist philosophy that subordinates the individual to the collective.

Prior to the standardization of sport, there was, in theory anyhow, more opportunity for all sorts of people to play. And, play could happen anywhere - not just in "approved" spaces of standard size and shape. Teams could expand and contract to fit the number of willing participants, and the only rules regarding the age or gender of the player were set by the players themselves. Even the rules of play could be adapted to different situations.

It isn't so much that standardization is inherently bad. The modern, professional game of hockey is thrilling and the skills that the players develop through their rigorous training and drills are beautiful to behold. It's just that, we sometimes forget that this particular incarnation of the game isn't necessarily the only one, the natural one, or the best one for everyone.

In Seeking the Center, Agnes's relationship with hockey deepens. As the story progresses she can see its downsides more clearly, but she also finds new reasons to love it. She realizes that playing hockey at the highest technical level isn't the only way to take the game seriously. Hockey is big enough to embrace everyone and flexible enough to serve multiple purposes. In the words of her linemate, Rosemary, "it's different every time. Depends on who's here." 

A hockey-centric weekend in Toronto

Last weekend I attended the fall meeting of the Society for International Hockey Research, which was held at the above iconic location - Maple Leaf Gardens. They don't make 'em like this anymore! Maple Leaf Gardens was the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs from 1931 until 1999, and during that time played host to no fewer than nineteen Stanley Cup Finals. It has since been renovated and is now a multi-use facility, with a beautiful ice rink that hosted a stick and puck session, a public session, and a women's college hockey game on Saturday afternoon.

The Ryerson University women's hockey team plays a game in what used to be Maple Leaf Gardens. It is now called the Mattamy Athletic Centre.

The meeting featured a number of speakers from the world of men's professional hockey and related topics. Most notable to me was Richard Scott, a man who is committed to creating a league history for the CWHL, the ten-year old Canadian women's professional league, through his book Who's Who in Women's Hockey. He believes that tracking player stats, creating game timelines, designating 1st and 2nd All-Star Teams, awarding trophies for MVP and various positions, and the like, will enhance the allure and the legitimacy of women's professional hockey. He also noted parallels between the early years of men's pro hockey a century ago and these more recent early years of the women's leagues - parallels that are cause to be bullish on the future of the women's game. I made sure to thank him for his work and presented him with a copy of Seeking the Center.

In Toronto there's hockey everywhere you look - even in the subway!

In the evening I got to see the CWHL in action. My friend Benoît and I took the subway to the end of the line, and then got on the 44 Kipling Ave. South bus to the Mastercard Centre, a 4-rink facility which, aside from being home to the Toronto Furies of the CWHL, is also the Maple Leafs' practice facility and home to Hockey Canada. Along with several knots of Furies gear-clad girls and a number of families we watched the Toronto Furies take on the Brampton Thunder. The home team lost, but a good time was had by all.

Defenceman (yes, that's how you spell it in Canadian!) Jessica Platt up against the glass.

And there she is defending!

Sonja van der Bliek in goal.

Brampton attacking.

Ensconced in cases at the Mastercard Centre were memorabilia relating to many well-known Canadian athletes, including this amazing mask worn by goalie and 3-time Olympian Sami Jo Small.