WHACK! OK, that shot is definitely going to leave a mark. THUMP! So is that one. And that one.
Agonizing saves are just some of the ironies of being a goaltender in a beer league hockey game. You feel pain whether you get hit by the puck in an unprotected nook, or whether the puck misses you altogether and the other team scores yet another goal. One form of pain is physical; the kind where you find yourself wondering, “so that’s what a broken kneecap feels like, eh?” The other is mental, realizing that you are uselessly uncoordinated, flopping around on the ice like a “Wounded Moth” (that’s in quotations because it’s actually one of my unfortunate goalie nicknames. Others are “Angry Yard Sale”, for my occasional habit of losing my temper and throwing goalie equipment all over the ice. And then there’s “Neck Burn”, for the amount of times the red goal light blazes behind me throughout a game).
If you couldn’t guess, the 2015/2016 beer league hockey season has started up again for this, my 12th season between the pipes for the Vancouver Flying Vees. We’re a mostly arts-and-medicine based hockey club, with various musicians, writers, comedians, doctors, and other friends from various walks of life, all suiting up in the stinky blue and green. My old Smugglers bandmate Nick “Lock-Eye” Thomas (currently rocking out in the Tranzmitors, Vicious Cycles, and Evaporators) has been on the team for our entire dozen-year duration as well. Our former bassist Beez was on the Flying Vees for a few years, until he had a heart attack in the middle of the dressing room floor. He survived, thanks to our doctor teammate Kevin “Rosie” Rowan. These days Beez takes a lot of pills and skates for a team in a division many below us.
Pat “Comedy” Kelly, host of the hilarious CBC Radio One show “This Is That”, is back for another season on the Flying Vees’ blue line, alongside his defense partner Bruce “Pounds” Dyck, who just played his last show ever drumming in his Vancouver punk rock band The B-Lines. Another long time Flying Vees stalwart returning for a run at a championship is Chris “Nitz” Mizzoni, a die-hard Toronto Maple Leafs fan, children’s author, and animator for “My Little Pony”. Our captain is the toughest guy on the team, a high school teacher named John “the Silver Screen” Silver.
An exciting new rookie to the Flying Vees is none other than roots-rocker and leather worker Dustin “Dusty” Bentall, who will hopefully hit some high notes on the score sheet, what with our number one goal-scorer Ken “Goal-A-Game” Hegan, a senior copywriter at Blast Radius, on the injured reserve list with a broken ankle. As I mentioned, we are so incredibly lucky to have a healthy plethora of doctors on the hockey team. If you’re injured during a game, all you have to do is hobble across the dressing room for an instant examination. Don’t like the diagnosis? Shuffle down the bench for an immediate second opinion. All we really need now is a local beer rep to sign up.
Those painful saves? They become bruises the size and colour of eggplants after a brutal 6-0 loss. Back in that cinderblock dressing room, the score is quickly forgotten. The joyous sound of cracked beer and crackling conversation makes every stopped puck, and every missed puck, worth it, year after year.
• Grant Lawrence is the author of “The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie”.
