Any Canadian hockey parent will tell you that the best hot chocolate is found in the neighbourhood arena, not that the taste is any better, but it just goes down better there, when you cradle the styrofoam cup to get precious warmth to your hands.  The warm fragrance in the steam rises to replace the odour of the ice-making equipment and "eau de la hockey bag."

The smiles are geniune. There is something about getting up at 5:00 am to warm up the car and get your would be Gretzky or Mahovolich dressed and ready for a 6:15 game. The car salesman, the bank teller, the foreman down at the plant are now just hockey parents. Little legs in socks and shin pads carry the armoured warrior through the lobby to the dressing room to lace up the skates. The bag boy from the market comes in wearing the green hockey jacket with the golden letters high on the arm; "COACH". Mrs. Thompson's son, who used to deliver your newspaper comes in with his skates and a helmet and a bag that holds a striped shirt and a whistle. Luigi, the zamboni driver makes his rounds, preparing the ice for the first game.

A quick look up at the clock tells you there's time to go out and brave the cold for one last cigarette before the game starts. The sky that was black when you started out is slowly changing to a steely grey. The sparrows nesting in the heat of the sign-lights are greeting the coming dawn. Hockey parents, huddled together in little groups of two and three, discuss the price of gasoline, or the current situation in East Asia, but as you walk over, the talk becomes, "Well we're playing the first place team today, but I think we can take them."

There's always one kid who gets there just in time to throw on the skates just before the team heads out to the ice. His mother smiles as she walks by, "Car wouldn't start. I had to get a boost." The rest of the parents, smile and nod their heads. They've been there.
 

You look down the other end. There's that number 4 who got that late goal the last time we played them. There's Johnny number 17, he was on your team last year. You look for number 99, or 88, or 9 or 16. That kid's good, wish we had him on our team. There's number 2. He looks too big to be playing at this level.

Like choreography the players line up to shoot a few into the pads, or to let the goalie grab a few with the glove. There's always one who tries something fancy and the puck ends up in the corner, or up over the glass at the end. The rink rats, jump off the stands and race for the puck, this is their opportunity to take part. Their game is later, but dad isn't making two trips. They go down near the zamboni gate and fish a couple of broken sticks out of the beat up old garbage can, and flatten a coffee cup or a milk carton and get their own game going down in the corner.

The outcome doesn't matter. Everybody wants to win, but only one team will. It is the means that justifies the end in hockey. It isn't a result, or a product, it is an exercise, a work in progress. The kids are having fun, but they have to work at it. Don't tell them they're learning teamwork, they don't want to know that. Don't tell them that dealing with their coach will teach them how to get along with their boss later in life. Don't tell them that winning and loosing will teach them how to deal with the ups and downs that life throws at you. They are playing.

I have seen the smile on my son's face when he plays hockey, unlike any other smile I have ever seen on his face. He played forward usually, but also played most of one season in net. One game with his team behind and pressing for the equalizer, he stopped three clear breakways in five minutes, two against the star player of the other team. The smile on his face as the play moved back out of his zone and into the other team's end was worth every early morning, every gallon of gas, every dollar for ice time and equipment, every time I took him out to practice skating. It doesn't matter that his team came back to win that game, it isn't the end. It was the moment. He was enjoying himself in that moment.

As Canadians, we enjoy hockey, we live and die by the fortunes of our national teams. We cheer for our local professional team. We wear our teams colours proudly (Habs fans), defiantly (Leaf fans). We watch, we read the sports section, we talk about the latest trades. But the real hockey isn't on tv. Hockey heroes? Gretzky?, Hull?, Beliveau? I suppose. But the real heroes of hockey are the coaches and league organizers and parents, who brave the cold Canadian mornings in whatever weather is thrown their way. The reason we love hockey is found in the steam of the hot chocolate at the local arena.

wolf6656