Chapter 1 - Crazy Starts Here

It usually starts innocently enough. Your son or daughter watches hockey on tv and falls in love with it. Those pros make it look so damn easy, just gliding around all over the rink. Then the begging begins. Please Mom, I reallllly want to try hockey! I promise I won’t get hurt. (You notice that this is directed to Mom?) So you find one of those Try Hockey for Free days, load everyone into the SUV (and if you don’t have an SUV or a truck, get one - fast! This will become very important later in this adventure!) and off you go. You get to the rink with the now bouncing bundle of excitement, check in, and the folks at the rink give you a huge smile. They hand your excited future NHL’er a body bag full of gear - and your child will happily grab it, only to collapse under the weight and size. “I’m ok!” The muffled sound comes from the vicinity of the floor under the bag, so you reach down to grab the handles and lift to find the triumphant face of your now beaming child staring up at you. But you’re not done, he still needs a stick.

 The stick. One of the most important pieces of equipment your hockey player will ever have. In the right hands it is a thing of beauty - crafting graceful arcs as your player maneuvers the puck down the ice while gliding effortlessly toward the net. In other words, after several hundred hours of practice time along with several thousand dollars worth of private lessons (you have now been warned!). In the wrong hands can cause massive destruction. Your house will forever hate you for giving this instrument of terror to your child, as pucks and practice balls will be sent flying off their seductively curved blades -  sailing down hallways, through closed windows, and and finding cozy spots to burrow in your walls. Your pets will learn to run and hide at the sight of this harbinger of destruction, as it also brings another of the 4 Horsemen of the Hockey Apocalypse- the puck/ practice ball. It will not take long, because they know, it’s that 6th pet sense. But alas, you know none of these things, so you foolishly smile and shue them in the direction of the stick bucket, manned by a rink employee who is doing their best not to get clocked in the face by one of these future Gretzkys. Off they go, rummaging through the bin of sticks until they find one that kind of sort of works for them, ie they can hold it in both hands. 

  So now for the hard work, the trial by fire. After some wandering, and perhaps a wrong turn or two, you find your way to the locker room. Or a hallway. Or a bench. Depending on your arrival time you may just be happy to find to find some floor space. Your eager beaver has probably opened the body bag you’ve been dragging behind you, and a glance over your shoulder may provide a fairly good approximation of time and space judging by the number of equipment items now scattered down the hall. After a short and somewhat snappy admonishment; “Will you knock that off and go pick that stuff up right now or I swear to God above you will not step foot on that ice ever in your lifetime!” Followed by an internal prayer; “Sweet Jesus, what in the hell was I thinking?”; you take a deep breath, gather up the tools of the hockey trade and begin to unpack the body bag before you.

  One of the key pieces of information- instructions - will not be present. USA Hockey decided long ago that since most men don’t read directions in the outside world there really wasn’t a reason to waste all that paper. What USA Hockey doesn’t realize is that a vast majority of the time it’s not Dad that’s getting them dressed for these festive adventures, it’s Mom. Fortunately Moms have been figuring stuff like this out for centuries, and with some free crowd sourcing help from the masses surrounding you both parents manage to figure out the gist of what goes where... after a swift reminder of left and right. 

Now for the piece de resistance- the second most important piece of equipment your little future Hall of Farmer will wear... hockey skates. (In case you are wondering, the most important piece of equipment is the helmet- yes, I’m a mom and this is how we think.) In order to find the correct size skate multiple higher math functions must come into play. First we must take the shoe size and square that by the square footage of the rink. Then subtract the size of your players foot by 12, unless you are looking at Bauers, in which case subtract by 24. If they are CCMs then add 2 and subtract by .5. Sound confusing? Great! Welcome to the wonderful world of hockey sizing! If you’re blessed enough to have a goalie - Woohoo, Just you wait, it’s even better (my publisher needs a sarcasm font just for that last sentence). If you though women’s fashion had vanity sizing just you wait until you start hunting for gear! Ha! Brush up on geometry and algebra now, it will come in handy sooner than you think. Fortunately the employee behind the skate counter has a pretty good eye and hands a pair of rather beat up house hockey skates to your eager Ovechkin in the making. 

  Suddenly everything in the rink slows. You will pinpoint this moment as the moment where everything changed. And I mean EVERYTHING! Evenings sitting in your warm house -  wave goodbye. Having money in your checking account - that whisper swirling around your ears is the sweet sound of dollars making a run for the pro shop. Your child is about to embrace an epic adventure- full of excitement, frustration, tears, bruises, a possible broken bone here or there maybe a missing tooth or five (amazing what those little flying black frisbees can do); but most important - they are going to have FUN! You will learn to embrace waking up before dawn to get your champ to the rink for early morning skates, you’ll buy tall boots and a parka that you will stash in your trunk and proudly drag out to wear even when it’s 90+ outside - because inside the rink it is usually-12. You will become best buds with your GPS as you drive all over hell and creation trying to find the rink where the tournament is, and you will learn how to cuss so softly that even the parent next to you doesn’t know just how much you want to rip the head off of the person on the other side of you because they just made a crack about how crappy they think your goalie is. So embrace that moment, because that’s when the fun begins. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves... first we got get on the ice!

   Many would say that the first moment a budding hockey player steps out on the ice is a make or break moment, i.e. either they are standing in a somewhat upright position or the car keys are in your hand because a trip to the emergency room is about to be in order. It’s a little like watching a National Geographic special about baby giraffes, but on ice. With a few penguins thrown in, because there are a few kids who just naturally glide around the ice like Snoopy in that damn Christmas special. Your kid, well he looks more like Charlie Brown after Lucy yanks the football out from him. But that’s ok, because Chuck is laughing while sprawled out on his back, so you tuck the car keys back in the pocket and you plaster yourself to the glass to watch. You marvel at how fast kids adapt to this new surface, and the parent next to you comments about how they would have probably broken at least half of the bones in their body by now while you try not to cringe as Chuck falls right back on his butt - damn Lucy and her stupid football. But eventually they start to get the hang of it, at least the standing part of it, so now it’s time to get to the real fun. One of the coaches will dump a large white bucket over and several dozen rubber pucks will skitter across the ice like a thousand little spiders. This is where the battle begins! They will charge at these little black monsters, be it albeit slowly- hell, snails could get there faster but they don’t have giraffe legs on ice skates. Sticks will start flying - literally in some cases because kids will forget to hang on to them as they swat away at those mischievous little black pucks. Little mini goal nets appear, and pucks are slowly being herded into the little nets with victorious arm waves and shouts once they slowly slide into the net. That’s it, they’re hooked. So strap in, Mom and Dad - let’s do that hockey!