Found a copy of Blood on the Ice on my nightstand. I’m thrilled. It’s the Slap Shot of hockey writing. Hockey in the seventies, before it was full of grace and Europeans and skills. It was a Canadian game, then. Putting on the foil. Old time hockey. Eddie Shore. Dead history, alright. I didn’t even know I had the book. I’ve never read it. I’ve read Ira Gitler’s book on Be Bop, which is essential for a jazz fan, perfect, but never his Blood on the Ice, which is essential for a hockey fan. That’s what happens when I leave anything on my nightstand. It’s because I fall asleep instantly. People who fall asleep instantly have no idea of what secret treasures lie just inches from the snoring head. Insomniacs have their nightstands memorized. Their ceilings too. And every minute of the day that just passed. And everything they ever could have done in their entire lives but didn’t. People who sleep all night wake up refreshed, their minds swept clean by deep REM sleep. Insomniacs sip their coffee, haunted, and wonder if they should call that old girl friend they had tossed and turned about all night, and if she would remember him, and if she would sleep with him, or if she would call the police.
Category Archives: Hockey
Hockey again
Kings skunked the Hawks five zip and I didn’t have to hear that stupid song once. So I sang it myself as the Black Hawks slunk off the ice in front of an eerily silent toddlin’ town crowd. Doo doo da doo, doo da doo, doo da doo do doo.
Now watching my hapless Jersey Devils, who are actually outplaying the Ducks. The Devils won’t make the playoffs–one of those endless rebuilding phases, the Kings’ lasted decades–but I still love ’em. If they’re good enough for Chris Christie, they’re good enough for me. Though maybe it’s genetic.
Damn….Ducks goal. Now their song, whoa, whoa whoa whoa, whoa whoa whoa. Cool, Devils goal, thirty seconds later. Baby we were born to run! or whatever they sing at Devils games. We got us a game.
Back and forth, forth and back, and Iron Man on the PA. Orange County. Damn, another Ducks goal. And another. And another. And another. And another. A brief interlude to remove hats from the ice. Then one more goal. The Devils season sinks somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. I wasted three hours of my fast disappearing middle age hoping my birth place’s team could redeem itself even a little bit. But no. Just whoa whoa whoa whoa.
And while I was spared the doo doo da doo, doo da doo, doo da doo do doo, I had to listen to that Ducks song seven times tonight. Whoa whoa whoa whoa, like some bad Clash cover band.
We don’t have a Kings song, I don’t think. We just share memories of Warren Wiebe.
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