““The Finnish journalist recalls a former coach’s words which helps him “rediscover” hockey.”.
More after the jump.
A former coach of mine once told my team that “routine kills art.” Somehow, that sentence stuck in my brain when not much else he ever said did. This is the same guy who swore that anyone with a grade point average above mediocre wouldn’t play on his team because we would play “stupid hockey.”
Obviously, put in a hockey context, what he meant was that it’s good to shuffle the lines every once in a while when things get rough and the team’s not playing the way it should.
That’s when coaches start “coaching.”
That’s when the coaches look up their sleeves to see if they can find a magic trick there. Maybe an outdoor practice would do the trick? How about working out at five in the morning, then again at nine, then at noon, and then at three in the afternoon? One of the classics is to have the players skate until somebody throws up.
Sometimes they use the dangling carrot, although not as often as the stick (the proverbial stick, not the composite ones), and give the players a surprise day off or another perk they never expected. Maybe it’s because these days, there’s hardly a perk the coach could give the players that they couldn’t afford themselves – besides time.
So they break the pattern, and try to bring some controlled chaos into the locker room and hope that it will turn into art.
For me, that particular attempt to revive the art of hockey meant a move to the checking line, my only consolation being that I was too smart. Or, at least smart enough to fool myself into thinking like that.
I was in London a few weeks ago, and walked into the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street. Walked over to the best sellers and saw Bob Dylan’s new album there. I asked the bloke filling the shelves – and yes, they’re all blokes over there – if it was any good. “Aw, dunno,” he said. “OK,” I replied, and just kept on walking.
A minute later the same lad – ok, they can be lads, too – tapped me on the shoulder, and pushed a CD cover in my face. “These guys are really good. I just heard them on the telly the other day.”
The band was called The Feeling, and the Megastore employee sure knew his pop rock, and he seemed to read me like Sidney Crosby reads any NHL defense. I love the album, but maybe even more, I love the feeling – pun intended – of having discovered a new band.
It’s like walking to the rink in a new city, and seeing new players for the first time, taking in the smell, the sounds, the echo of the puck hitting the boards. It makes me rediscover the sport and see nuances in plays that I never saw before. Or, even if I did, I had forgot all about it because I had taken things for granted.
Sure, Teemu scored a nice goal, but he always scores great goals. Yes, Sid had a four-point night, but doesn’t he always get four points? Ho-hum.
If Eddie Shore was my coach now, he would make me watch the NHL all night tonight. And he would be right, and I would get the lesson.
Routine kills art.