A Hockey Night in Canada: The Link Between NHL Playoff Stars and Everyday Heroes

My limbs were just warming up as we arrived at the outdoor community rink, stark sheets of ice quiet and empty at this early hour. The area lights were turned off, but the light of a full moon reflected well off the ice and snow creating its own dramatic illumination. After scraping the benches free of frost we set about strapping up, prepping the skate laces before taking off a shoe to avoid cold feet as much as possible. It seemed to take forever, with each second sitting sapping more and more heat away from our bones. Eventually I forced my feet into the stiff old skate boots before turning my attention to the goal-gear, full of straps and buckles and finicky things that required me to remove my gloves.

Yawning my head off, I finally skated onto the ice.

I did a couple of laps to shake the cobwebs off and headed for one of the metal goal nets at the end of the rink. The puck we had brought, a cheap plastic road-hockey number, shattered from the cold on the very first shot. We looked at each other sharing the same thought: what are we doing out here? It was freezing cold, we had no lighting, no puck, no warmth in our extremities, and here we were stood out on a sheet of ice at 1am in the middle of January. But we continued to skate, using clumps of ice to take shots at the net, doing lengths up and down the rink as we remembered what it was like to pretend to be Orr and Gretzky as kids. The bottom of my hockey sweater hung below the waist of my down jacket, a lone strip of red gliding three feet above the iced surface. Our feet were frozen, only 1/8” of enforced fabric between flesh and icy wind as we carved furrows and blew ice shavings against the back boards under a clear night sky.

The air crystallised our breath onto our toques and eerie haloes of ice appeared around our faces, gleaming in the moonlight as we skated towards the benches where our shoes lay. Earlier we had discovered my skates were without footbeds, so I had nicked a pair from Dave’s shoes at the rink, and while we struggled to get out of our skates without touching sock to snow we had to juggle insoles as well. We sat on our street shoes as we performed these delicate procedures in an effort to warm them up a bit before our feet went in. Finally extricated and re-clothed, we packed our gear in the hockey bag and tied up our skates for the walk home.

Retracing our steps again in silence, I thought about my earlier question and found I had an answer. I was no longer yawning, and I noticed I could feel my toes properly for the first time that night. Walking away from the rink I found myself wanting to go back and skate some more, all the while knowing it was too cold and it was best to go home. I felt better then than I had all week, there in the wee hours of what was now Sunday morning, all because a casual whim had lured me away from a warm hearth and out into the frozen night. And as I carried the cumbersome equipment over my shoulder, I realised why.

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