Small Hockey World

The summer is long and hot so I'll add to our misery with some tales from the western SPHL I bumped around in during the 80s and 90s. The West Covina Blackhawks to be exact, hated the name but beggars can't be choosy.

So we're headed to Las Vegas one weekend for a couple games with the Las Vegas Gamblers. Lost Wages was always a good roadie, easy 3 hour run across the desert,  friendly strippers, 1 shoe Blackjack decks and great night life. How could you go wrong?

The one drawback to playing the Gamblers was their fucking rink, it was 3/4 the size of an NHL rink. What god dayum genius figured he'd build a rink that size I don't know. You'd no more than get up to speed and have to hit the brakes. For the poor goalies it was a bloody shooting gallery. For us defensemen it cut both ways, you couldn't really dump truck anyone from lack of speed but no one could really burn you on the outside either. Slow, plodding players loved this ice, it made them equals to the speedier burners.

The game starts and we're pretty evenly matched, the league is full of almosts and could have beens with a few talented players sprinkled on the 6 teams. I get on the ice for my first shift and their one D man starts flying up the left wing with the puck and suddenly pulls a dipsy doodle move that seemed oddly familiar. I anticipate the faint and go to rub him along the boards when he turns and it's my old hockey teammate Todd Z. We screech to a stop together in the corner and started rubbing each other helmets and saying hello, how ya been. The rest of the players and refs are looking at us like WTF and our goalie is screaming at me to clear the damn puck.

We had been D partners in Germany and I had lost track of Todd a couple years back. Turns out Todd had transfered and was a F-16 Falcon driver at nearby Nellis AFB and now playing for the Gamblers. Todd was a great skater, he had that long smooth powerful stride like Orr, Neidermeyer and Coffey with some of the same flash along with great hands. Many of us agreed he would have gone on to play in the NHL had he not chosen to fly jets over a hockey career, he was that good.

Anyhoo, my shift ends and I get back to our bench and the fuckin coach is hopping mad.

"The fuck you doin out there?" he greets me. "This ain't no god damn social", he screams.

FML. He benches me for the rest of the period. Fuckin great, now I'm stuck on the bench blowing kisses to the possibilities in the stands like Tito Landrum from the Cardinals. I get lit up in the locker a room a bit between periods but I'm back in at the start of the 2nd. All is well in Whoville.

Ya just never know who you'll run into out there in the hockey world.

P.S. Todd Z. is back row far left in the above pic. I'm back row 5th from left. Pic is at the rink on Baden Baden Canadian AFB in southern Germany. Circa 1979 I believe with the CANUSA Snowbirds, a Canadian USA all star military team that traveled around Europe playing hockey teams from various leagues and military installations.