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Hockey holidays revisited Posted: Monday December 23, 2002 4:00 PM
Some of my fondest memories as a kid growing up in southern Ontario -- a period when seemingly boundless time and anticipation collided in thrilling fashion -- stem from watching hockey over the holidays. There was the Christmas when I received my first set of goalie pads. We lived in Burlington at the time, and I was in first grade. At that point, I played exclusively in the neighborhood -- on the street and on the sheet of ice that the fathers of the adjoining townhouses flooded in the common court area. My Dad -- I mean Santa -- had hidden the pads behind our shimmering silver artificial Christmas tree -- remember, this was 1967 after all -- so that they would be the final present I received. To say I was ecstatic would be an understatement. I was in awe -- as if to own a pair of goalie pads actually made me a goalie. Well, it did in my six-year-old mind. I still remember strapping them on right then and there in my living room right over my pajamas. Of course that initial thrill was genuine, but the feeling of walking out to join the game later that day with the rest of the kids -- all sporting some piece of new hockey gear -- was a moment of triumph. Prideful strides indeed for any kid, as I awkwardly -- learning to walk while wearing goalie pads was tricky -- and excitedly approached the gang without having to say what I felt: "Look at me, I am a real goalie!" Completing my get-up was my baseball mitt on my right hand, a pillow as a belly pad stuffed under my Montreal Canadiens jersey and my hockey stick. Man, did I have it all goin' on. Two years later, my pads now on the short side and considerably tattered -- the result of two winters of contact with the unforgiving pavement -- my parents thrilled me again with my first set of goalie gloves. The blocker had a blue felt facing and a leather mitten on the back side rather than a full glove and the catching glove looked more like a first baseman's glove than anything the NHL goalies wore, but it didn't matter. Along with my wire catcher's mask, these beginner gloves completed my goalie attire. I wore those gloves around the house and often, when watching TV, I took to throwing a puck in the catching glove over and over and over again. Something about the sensation of snaring the puck in that pocket never got old. Those gloves served me well, as I wore them the next two years -- my first in organized hockey. My first year on a team, I played house league in Burlington. We practiced Thursday nights on this outdoor half-sheet of ice at Mountainside Arena. The only thing snowier than the ice surface was the front of my blocker, with that old felt facing holding the snow until little ice pellets formed random intricate patterns all over it. My second season of organized hockey introduced me to another holiday tradition -- hockey tournaments. From that first year of pee-wee hockey in 1972 -- I think it was the Brantford Firefighters Tourney -- I played in a holiday tournament until I turned pro in 1984. Officially, I guess, the final holiday tournament that I competed in was the Izvestia Tournament in Moscow. Let's just say that it was a thrill to participate in that traditional tournament, rather than get into the details of the results (our opening-game loss to the Soviet National Team wasn’t pretty). Over the years, though, holiday hockey tournaments provided some of my more vivid recollections. The best tournament team I ever played on was my first-year bantam squad in Oshawa. We won all seven tournaments we entered that season, including the holiday offering in Peterborough -- our most bitter rival. In college, there were a couple of highlights, including winning at Lake Placid in 1982 as a senior at Cornell University -- the site of the historic USA Olympic Miracle on Ice triumph making it special. My sophomore year at Cornell we traveled all the way to Colorado Springs for the Broadmoor Classic. At the time, it was the farthest hockey trip I had ever been on. We won there as well, and I recorded my first-ever collegiate shutout (does it really matter that we beat Air Force 7-0, outshooting them something like 58-11?). A more lasting impression from that trip involves the cowboy hats my goaltending partner Brian Hayward and I donned to head west. We thought we were stylin'. I have the faded photos to prove that neither of us looked particularly sharp under a ten-gallon lid. But we sure had fun. So wherever your travels take you, enjoy the season. And enjoy the hockey. Together, they are memories in the making. Darren Eliot, a former NHL goaltender, is a hockey analyst for CNNSI.com.
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