Damn global warming. I was up visiting my dad the other day and thought that maybe we could go for a skate with him and my son. Like last year. Or, like every day during every holiday season between 1981 and 1986.
Naturally, without my son then, I was just a kid myself.
The place I had in mind is just an open space natural ice about 100 meters from our house. It’s a soccer field that gets flooded in the winter. The ice has never been good, and often I would just grab my stick and go shoot some pucks after school, but this year even that was difficult to do.
There was no ice.
Hockey has always been a big part of my holiday season. I got my first really good skates for Christmas circa 1976. It was a pair of CCM Marksmans. They were red and black, and I’ve been wearing CCMs ever since.
The two-week holiday from school was all hockey. First, I had to watch Team Finland play against the Swedes, and the Russians and Canadians in the legendary Izvestija Tournament in Moscow. Then I got hockey gear for Christmas, and the week between Christmas and New Year’s I was watching and playing in various junior tournaments in Finland.
When I was a kid, there was nothing better than to run around a rink with the shin pads and pants on, but without the shoulder pads and the rest. So that everybody saw immediately that you were a player. A real hockey player. One of those guys that all the other people came to watch.
Well, not all of them, just the relatives.
I still love to just hang around a rink all day, watching a game here, eating junky food, watching a game there, seeing a player that missed a penalty shot in the first game get a nice goal in the evening game, and meeting old friends.
I’d almost want to put on my equipment, minus the helmet, gloves, shoulder pads and skates, and just go sit on a wooden bench somewhere, and eat a hot dog. Maybe yell out some cheers for the players.
Even though my holiday tradition of skating and shooting some pucks on my home ice didn’t happen this year, there’s another one that most likely will.
For about five years now, I’ve played Christmas Eve hockey with my brother-in-law, at around noon. Each year, he says that we have to come earlier the next year because his old hockey buddies always show up at ten in the morning.
Things change.
Those buddies now play in the Swedish Elite League. One of them, Oscar Steen, just came home from Moscow where he played with Team Sweden in the Izvestija Tournament — now called Channel One Cup.
Happy holidays to everyone! May your shots be accurate and skates sharp. Here’s something to read. ‘The Art of Ice Hockey,’ a hockey blog written by a Finnish philosopher who currently works as a lecturer of theory of visual culture at the University of Art and Design Helsinki.