The summer rec league hockey season started in Iowa City this weekend so
this is as good a time as any to announce my retirement from hockey. Granted,
there really isn’t much to retire from; my career lasted all of one year and I
played in a recreational league in the hockey boondocks of Iowa. Also, I
sucked. But I didn’t just suck, I sucked in a way that put myself and others in
danger. I spent way too much time laying face down on the ice, flailing in pain with
some bizarre injury or another. There was the wayward wrist shot to the face.
The shoulder v. jaw collision. And the last straw, when I butt-ended myself in
the gut with my own stick in a wreck that’s too convoluted to explain.
The first injury wasn’t at all serious—I was wearing a mouthguard
that no doubt saved me from lost teeth and a concussion, so the only pain was a
welt and a bruise (always wear your mouthguard when playing hockey). The shoulder/jaw
collision left me unable to eat much more than soup, yogurt and soft fruit for
a few days, but again, it turned out to be more inconvenience than serious
(always wear your mouthguard when playing hockey).
The third injury, though, was more freakish—the butt end of
the stock was rammed up underneath my bottom rib and tore an abdominal muscle.
Two months later, it still isn’t quite right. All of these collisions could
have less happy outcomes—an inch this way or that and I would have been
screwed. So I’ve decided that rather than insist on putting myself into
situations that could potentially end in my own death, I will hang up the
skates. I’ve got a kid and a mortgage. My money should be going to take care of
them, not medical bills to repair the damage from some freakish hockey injury.
Which is too bad, because I love to play. Even though I suck
(and trust me, I really suck), the thrill of those few moments when I didn’t
suck, when it actually seemed as if I knew what I was doing, outweighed the far
more frequent pain and humiliation of failure. Putting a pass perfectly on a
teammate’s tape, swatting the puck away from the guy trying to get around me,
clearing out the puck that got past my goalie just before it crossed the goal
line, charged me up in ways that few other things can. Even if that good thing
you do leads to nothing, no goal or assist or anything but a finished shift and
you’re back on the bench, you can say you accomplished at least something.
I can only imagine what it’s like to actually have some
talent, with a much higher ratio of good things to bad things, so that you feel
good about your play almost as often as you think damn, what the hell was I
thinking (and, at best, that ratio is probably about 1:1, and that’s only for
players like Lemieux or Gretzy or Howe or Tretiak. For a good pro-level player,
I would guess it’s about 3:1. Or maybe 5:1. Let’s face it, I’m just pulling
numbers out of my butt here).
I scored four goals in a game once—FOUR!—which was a quarter
of my scoring output for my career, in a SINGLE GAME, and the fourth of them
won the game in overtime. I’m sure that’s one of the memories I’ll be thinking
about as the last oxygenated blood cell leaves my brain.
Sadly, most games weren’t even a tenth as productive as that
one. Some games I somehow violated the laws of quantum physics and was
negatively productive. I played for a team called the Clam Slappers because the
captain needed a warm body on his roster and I qualified, though that was the
extent of my qualification. I was too slow to keep up with the play, too small
to hold my own against bigger, stronger players, too unskilled generally to
really know what I was doing. I never played organized hockey as a kid, just
rink rat stuff and street hockey, so I never learned the finer points of
positioning, strategy or technique. I knew the basics from watching but little
more, and I’m sure that was obvious to anyone who saw me on the ice.
And so I end my experiment as a hockey player. I see they’re
starting a curling club in Cedar Rapids. Maybe I’ll trade my stick for a broom.
I’ll still make a fool of myself, I just won’t get hurt doing it.
