The Pros and Cons Of Playing Hockey With Kids

So a couple of weeks ago I played in a hockey tournament called Quest For the Crown. It's a pretty big deal around here- a nice charity event that draws a ton of teams from all over the western United States. Great hockey, and a real nice weekend.

And our Dawgs teams have had terrific success. Our Dawgs II guys finished second for the third consecutive year, losing every championship game by a heartbreaking 2-1 score. I think those fellas might consider sacrificing a live chicken if they make it to next year's title game.

I play on Dawgs I, and we had been fortunate enough to win the thing for the past two years. Strangely enough, they were both by 7-4 in the final. When we won two years ago, it was the first time our team had won anything: we had no league championships, no tourneys, no nothin'. So we pretty much jumped around after the game like a bunch of drunk monkeys. It was friggin' brilliant.

Since then, we've won that tourney for a second time, and thrown in a couple of league championships. I wouldn't say we're spoiled, but there's nothing like winning that first big championship. But we sure wanted to defend our title in 2010 and three-peat.

The problem this year was that my good pal and team captain Marty wouldn't be around for the tournament, because he had to go to Washington, D.C. to watch a couple of his cousins marry each other, or some shit like that. So the task of organizing the group fell on me and one other guy.

Have you ever heard the expression, "it was like herding cats"? That's exactly what this was like. I now have a new and deeper appreciation for Marty's organizational skills, and what he does for this team. Not enough for me to stop finding new and exciting ways to call him a homo, but still...

For the Quest tourney, everybody brings a stacked team. That's just the way it is. We played in the Upper C division, but in reality, the level of play is easily what would normally be considered a high "B". It's the fastest skate we have all year. And probably the most fun. I love playing with and against really talented players.

Now, the regular season Dawgs have a pretty solid C level squad, but we needed help if we were going to compete in this event. So like the past two years, we recruited some very good players, and they were all young kids. And I'm talkin' young here. Like born in the '90's young.

Just as a reminder, I was born in the '50's. Dwight Fuckin' Eisenhower was the president. There were 48 states. A gallon of gas was 24 cents. A new house cost less than 13 grand. Yeah, I'm older than shit.

I did some math- I am 33 years older than some of my teammates from the tournament. The look on their face when they came into the locker room for the first time and saw their goalie for the weekend was priceless. One of them looked at the number on the door to make sure he was in the right place.

I won't bore you with too many details about the tournament, but we ended up second this year. The level of play was by far the best we've seen in the three years that we've played, including our championship game, which we lost by a 5-3 score. A lot of the boys on the other side play on the club varsity team up at the University of Colorado (they stacked their guys even more than we stacked ours, the bastards).

How did I play, you''re wondering? Well, I hadn't competed a real game in over two months, and it showed during the first contest on Friday night. I was a complete sieve, but we still managed to escape with a 6-5 win. Never should have been that close. I sucked balls.

Saturday afternoon, I improved a little, and we got out with a 7-4 victory. I still wasn't very comfortable in goal, but it was a damn sight better than Friday night.

Then Saturday night, we had to win our last preliminary game in order to advance to the finals on Sunday morning. This was the moment where I discovered the downside of playing with kids in a tournament that has a Saturday night game.

After a bunch of juggling during the week, we came up with a lineup that had 12 skaters and yours truly. Well, I knew we were going to be down one player Saturday night, because there was a very special party that couldn't be missed. No problem.

Then Saturday afternoon after our game, I found out that his friend on our team also wasn't going to make it. Same party. Now it would have been just bitchin' if he had told me that before, but what the hell. Those two were very key players, but we still had 10 skaters- we could hopefully get by.

Then a couple of minutes later, I was told that one of our other kids would be late, because he had to work. He wasn't sure what time he could get there, but he would do the best that he could. Okie-dokie.

And finally, just a few minutes after that, I was informed that yet another young man might not be able to get there, because he had dinner reservations with his girlfriend, and I assumed he wanted to get him some poonannie. To quote Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer, that was again information that would have been good to know YESTERDAY!!

So to summarize, we had eight skaters for what would be our opportunity to get to the championship game. This was not particularly good news, considering that two of those eight were around my age (we three old farts were the only reason we could justify being in the C bracket), and there was a very real chance that one or both might suffer some form of conniption around the middle of the second period.

Using all the wits that I could summon, I recruited a kid Danny that was playing for our other Dawgs team, even though he would be finishing up his game about a half hour before ours. Oh, and did I mention that he was just coming back from treatments for thyroid cancer? He assured me that the odds were at least 60/40 that I wasn't going to kill him by asking him to play, so that was good enough for me.

So we started this all-important game with a total of nine skaters. I was completely sure that we were fucked. Then something happened. Maybe is was because I knew we didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the thing, or maybe it was the combination of a chicken burrito from Qdoba and Red Bull. But I felt fucking great. And it was my second game of the day, which should have spelled doom. I was completely relaxed and confident when the puck dropped.

Well, the nine Dawgs that didn't have something better to do that night played their balls off, especially Danny and his surgically missing thyroid. I can't say enough about how well that kid played and how much I appreciated his effort. He totally saved our ass. We scored three goals early, and a couple of more later in the game, after one of the missing kids showed up after he got off work.

And we held a pretty good team scoreless until late, when they scored off a third rebound, and then they got one in the last seconds, when everybody on my team moved forward trying to score one more goal, and let them come back down the ice on a five on zero breakaway. I even damn near made the save on that one. Whatever- we were through to the finals.

By the way, I finally got to have a decent game when my girl came to watch me play. Believe it or not, after 16 years I'm still trying to impress her with something other than my wits and ability to knock her up. Normally, I try too hard when she's there, play with my ass clenched and perform like old people fuck. Not this time. Shit, she didn't even have to put that paper bag over her head when we walked together out to the car. It was a big night.

So Sunday morning came, and with it a chance for our three-peat. And we had a full squad. Sort of.

The two guys from the important party didn't look too hot. In fact, one of them told me he was still drunk from the night before. I couldn't tell if he was kidding or not. One kid hadn't been to bed yet- he had been out with his friends all night. And one other told me he was really hung over, but thought he could sweat it out as the game went on.

Fuck me.

If you remember from earlier in this article, I mentioned that the other team contained a bunch of varsity players from CU. They had won their previous three games by a total of 22-5. Under the circumstances, I was hoping to keep them in single digits, and not embarrass myself in front of my entire family that came out to watch me play. I noticed that they were all clutching paper bags when the game started. Not a good sign.

But damned if we didn't come out hot, including your chubby little pal. Honest to God, I don't think I've ever played better than the first half of that game. They spent most of the time in our end, but we snuck out a few times and scored the first three goals. This tourney had a different format- in order to save time, they played two halves instead of three periods. So we were up 3-0 at the break.

And then...

We had nothing left in the tank for the second half. We had shot our wad. They scored on a bang-bang play in front of the net about a minute after we resumed play, and it just snowballed from there. I'll bet we got outshot 25-3 in the period. None of the five goals they got were soft ones- they were just all over us. They were very, very good- the best team I've ever played against, and that's saying something considering how long I've been doing this shit. By the end, I was so fucking tired that I could barely make it to the handshake line. So we got beat 5-3, and had to settle for second, which isn't too damn bad.

However, I can't help but think that we might have had a better chance if hockey would have been the first priority for our whole team. But you know what? That's just not the way it works when you're a kid. When you're in your teens and twenties, it's all about being with your friends, having some beers, and chasing some ass. I totally get that. And I'm completely fine with it. Shit, I was a kid once. At least I think I was- I can't remember back any further than 1987.

My problem is, I'm not only playing the back nine of my hockey career, I've teed off on hole number 18, which is a dogleg, with water all the way down the right side. I don't have that many more championship games left in me, so I just hate to waste the ones that I do get to play in. If we had brought our best team that was ready to play and gotten beat, I could live with that. But we didn't, and it's a little bit disappointing.

But I did learn something important during the weekend. For a short period, if I relax, take my Advil and say my prayers, I can still hang with the kids. I know I won't be able to much longer, but for a couple of days, my 51 year old chubby ass played halfway decent against some really good young players.

That'll keep me going for awhile...