Why Hockey Matters To Me

Growing up, hockey was my favorite sport and it still is.

We grew up in an abusive home. My dad was prone to loud, angry and sometimes violent outbursts, he hit my mom - he hit us. My mom tried and did the best she could to protect us, but you can never stop everything that's going to happen. Once when I poked my head from my room to see if my mom was okay during one of their louder fights he hurled a chair at me from the kitchen table. I was 8 years old.

Kolby & I at a Winterhawks game this March

The way I coped was to escape. I would hide in my closet and watch hockey. Nothing else could get in, it was just me, Jaromir Jagr and Mario Lemieux.

My brother and I grew up going to Winterhawks games together. We would scrounge up enough money to buy tickets, drive the 45 minutes into Portland, stopping only at Taco Bell for the proper pre-game nutrition, and then settle into the old coliseum seats to watch the Hawks get shelled by basically whoever they were playing that night.


We loved hockey. It was our favorite sport in PE, we both begged our mom to let us play, but the nearest rink was over an hour away - add on top of that registration fees, equipment and whatever else we might need, it was just too expensive for our family.

So we watched. We watched any and all hockey we could find and dreamed of playing ourselves, even though we knew we never would.  

During this time my brother grew an unhealthy aversion toward Kurtis Mucha, the Hawks netminder who was only slightly less terrible than the rest of the roster. Alright, he was decent actually, I just liked to rag on him because my brother liked him so much - I didn't really have a favorite player, that's how bad those teams were (I guess I liked Colton Sceviour, but he was traded and whatever).

This was a pretty bleak time for Kolby and I's hockey fandom, the Pittsburgh Penguins were no peach during this run of years either pre-Sidney Crosby. The early 2000's Hawks were marred by four straight 1st round playoff exits from 2001-2005, then came the dark ages. Missing the playoffs in 2007, 2008 and 2009 - finishing dead last in the U.S. Division each year. In 2007, they won 11 games in a 72 game season.

2014 Teddy Bear Toss Game

They sucked.

But we didn't care.

I was in college by now and Kolby was in high school. We were both busy but we would still make time over winter break to catch a game. We would laugh about how bad the team was in between hurling insults at management, coaching, player development and whomever else we could think of that were somehow forcing this awful team down our throats.

Me and Lord Stanley's Cup

Then we would remind each other that the players on the ice were our own age (if not slightly younger or older give or take a year or two) and that somehow galvanized us into Hawkey fans even more. An imperfect adolescent hockey team with distinct disadvantages trying to overcome the monstrous opponent put in front of them night after night. It made sense to us. So, we cheered.

Then something happened.

They quit sucking.

Nino Neiddereiter, Brad Ross, Ryan Johansen, Mac Carruth, Ty Rattie, Derick Pouliot and on and on and on.

We saw our first playoff game together on March, 20th 2010 when the Hawks played Spokane. They lost 5-4 (Kyle Beach can fuck off to this day). Eventually Portland won the division and two heartbreaking finals losses later a championship.

Kolby and I would still catch a game or two every year. We haven't missed a season since 2002.

So as I watched the Hawks battle and slog through a gutty win in game 4 to take a 3-1 series lead over Victoria I felt relief. Not relief that the Hawks season would advance, or that they could defend their WHL title, but that the season and time with the person I am closest with wasn't done yet.

Champions

In 2009, the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup, in game 7, over the Detroit Red Wings. I was over at a friends house for a BBQ and watched the game mostly by myself in their living room. Watching Crosby hoist the cup I called my brother who was watching back home, we cried...okay, we didn't just cry, we ugly cried and sobbed and then ugly cried some more. Not because they had won a championship, I think, but because of some type of vindication for what we had been through.

Like it was worth it.

Last year the Winterhawks won the WHL championship. I called Kolby again. We didn't cry this time, but we reminisced. We talked about how bad those teams were, about the mostly empty arenas, about his fascination with Mucha, about how the hockey wasn't necessarily what brought us there, but the time to be together where we had always felt safe.

At that BBQ, in 2009, after the game a friend said to me, "You know that you didn't win anything, right?"

He couldn't have been more wrong.