I started this blog many, many years ago, as a means of recording (pen to paper? keyboard to silicon?) my hockey memories from yore. Yore is getting further and further in the rear view mirror so when I circle back and read some of my own work here, I realize that perhaps the biggest beneficiary of this little project has been me.

Today, on a random ride home from the grocery store where I filled in some gaps in the still massive pile of Christmas eats in the fridge, I recalled the several extended family Christmas parties we had back in the 80’s and 90’s on my mom’s side of the family. These events had morphed in form from earlier years which were more Rockwellian in setting (someone’s house / farm, snow, toboggans, turkey, stuffing, etc), to the hospitality room at small town hockey rink in southern Ontario which we rented for a few hours in the afternoon or evening on boxing day or the 27th. Snow became drizzle, toboggans became mini-sticks, turkey became KFC and pizza, – time marches on, no? We also rented the arena ice for an hour. 

As I rummaged through the details of several years of these parties that my aging memory served up, it struck me that I couldn’t actually recall having written about them in this blog. Mon Dieu! How could this be? These were worthy memories and, one of said parties may actually be the creme de la creme of hockey treasures from my past. When I got home, I searched this very Rinktales blog and zut alors! – could find no record. So. 

First, some context. These family Christmas bashes had a family hierarchy. The old generation was that of my parents. For the years relevant here, this generation included my parents, plus my mom’s brother and wife, and my mom’s sister and husband. The aunts and uncles. These 3 fine couples had a total of 14 kids, most of whom were married by the 80’s and were several kids in to each of their marriages. The youngest generation ranged from literally newborns in weeks leading up to Christmas to kids in early teens. It was always a noisy gong show with several generations of cousins mixing across the generations. Good times.

Now, not everyone plays hockey but we were a democratic clan so generally the ice was split in two with one half going to those who wanted to play shinny and the other half who just wanted to skate. The shinny half is where this little nugget will focus.

It was just shinny, with a handful of adults being kids again, along with their own kids and nieces and nephews. It was a unique, rare thrill to be playing with and against family, with limited rules, structure, buzzers, refs, coaches, etc. etc. This was equipment-lite shinny (skates, helmets, and perhaps gloves, elbow pads) and even the least hockey literate understood that raising the puck off the ice, ever, EVER, in such a context, can present serious problems. Geez, even the toddlers seemed to have it deep within their DNA, even if they weren’t yet strong enough to raise the puck if they had wanted to. It was a self policing tilt. Smiles, red cheeks, screeching and whooping, chirping….and my Dad.

My dad is the central character in this caper. God bless him, because caper may not be the right word by the time you are done reading this. Picture a shinny game, with maybe 10-12 kids across 2 teams between the ages of 3 and 13, with usually at least one parent (but not always) who may or may not have played organized hockey. Big range in abilities, but the lower the ability, the higher the bravery attribute.

The game would start innocently enough. Up and down the half sheet, two big hockey nets, big kids and little kids. Some were stick handlers. Trying to go through the entire family. That never worked. Family from both sides would ultimately conspire to strip them of the puck and unlearn that habit. Some were passers…unselfish, team players, good family members…(I’ll stop short of drifting into political terms here)…who would team up with a sibling or cousin or uncle / aunt / parent for the greater good. Soft passes, crisp passes, cross ice passes, drop passes, good passes, bad passes, blind passes. But all passes along the ice. 

[Editors note: I actually stopped writing this one paragraph above and mentioned to my wife that after all these year’s, I can’t believe I hadn’t written about this. She suggested that perhaps during my peak writing years, when my Dad was still alive, I did so out of respect to his hockey reputation.]

Now, my dad could be a competitive sort (perhaps the fruit doesn’t fall so far from the tree?) and he loved these games. He was a kid again, in his late 50’s. He grew up in an era of straight sticks (always hated a curved stick) and while he was a powerful skater and very good player, his shot always struck me as old school. And there wasn’t much to distinguish it from his passes sometimes. A Blue Rodeo lyric suddenly comes to me “history has its own way of revealing the moment we lit the fuse…”

You’ve probably guessed by now that my Dad’s passes were not along the ice. And you have the visual of young, innocent children wearing no body armour. Touche.

He just passed the puck so ridiculously hard at times, slapping the old biscuit like the dinner he would soon share with his less ice-savvy relatives in the nearby hospitality room depended on the puck arriving firmly on the tape. I can still see the toddlers falling after point of impact. Screams, blood curdling. Writhing. The looks on the faces of the still-standing…Geez grandpa?!

The first one to fall, a martyr. Took one for the team. (As I used to say to my kids during wrestling matches when they were little and after one would inevitably hit their head on a coffee table, or get a rug burn “if you’re gonna play rough, you’re gonna get hurt.”) 

But after a while, you know, we all moved on. It was just one kid, one ankle bone, and there were plenty of other kids, (and Grandma’s and KFC and Christmas jewel pie in the nearby warm room). Hey, do we hold it against Clarkie for breaking Kharlamov’s ankle, given that we won the ’72 series? (Rhetorical, rhetorical).

And so the game would resume. More chirping, whooping, rosy cheeks…and then at some point, the puck would go to my Dad again, he’d break up ice, spot his grandson / granddaughter / nephew / niece cross-ice, then…(I can almost see cross-hairs in my visual cortex)…BAM…he’d drop another one. Silence, followed by blood curdling screams, etc. etc. 

As his son, I suddenly realized how it must have felt to be Goose right after Maverick buzzed the tower and showered the brass with their own coffee. Slightly nauseous but with nowhere to hide.

And so, this little vignette comes to an abrupt end. Young lives scarred, bones bruised. I don’t recall if any of the wee ones had to be hospitalized (perhaps a my memory lapse a coping mechanism after all these years).

Red Green’s trademark line was “keep your stick on the ice”, one which he ended each of his shows with. For all you old-school, straight-sticked, high-octane, competitive-in-family-game situations who find yourself in the rarefied air of a no-equipment shinny match ever again, please alter this slightly and “keep your pucks on the ice”.