I can see magic in your eyes
I hear the magic in your sighs
Just when I think I’m gonna get away
I hear those words that you always say
– Steve Miller Band, “Abracadabra”

The first time I walked into the rink, it didn’t even have all the walls in place. The town had been waiting for the indoor rink for fifteen years, ever since Finland had got their first one in 1965, and a friend of mine was so excited about the rink finally being built that he wandered around the construction site to monito its progress. And one time, he and his father took me and my Dad with them.

“That’s where the rink will be,” he told me. “That’s where the dressing room will be. That’s where the cafeteria will be. This will be the sauna.”

He was right, even though, forty years later, I’ve never been back to the sauna.

The rink, including the cafeteria, was like a clubhouse to me in my teenage years. Outside school and my room (with my tapes and ZX Spectrum), that’s where I spent most of my time.

I knew every inch of the arena. And by every inch, I mean every inch. (Well, except for the sauna, of course).

When I tore the ligament in my ankle, I spent hours at the gym under the stands, pushing a sledge up a wall, in a few centimeter increments, while squatting.

It was in the cafeteria that I played the greatest video game I have ever seen. The Dragon’s Lair had graphics that blew my mind back in 1984. It was almost as if I was inside the game.

That’s the rink where I once won two faceoffs in the offensive zone in an identical way, light behind me between my legs, and Pete scored on both of them.

I used to walk around the rink when there was no-one else there, looking for misfired pucks on the floor. You can never have too many pucks.

That’s where we heard the famous coach rip into his team after they lost a pre-season tournament game to us.

I had a huge crush on the girl who worked at the cafeteria, but she left after the summer, and I never saw her again.

It’s where I first heard Steve Miller’s Abracadabra, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” album.

It was to that rink that I ran after I had seen Back to the Future for the first time, so excited, so inspired by Marty McFly.

It was in that rink that I once, hastily, tore the C off my sweater and quit hockey, and it was in that same rink I played my first game back after a short hiatus.

I hopped and jumped on the concrete stairs in the stands, both as off-ice training and on my way to the top row to watch a game with Dad, a grilled sausage in my hand and a chocolate bar in my pocket.

I’ve spent hours behind the plexiglass admiring the figure skaters on the ice before my team.

That’s where I had my very own fan, and she showed up for every one of our games, and even some practices.

When the men’s team played, and they played Steve Miller Band during the intermission, I’d walk around the arena, looking for teammates, classmates, and figure skaters to casually bump into.

Sometimes I played with my Dad’s old-timers’ team on Sunday nights, but even if I didn’t play, I stayed there with him after the big game and played Pac-Man in the cafeteria, or walked around the rink, looking for pucks, or just walked around, not looking for anything. I love the sound of an almost-empty arena.

I was at the first international game played in the arena, and I was at the back door when Soviet players wanted to trade crystal vases and vodka for jeans and car stereos.

Whenever I got bored in my room with my tapes and the Spectrum, Dad and I would drive to the rink. There was always something going on there.

Always.

In a way, the arena made me me.

Two years ago, I heard that they were going to renovate it completely. It was an old arena, they said, and didn’t meet the needs of modern hockey anymore. They were going to replace the seats, all of them, and they were going to build VIP boxes, and add restaurants and move the walls by a few meters, replace the boards, add new advertising, and who knows what else.

While I tried not to take it personally, I was slightly offended on its behalf. It may not have had the biggest jumbotron with the highest resolution, and maybe it didn’t have a jumbotron at all, but I remember that it had one of those cool digital scoreboards that only the big arenas in Helsinki and Tampere had.

Yesterday, I returned to the new old rink.

Daughter and I walked by where the main entrance used to be, around the corner to where the new ticket office was, and I got a little anxious. A part of me wanted the arena to be amazing, but a part of me was worried that I’d feel like a stranger in my own barn.

No need.

Just a few steps in, I saw the old concrete stairs, the ones I had been running up and down all those years. In fact, the stairs were the same, albeit a different colour. I walked around the arena a couple of times – found no pucks – and then easily found our seats on the other side, where there used to be wooden benches. We took our sausages and sat down in the new, comfortable seats.

The arena colours may have changed, but you could’ve blindfolded me and I could’ve told you exactly where Terry and I ran a lap around the rink after a game, or show you the spot where I always warmed up for games, or where my teammates used to sit, or take you to the gym, or point to the spot where I bumped into the girl who had left a note for me in my school locker.

The only thing missing was Steve Miller, but I know what he would’ve said.

“Abra-abra-cadabra. Abracadabra.”