Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Hockey is my happy place. This won’t come as a shock to anyone who sees my posts on a regular basis, but I love the sport so much. When I walk into a hockey arena for a game and feel that little blast of cold air and see the lights gleaming off the ice, I find it actually calming. That may be a strange reaction for a game that’s so intense, but there are moments when I’m so into it that everything else falls away.

This isn’t necessarily the case during the playoffs, that most wonderful time of year, when if I’m lucky enough to see a game or two live and there’s a knot that seems to take up permanent residence in the pit of my stomach that seems to intensify with every touch of the puck. And all those feelings are before we get into overtime which is the absolute best. (Yes, I’m gushing, but don’t knock it ‘til you’ve seen it.) Playoff overtime is both wonderful and terrible for the exact same reason- it could end at any time. I’ve seen OTs on television that lasted all of seven seconds and one’s that extended into a fourth period. (I’m not good for squat the day after a quadruple overtime.)

At various times in my life, I have rooted for each NHL team. Some find and keep favor like the Blues and Devils. Some, like the Oilers and the Red Wings are more like an on-again, off-again relationship. Then there are teams like the Kings and Blackhawks who were once toward the top of my esteem and then did something that I found irredeemable and have not found their way back into my heart. With the attention now given to women’s hockey, I casually follow the NWHL (and during the playoffs, the CWHL).



Side note- women’s hockey, particularly US and Canadian Olympic hockey, is fantastic. I took off the day after the US women won gold. I’d scheduled the day off in advance because I knew I was going to be up late. The game did not disappoint, going into a fast-paced overtime and ending with a shootout (which normally aren’t that exciting, but this was something different.)

I’ve been lucky enough to see the Stanley Cup four times in my life – three times in Chicago for various Championship parades (back when I was still a HUGE Blackhawks fan) and once here in St Louis as part of a fan fest that happened during the NHL’s Centennial year. For that last one, I actually got to lay hands on it. I am looking forward to seeing it again, possibly next year during the All Star Game festivities here in St Louis.

So, what happens in July until mid-September? Glad you asked. Australia happens. (Go, Adelaide!) I’ve never been there for a game, but it’s nice to know that there are teams out there skating around while the rest of the hockey world is dormant. Also, when I take road trips during the summer months, I will drag my mother to every hockey arena that’s on our route and take pictures and try to break into the place, if I can. It’s part of my preparations for the next NHL lockout.

Somewhere along the road, I discovered Hockey RPF on Ao3. At first, I thought, I don’t want to read that. It’s icky. Why would I want to read story after story of the secret love between Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews (that was my OTP when I started, not at all anymore)? Oh, but these stories are so sweet and romantic and well-written and all about hockey. Maybe just one more. That one’s less than a thousand words. I’ll just give it a look. I could blame the lockout for it. I wrote some of my own at that point. It’s a nice escape and has actually made me a better fan of some teams/players on account of someone’s fiction.

For my NaNo project in 2017, I was a bit of a rebel and wrote 50,000 words about life as a hockey fan. It should have been a memoir of sorts, but with my spotty memory and a lot of “that one guy”, it could have read more like historical fiction. It was fun. Hockey has appeared in at least three of my NaNo novels- the Staples Center was the site of a meet-cute in my first novel, one was entirely about a hockey team (I had envisioned Las Vegas as an expansion city before the NHL did), and my 2015-16 novel was about a kid with a promising high school hockey career that saw everything fall by the wayside.

I also run a Facebook page called “The Barret-Love Section” (in honor of the now-retired Blues defenseman, Barret Jackman) which is just a collection of hockey things I find interesting and that I think other people might find interesting too. I will write the occasional game recap or updates from training camp and an annual analysis of the TV schedule showcasing that the Western Conference still isn’t getting as much coverage of the East. It’s a lot of fun and I’m grateful for the few people who look at it and take the time to chime in on discussions.

Well, I hear the television in the living room blaring the play-by-play from the Blues game. Time to get back to my happy place.