Puck life

Puck life

IT'S lucky that I'm used to friends and family giving me That Look. When I announced a year ago that I planned to join my teenage son in taking up ice hockey, heads began to shake like metronomes all around me.

It's been that way for a while, though, and it's never stopped me before, so I strapped on some rental skates and met the ice. Literally, as it turned out.


Often. And painfully.

Who knew that it would be difficult attempting to ice skate for the first time at the age of 45, and then adding a stick, armour and a rubber puck, also known as the fastest-moving chased object in world sport?


Ice hockey is a nutso sport but I adore it. At the NHL level, it's a lightning quick, brutal contest between musclebound skaters, who share a superstition of not shaving for the entire play-offs as they slam each other into glass walls and drop their gloves to duke it out, while referees stand back and let them go at it until somebody loses their feet or their brain cells.

It's become a passion. From not having any idea how to skate this time last year, you can now find me battling up and down the Henke Rink at the Icehouse in Docklands at least twice a week, draped in helmet and armour, happily cussing my classmates, shooting pucks and sometimes even skating in the direction I planned. Among the students, there have been at least three broken collarbones, lots of stitches and other injuries. Two fellow over-40 rookies I befriended online, who skate in San Jose, are now nursing broken legs. I carried a shoulder for at least three months. When I would go to see Magic Enzo, the osteo, he'd ask: ''Still playing ice hockey?'' I'd nod and he'd sigh and do what he could. It was great.

The story actually starts in the winter of 2008, when I found myself watching the Detroit Red Wings win the Stanley Cup, the NHL's equivalent of the grand final - best-of-seven matches. Within three games, I was in love. A year later, my teenage son, Will, and I were watching the imaginatively named local AIHL team, Melbourne Ice, at its new Icehouse home and discovered you could sign up for lessons. Oh yeah!

I'm not going to lie. Twelve months on, I am mediocre at best. Sure, I've advanced from intro to intermediate classes and now to development league - at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday night, we're scrimmaging furiously in actual matches - but I have no illusions. I am surrounded by people who skate like the wind, by Canadians who by law must be able to skate before they can walk, by teenagers who are no-fear brilliant in a matter of weeks. My coaches, Melbourne Ice stars like Lliam Webster and Matt Armstrong, are totally daunting in their skills.

But then I remember that I had never, ever been on skates before January last year. Never. Well, OK, once: when I was about 10 and clung desperately to the wall of the Oakleigh rink. And now I'm pulling off some of the trickier hockey-specific moves. My puck-handling doesn't totally suck and I once even broke a stick, shooting for goal. Tommy Powell (No. 12 for the Melbourne Ice) who was overseeing the session, said: ''Congratulations. A rite of passage. You're a hockey player now.''

We don't actually fight at my level. Not yet. We can ''board'' one another (plant somebody into the glass), but we're not very good at it. Most collisions are accidental - rookies hurtling in all directions with large sticks and a rubber puck flying like a bullet: what could go wrong?

But it feels like a timebomb until I get hurt or I realise, unexpectedly, that I'm old. After a bad game or training session, I stare into my whisky and genuinely wonder why I didn't take up cycling or kayaking or whatever more gentle sports guys my age are supposed to devote themselves to. Why am I considering scuba diving in Antarctica although (because?) the boat ride down there sounds like my worst nightmare; 48 hours of being slammed by the ocean's most ferocious and icy waves? It leads to bigger questions of life, of choices made and risks taken. Why do I so often refuse to listen to the pragmatic and sensible voice?

What is wrong with me?

Maybe nothing. Sometimes ignoring the pragmatic leads to a completed novel, or a relationship worth savouring even if, in retrospect, it was always doomed, or those moments where you just laugh that life has come to this. It's seen me literally fall off a cliff, find myself in the magician David Blaine's lounge-room, fear for my life, stroke a shark, scream for the Red Wings live at the Joe Louis Arena, in downtown Detroit. Good stories all.

Maybe life's not about those hours behind the desk, about shopping or paying bills or even trying not to swear in front of the children (fail). Maybe it's about that pure, rare moment when my skates actually feel right under my feet and I neatly trap the puck, at speed, and spot a classmate on the other side of the ice and slide the pass like a guided missile to their stick. Perhaps it is about those moments in the hockey change room where my male and female classmates, a collection of Wings, Canucks, Bruins, Penguins, Senators, Rangers, Flyers and more, tease each other and laugh and exult in this crazy adventure we've all embarked upon. Just us and a lump of ice in Docklands and a whole secret world of barracking for NHL teams, chasing pucks and comparing sticks and bruises.

Or hell, maybe it's simply that being a hockey player is undeniably cool, if I ever actually make it onto a team. I say I will. I'm only in my mid-40s, the ice is cold and the day is young. Watch me try to bring the snow. Or die trying.

Either is possible at this point.


Most Viewed in Sport