I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent playing hockey, and even less, how many hours I’ve spent sitting in a locker room, or in the parking lot, talking to teammates about the games, and … stuff.
Or how many hours I’ve spent watching, listening to, or reading about hockey.

Let’s just say that I started about 35 years ago, and haven’t quit yet.

According to experts, real experts, scientists who study things for a living, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master something well enough to be a world-class expert on it.

Maybe I haven’t played 10,000 hours of hockey, but I sure have talked about it that much, which makes me a world-class expert on talking about hockey.

During those hours and years, I’ve learned a few things about … stuff.

1. There’s no »I« in team.
2. The team always knows its own hierarchy.
3. Good bounces come to those who work hard.
4. It’s not easy to be a good coach.
5. It’s easy to be a bad coach.
6. If you don’t shoot, you can’t score.
7. If you can’t score, don’t shoot.
8. There’s always a chance to turn things around.
9. So you’d better never give up.
10. Never give up.

Besides picking up a lot of clichés over the years, and a knack for using them every once in a while to end a conversation — how can you argue with a well-placed cliché — I’ve also come to realize that some of the clichés are repeated because they’re true.

I’ve learned these things by doing some things right, and by banging my head against the wall a few times.

Like the time I got angry with the coach who just didn’t get me, and ripped the »C,« made of tape, off my chest on my way to the locker room. I quit the team that day and refused to go back for two weeks.

We eventually patched things up, and I even have occasional contact with the coach in question. [He was just a kid himself then, I realize now.] But I know now I failed at points 1, 2, 9, and 10. I’ve learned how to recognize a #5, but also that it’s not all black and white, and that #5 can learn to be #4, if both just talk to each other – and listen.

It was hockey that took me to Orillia, Ontario for a summer, twenty years ago. In Orillia, I saw a house that Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock had lived in. On the side of the building, there was a quote of his: »I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.«

I don’t know if he played hockey, but he must have, he was Canadian. Anyway, he nailed it. I was trying to say the same thing in my own words in point #3.

However, that doesn’t mean that just because you work hard you shouldn’t use your brain. I’ve never understood why players take desperate shots when there’s no chance of scoring [or of the pass making it to his teammate]. So, act on point number 6 when it’s time for that, but remember point number 7.

Except when the clock’s ticking, and you think of “8”.

I know. Doesn’t make sense, and it’s contradictory.

I did say these are things I’ve learned about life.