Monday, March 10, 2008

Suspended? I've never even heard that word in the same sentence as my name...


So I joined my brother's hockey team a few months ago, and boy was that a wake up to how out of shape I am. I've been exercising a lot more, and my stamina is about twice as much as it used to be, but I didn't realize how in shape my brother is to do all that. He's a freak of nature to skate for an hour at 110%, literally. Now, for those of you who know, I stopped playing hockey after I lost 2 teeth not too long before my sixteenth birthday. However, I've been coaching my brother's team for a long time and he really wanted me to join his team, and reluctantly I did. My brother is the best player on the team, and while I'm nowhere NEAR as good as he is, I'm not in the bottom half either. I'm a fence straddler...
My first game, I played defense cause I didn't have the stamina to keep going up on offense and then back checking on defense. I got burned 3 times and had three goals scored when my line was out. Then someone told me that's the opposite of what I'm supposed to be doing. "Wait, I'm NOT supposed to let them score? CRAP!". I like to call that "Things that would have been nice to know yesterday." My brother gave me some pointers and showed me a few things, which is weird cause I've been teaching him since he was 7 or 8. But the kid's good and I'm not gonna argue with someone who will play professional roller hockey next year, and will probably play in the junior Olympics. I may be dumb, but I ain't stoopid. The next game I broke up 6 or 7 plays including a few 2 on 1's, pulled a Sidney Crosby style move faking out a defense man by turning my back to him, bouncing the puck off the boards, and spinning around him, and later in the game, scored a back handed goal. I was really looking forward to last night's game and hoping to score at least one more goal. Well, we played a team called the Colorado Cons, and not as in con-artists. My player says that one of the guys just got out of jail for murder, no joke. Hmmmm... kinda scary, but ok. I played a solid 4 minutes in the first period and then I went out for the last 3 or so minutes of the period. Well, time's up and the whistle blows. My brother has the puck on the boards and this guy takes both hands and hits him in the back of the head, face first into the glass. (Quick interruption; this league? It's for adults, but not like professional adults. It's an adult rec league, but in reality it's a league for people who've never played and some people who are kinda good.) My brother takes one hand and shoves the guy(#43) off. #43 grabs my brother's stick and hits him across the stomach and starts swinging on him with one hand, and drops the stick trying to grab my brother's jersey to pull him into his punches with the other. I immediately skate over and shove #43 and he hits me in the face mask. What seemed like an eternity later, the referees showed up and pulled us apart. He got thrown out for that game and his next game. The bad news? The rink has a no tolerance policy for fighting and established a "3rd man in" rule for fighting; basically stating that if you enter a fight as the 3rd man, it's an immediate game misconduct and a "game and a game" suspension, interpreted: I got thrown out of last night's game and tonight's game. Major suckness. I'd like to think that if I knew I was going to get thrown out, I would have just shot in on the guy, taken him to the ground and beat his head in; but I know that's not the truth. I'm not that kind of person, I just wanted to protect my brother, which is why I never threw a punch. In reality, I never even connected much with my shoves, I just distracted him long enough for my brother to skate off and get the refs in. I'm upset that I'm missing the game tonight, but I'm glad that I was able to protect my brother. He's a crap-load bigger than me, but he's a total softy. He never even threw a punch either, he was just gonna keep dodging them til the refs came. My fear was that this guy just wanted to take him out of the game by hurting him, so I stepped in. I'm not a brawler, but I know that one day soon, when I'm a cop, there's gonna be a lot of fights I'll be in, and I'm kinda glad that I got a little experience and I'm not afraid to defend those who can't (in this case won't) defend themselves. That's my heart-touching story of the day... later.

5 comments:

Randy said...

WOW! I guess I totally saw this in a different light. MAN... what was I looking at... wow

"Cowboy" Cody said...

I'm afraid I like your take on things a lot more. Please disregard this post at completely inaccurate and read Randy's version. It paints me in a much better light...

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Randy's recount of the event made me feel as if I was there... and here is what I saw: http://www.direenworks.com/jdblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/hockey_03081.jpg

Randy said...

James's picture has now been added to the historical document.