Good Stuff

My nine-year-old's regular hockey season finished a couple weeks ago. We live in a community of about 1,700 which is about 10 minutes away from a city of 250,000. My kid’s team is pretty good even though in a community this small, anyone who wants to play gets to play. Well, the coach of a girls team in the “city” phoned to see if we wanted a wind-up, year end exhibition game. “Just for fun.” Our coach phoned around. Enough guys for three lines wanted to play (mine included) and so it was set up.

Did I mention that in the city, only the best get to play?

You should have heard the boys in the dressing room. To call it optimistic would be an understatement. Remember, each of our guys still thinks he’s going to play in the NHL.

“Girls! We’re gonna win tonight boys.”

Oh, how wrong they were. Those girls put on a hockey clinic that was beautiful to watch. They just came in wave, after wave, after wave. And check! I’ve never seen so many of our guys picking themselves up off the ice.

I think our guys only had four shots on net and crossed their blue line maybe eight times. In the whole game! The final score was four nothing for the girls but only because we have a really good goalie. If anyone else had been in goal it could have easily been twelve to nothing.

The dressing room was dead quiet after the came.

“Spanked by a bunch of girls,” as one nine-year-old boy put it solemnly.

The future of women’s hockey in Canada looked good tonight.