The past few months have seen a lot of hockey. Along with the hockey there came anxiousness, stress, anger, and pain. However, the sport we love also brought us healing and comfort at the same time. Logan ended his first high school hockey season in bitter fashion. Luke’s team made it to the State Championship Finals and lost. My St. Louis Blues Warriors team went through some major changes both good and bad.
This was Logan’s first year not playing club hockey. High school hockey is not nearly the same as club. You don’t spend 5-7 days a week with the team and parents or travel together. It’s two days a week and most of the kids get dropped off to practice or they drive themselves. The parents don’t really hang out like they do in club. There are no team get togethers or happy hours. In club hockey all the kids on the team are the same ages. High school B teams start at 7th grade and JV and Varsity go freshman to senior. That adds a lot of different dynamics to a team. They are all different skill levels, ages, and of course the addition of high school cliques and peer pressures makes it challenging.
When game time comes you find yourself playing against some of your best friends or hated rivals you have been playing with or against since you were six and now, you’re all teenagers hopped up on testosterone and school pride. Parents find themselves rooting against kids they have loved and treated as their own for years during club hockey and now they are the enemy. It’s really weird. The games also get much more violent and mean spirited. Physically it is boys versus men (and women) with the different ages. There are kids who just decided to learn to play hockey at 15 versus 18 year olds that play for AAA travel teams and their high school.
As a goalie Logan was rostered on all three of his school’s teams. B, JV, and Varsity. There needs to be two goalies for games so when someone was hurt or couldn’t show up Logan would fill in. When the kids who still play for AA and AAA club teams have games for their clubs the JV and Varsity teams play short. So, you not only have a less talented bench you have a bench of wore out kids after the 1st period. If the other team is loaded with kids it makes for a harsh uphill battle. Logan saw more shots than he probably ever has and shot by much older and more skilled players than he’s ever had to face. He won some but lost more.
With some of his closest hockey friends and ours playing for different schools with different schedules we all seemed to drift apart some. As kids do, they made other friends on their teams. Logan’s last game was a 12-0 lost to a prestigious prep school that recruits its hockey players from the highest-level club teams. A loss was almost guaranteed missing some of our top scoring players and having a much shorter bench than theirs. What was unexpected was how the opponents and their parents behaved throughout the game. Thankfully, the game was mercy ruled and over in the 2nd period. From their first goal to the 12th the team and its parents celebrated as if they had never scored a goal before.
Logan’s team barely even made it out of their own zone for the entire game. They recorded only one shot. Logan meanwhile was the lone target in a shooting gallery of expert teenage marksmen. In the 1st period he let in 4 goals. The coach pulled him and put in the 6’4” Senior goalie that Logan began sharing the crease with in the middle of the JV season. He fared no better allowing 3 goals in just a few shots. To no fault of their own. The whole team was just clearly outmatched and outmanned. This is another odd fact of high school hockey that expensive private schools with recruited players play the public schools where pretty much anyone who can stand on skates makes the team.
The 2nd period started 7-0 and coach decided to put Logan back in net. Before the opposing team lined up for the initial face off, several of them skated over to Logan to laugh at him and inform him “not to worry they’d be chasing him right back out of the net.” The next five goals came even though Logan and his team did all they could to fend them off. The other school cheered each goal as if it was the first and congratulated themselves as if they had just pulled off the 1980 Miracle on Ice. It was infuriating. I was extremely proud of my son and his team and how they still gathered around him as if he had won the game instead. Had I been in his place I am fairly certain I would have grabbed hold of whichever smartasses had laughed in my face and I would have messed up theirs.
Logan has never been mercy ruled out of a game. In an ordinary loss it is usually a quiet ride home as he normally blames himself and needs an hour or so to pout and move on. He was not happy about the loss or his performance, but he took it much better than I thought, and he told us how the team told him there was nothing he could have done different. He then decided he wanted to play more hockey and now he’s playing inline hockey for the Spring.
The other night we had an impromptu reunion with several of our long time hockey friends. Most of the kids play for the biggest rival of Logan’s school. After much trash talking they were laughing and getting along like not a second had passed since they hung out together in the hallways of the tournament hotels. We parents laughed and drank and enjoyed each other’s company in much the same way. I realized how much I missed times like these we used to share together for months during club season. As corny as it sounds it was heartwarming. My heart actually felt warm being around several of our old friends that hadn’t been together in a year at least if not longer. Hockey heals.
Luke has had a really cool year with his team. As has been our consistent experience with the St. Peters Hockey Club organization, Luke and his team were not evaluated in any sensible form of the word. Our club’s evaluation process is a blog in and of itself. Suffice it to say Luke’s B3 level evaluation was far off as his team annihilated the first couple of B2 teams we played. We went to Michigan in a B1 tournament and came in second. At another B1/A tournament in Wisconsin we won the championship.
We asked to be re evaluated as a B1 team by playing the other B1 St. Peters teams, but inexplicably we were denied even a scrimmage against a B1 team. We were moved up to B2. Luke’s B2 team lost exactly one regular season game. They have ended up in first place nearly undefeated in a division one level up from where they were evaluated.
We played in another B1 tournament last weekend locally. They did not play their best hockey. They could have won the tournament but did not. We might have all gotten a little cocky and too used to winning. The parents got cranky with the coach. The coach got cranky with the parents. The players got cranky with each other.
Fortunately, a big snowstorm and frigid temperatures rolled into the St. Louis area and it was a holiday weekend. Even though the boys were frustrated with losing the tournament and had lost their cool with each other, almost the entire team ended up together between three houses in sleep overs and they all met at the goalie’s house to skate on his backyard rink. Just like that they were family again and the tough tournament loss was behind them. Luke got to have a day I dreamed about as a kid. Grabbing your skates and stick and heading to a friend’s pond/yard to play hockey all day.
Today Luke played in his first ever State Championship Blue Note Cup game. They were playing a team they had beat three times this year. It did not go how we wanted at all. Luke played his guts out, but just could not get the puck to go where he wanted, but it was not for lack of effort. He fought in front of the net for rebounds and had a couple of beautiful tip shots that just barely missed. Hearts were broken and tears were shed.
However, as they have done all season win or lose the entire team surrounded their goalie and hugged and talked each other up. I was so enormously proud of all of them. They could not have lost any classier. They really did learn this year that you win as a team and you lose as a team. In my favorite moment of the day Logan walked up to Luke first out of the locker room and gave him a huge hug. Normally this would have resulted in a punch to the stomach or knee to the nuts from Luke as he “hates Logan touching him.” Instead, little brother put his head right into Logan’s chest and shed a tear. I wish to the Lord I had had a picture of that moment. I pray that my brain will let me keep that memory for as long as I live.
Our outstanding team manager set us up at a local pub with our own big dining room. I wasn’t sure how this was going to go with how down the boys felt. I thought maybe it would be better to just go home and pout ok I thought it might be better for me to go home and pout. Well, it turned out to be just the thing. Because our team manager is a genius, and I am not. They have a bit of an outside play area and before we knew it they were out there wrestling around, laughing, beating up their older brothers and getting beat up by their sisters. It was awesome. Hockey heals.
Luke has been online with his teammates and his brother (he “hates” playing with his brother) playing video games for hours since we’ve been home. I can hear them laughing at and with each other and Luke’s teammates from both of their bedrooms. Logan understands just how Luke feels, because he almost had a third championship title, but he lost it in a shootout. Shoot outs are stupid. Especially if you’re a goalie parent. Logan didn’t have to really say much except he knew Luke played hard and he knew this really hurt. He also told him he still had time.
Which brings me to another cool story. Due to idiotic COVID restrictions that were not enforced all season, we were only allowed two spectators per kid for the Final game. They issued us different color wristbands we had to wear to get past a security guard to get in the rink. This meant big brother/sister/stepdad/grandma whoever couldn’t go if both parents were going to be there. This is in a 500-600 seat arena. This is completely asinine, but I’m not in the mood for another COVID rant.
Logan had offered to help coach Luke’s goalie at practice for the last couple of practices. A sweet gesture on Logan’s part as he has been nothing even in the neighborhood of sweet for quite some time. I would have had to beg him to skate with his brother’s team a couple of months ago. But he really wanted to do it and the coaches were glad to have him. “B” Luke’s goalie really enjoyed having the older goalie paying him attention and according to his dad actually listened to some things he had been trying to tell B all year, but as you know it’s stupid when your dad says it.
Out of nowhere B’s dad offered his wristband to Logan. He was able to work as a medical officer for the Championship weekend which gave him a backstage pass, so he didn’t need a wristband. We had thought of everything from trying to counterfeit the wristbands or do the movie theater thing and leave the back door open to at least get siblings and grandparents in there.
We as a group decided to follow the stupid rules. In another rare occurrence of brotherly love Logan had said several times after we got the Nazi, I mean communist, sorry the wristband policy Logan got really upset and angry off and on in the days leading up to the game. He said he really wanted to be there to see his brother play. I felt a little guilty even thinking about taking the wristband as their family must have other people to give it to. B’s dad said he wanted Logan to have it out of his appreciation for helping his kid. Goalies got to stick together. He also knew we had been struggling with Logan’s behavior all year and wanted to do something to reward his good behavior. Hockey heals.
That was super cool. We all got to go and I am so glad Logan was there. For the hug and then at the bar where he allowed himself to become a punching bag and a jungle gym for the whole team outside. It was another example of a kind of healing through hockey.
I have already written a blog about what the St. Louis Blues Warriors Hockey Club means to me. If you haven’t read it : https://jackedupdad.com/2020/10/21/the-day-i-forgot-my-pants-at-hockey-practice/
Now it’s been a few months since I wrote that, and the Warriors has become a physical and mental form of therapy I would be devastated to be without. It has had it’s ups and downs for me personally. I have discovered I am better and worse at hockey than I thought. We grew so big so fast we had to split from two teams to four with “Evaluations” (Tryouts) for three travel teams and a “Developmental” non-travel team.
Now my boys have gone through evaluations with their club and school since they were both six. Their parents have stressed and worried and been angry or proud each time. Luckily for the most part regardless of what skill level team they have made and whether they deserved that or not, has really not mattered. We/they ended up with friends and great memories from each team.
Now I was the one skating drills with a guy with a clipboard watching me from the stands. No idea what he’s writing or even what categories/skills he’s evaluating or how I am doing versus my peers. Of course, I want to make a travel team. The first couple of days I was fairly stressed out about it. Then I did a count in my head of people on the ice that day with me and the higher level players that practice on the opposite days of my team. The math I had done had me on the bottom team. Then I just started having fun with it.
At the kid’s tryouts you watch the guys with the clipboards and see if they’re even paying attention when your kid does something good or lays down to make snow angels. You must not speak to the masters of the clipboards or coach/cheer your kid on. Well, I started calling out to our clipboard coach every time I did something good. I made a one-timer I’d yell, “Brooksy, did you see that?” He would nod and I would motion with a fake pen to write it down. When I couldn’t do a crossover if my life depended on it I would look up at him and make the cut it signal hand across throat and shake my head and yell, “Hey forget that one.” One day was so ugly afterwards I just told him to please write me down as “Absent” that day.
Once it was over with I forgot all about it. The teams would be ranked and titled from high skill level to low as Alpha-Delta. I had a pretty good idea who might land on Delta with me and they have become some of my favorite people on earth. I was pretty happy. Then the rosters came out and to my pleasant surprise I had landed on Charlie. Wait what? I am on a travel hockey team?
There were some hurt feelings and some awkwardness for a few days when those rosters came out. Justifiably so I guess. That subject could be another blog, but it won’t be as it is club business that will stay in the club. I will say it was disappointing to see some of the reactions and politicking involved in who made what team and who the new captains would be etc. This club was not supposed to be about all of that. The NHL scouts are not coming for any of us.
This blog is not about any of that at all. It’s about healing. The club had to split up that’s just how it is. The key is to back each other up whether you’re on Alpha or Delta.
I have put the Blue Note on at Enterprise Center and played a game. I have played at two rinks now that my boys have played in club and high school. Now I am going to get on a plane with my team and head to Dallas to play in a tournament. Never in eight million years would I have imagined any of this happening.
These are no kidding childhood/adulthood dreams of mine I am living now. I had to go buy a travel bag for my sticks! I cannot tell you (silly as it sounds) how many times I’ve seen hockey players of all ages grabbing/dropping off stick bags at the baggage line in the airport. I would daydream about how cool it would be to be that guy/girl/kid. I am going to be that guy this weekend.
I have been intentionally purchasing the same things we’ve bought the boys over the years. The good, not the best, but the good sticks, skates, and pads. The monogrammed team logoed garment bag. I cannot tell you how cool that feels. In a ton of ways. I am very blessed to live in a financial state that allows me to do this. I get to live out my hockey fantasy in good gear and wear my Warrior Blue Note proudly on my stupid COVID mask, my warmups, etc. In my previous blog about the Warriors I talk about not being able to afford anything that had anything to do with hockey until I was old enough to get a job. We lived off and on government assistance at times and for a short period I was technically homeless as a teenager. Luckily only spent one night in my car before crashing at a friend’s house for a few weeks. I sure as hell wasn’t buying hockey equipment.
We have a lot of guys still in that situation now. They are living paycheck to paycheck. Some cannot work as they are 100% disabled and/or do not function well in a work environment. Our VA checks don’t go very far at all. Thus far we’ve had Warriors helping other Warriors get jobs and one even was able to get a car donated through the team. When you’ve got a house full of teenagers and one car that sucks right out loud. Every day we are on our team chats and when someone asks for help they get it. As I move through equipment, I offer it up. When I can donate extra or help a teammate out on the side I do it. I am so thankful I can do that. There are many guys/gals on the team who do the same whether you asked for it or not.
Sometimes it is help they did not ask for. One of my teammates came to me a few months ago to tell me he had an alcohol problem. I’m a former crisis counselor, Chaplain’s Assistant, cop (whether cops or cop haters for that matter want to admit it or not we are also counselors of grief, addiction, abuse, etc) and I am a “Fixer” by nature. I have always felt I needed to fix anyone and everyone I knew in crisis. Even as a kid between adults in my family. It has taken many breakdowns and therapy to realize I cannot fix anyone.
I worried I was going to have to try and fix this person by myself. He had asked me not to tell anyone else because he was handling it. When we would drink as a team after practice in the parking lot I’d bring energy drinks or bottles of water so he’d be drinking something, so people wouldn’t offer him a beer. I tried to remember to check on him every day, but I couldn’t always remember to. I’d beat myself up for that. He’d also come to practice smelling of alcohol a couple times. He seemed to avoid me pretty well on those days even when we skated outside of Warriors practice on our own.
Our first skate at Enterprise Center we met at a bar for some pregaming. I had myself some water as I knew my struggling teammate would be there and I didn’t want to make him feel like the odd man out. Plus, I can barely skate my big ass as it is, I definitely don’t need beer weighing me down. Now after the game? Totally different story. So, he gets there and promptly orders a beer at my table. I thought, “Uh oh.” Now what do I do? I’m not going to dime him out in public. If he only has one which he did. But then he went out afterwards I went home, and I see him drinking more on Facebook. Crap.
The next day I reached out to him. Not to judge or scold but see what was happening in his life. He called me and we had a long chat about him being at the bottom or as close to it as he had ever been. To my great relief I wasn’t the only one who knew this. He had good friends on the team from before there was a team. They knew all along his struggles with alcohol and other demons that come home with you from combat. They went to the board and the board immediately intervened in his life. They had a rehab program ready to take him if he was ready to go.
He told me in our phone call he was ready but scared and upset he would be missing our tournament in Dallas. I told him I’d rather have him alive than in TX playing hockey. His girlfriend and kid who I believe were on chance number 2-200 with him would also prefer him in rehab versus Dallas. I was so proud of my hockey club. They weren’t just talking the talk. They walked with him and I know they will walk with all of us. Playing hockey is a bonus to the bonds we have created and help we can lend. Hockey heals.
I have been really wanting to meet with teammates outside of practice, but my boys’ schedule keeps me busy and that’s been sort of unofficially frowned upon with the COVID. That seems to be lightening up a little bit. The other night I met three teammates at a bar and grill to watch the Blues game. We small talked for awhile and then things got real talking divorces, custody battles, financial straits etc. It has amazed me at practice and out of practice how open we will be with each other.
We landed on the subject of suicide which seems to be a common thread with a lot of us. We don’t necessarily get into the war stories of why we would think of something so horrible as a solution. We just talk about the state of mind in that situation. We talk about how we got out of it. We talk about how much we need this team and how much we needed it without knowing it. We were all living separately with this crap on our backs and minds with no one to talk to about it. Yes there is the VA and private therapy etc. None of that is the same as talking to someone who has lived it too. Someone who has been so desperate, and guilt ridden. We joked that things had gotten a bit dark as far as conversation goes, which is awesome to catch before you get too deep in your own depression or walk someone right down with you.
We joked a bit but came back around to that feeling of not being a “normal” person anymore when you come home from wherever/whatever. A lot of us were screwed up before we ever went into the military. Turns out I was fairly jacked up physically in the brain from multiple concussions in football and a car accident. Mentally I had been under siege since I was a kid. Then the Air Force, Secret Squirrel land at Boeing, then a cop, then a stressed to the max corporate security manager responsible for 3,000 employees all over the country and China and a couple more concussions to go with my new or enhanced mental health issues.
I don’t ever talk about the combination of those things in public unless I am majorly drunk. All the sudden sitting there with these guys the stories came flowing out of me. Things I have never told anyone else ever including my therapist and my family. My wife worried it’s dangerous to bring those things up. She’s right it is. I discovered in the right company however, it can be so healing and relieving to say things you would never say to someone you’d known your whole life much less three guys you just met a few months ago, but I knew I could say them and I knew the reaction I would get. At a cocktail party or a hockey gathering I’d get the biggest WTF or disgusted looks for saying what I said. These guys didn’t even blink.
They sat and listened. We had discussed our mutual friend in rehab and so two beers seemed like enough for the night, yet we still sat there and talked for a couple more hours after the beer and after the game. Even though we talked about some horrible stuff and I admitted some really awful things, I walked out of there feeling a hundred pounds lighter with a smile on my face. We had some great big hugs and “I love you mans” without even being drunk. It was awesome and it was in fact healing.
We have a coach that was professional NHL player for years. He had an alcohol problem and it cost him a friend’s life and a huge part of his own life in prison and a halfway house. He wasn’t in the military, but he knows demons. He knows them really well. He doesn’t hide from it. He talks about it at practice when the situation dictates it. Whether it’s a motivational story or just a funny story to lighten up the mood he is free with it. He is a great example of fighting and conquering demons. He says a big help to him is coaching us. I find that astounding as I know I would never have the patience to coach me especially being a pro player. No way.
The St. Louis Blues are an extraordinary organization. Hockey is an extraordinary sport. I will say it again, there is something about the guts it takes to play hockey that seems to bind people together like no other sport from little kids to old men and women. The Blues give second chances like no other professional organization I know of. They have at least two coaches/scouts that have had alcohol and legal issues.
The St. Louis Blues have taken on a group of the most dysfunctional and broken veterans and given us a therapy program we never dreamed of. A support system that is there 24/7. We are some of the most filthy mouthed, heavy drinking, rebellious, angry people they have ever known and yet they have given us the honor of wearing the Blue Note and even put us on TV. We could easily embarrass the organization in any number of ways. I pray that never happens, but they have trusted that the healing hockey brings will be worth the risk and even mitigate the risk. Hockey is used with so many groups of challenged people.
When I worked for Scottrade the online investment company our name and logo was on the current arena now known as Enterprise Center. Due to my position in the company, access to the executive level, my well-known love of hockey and the Blues, I was often rewarded for meeting milestones and company goals, or once for administering CPR to a customer at a company seminar with special access at St. Louis Blues charity events.
The Blues put on a huge, themed poker night every year to raise money for their various charities. Selfishly I used these events to “donate to charity” while also adding to my Blues memorabilia collection through auctions at the event. However, before all the fun former and current players get up and speak and presentations are made about personal stories of Blues employees and recipients of funds or just visits to the hospital. I was not prepared the first year Liz and I went. We learned after that one to bring tissues.
We heard stories of players meeting mainly sick kids. Sure, we see all kinds of athletes doing photo ops at the children’s hospitals. This was not that. This was players initially visiting at Christmas etc for the cameras, but then we saw pictures and heard stories of the individual players giving out their phone numbers and their gamertags so the kids could text them anytime and/or play video games with them. That stuff does not make it on TV. We saw players who let’s face it are mostly just 20 something year old kids themselves going to their terminally ill 10-year-old friend’s house while they’re on hospice to play games with them personally before they died. Zero cameras. The only way we saw pictures were from the kids’ parents.
I am sure there are some athletes in other sports that befriend dying children. I just have never been in a room with any of them and watch them breakdown when they talk about the death of their friend and how much courage and motivation these kids gave them. The kids looked up to them, but not nearly as much as the players looked up to these kids. Year after year we heard story after story like this. Stories of players or the organization make last wishes come true. Stories of players, coaches, and staff running marathons, helping out with the hospital bills and even one now very famous little girl being brought to the ice to celebrate the 2019 Stanley Cup win. Man I just got the chills. Hell yes hockey heals.
In 2019 the Stanley Cup had been making it’s way around town after the players had each had their day with it. One of these days Liz and I just happened to be checking on our friend Stephanie who was being tested at the Siteman Cancer Center to see what kind of cancer she “probably” had and how almost positively treatable it would be. Unfortunately, right before we got there, Stephanie’s world had been torn apart. She was told she had the worst and most aggressive version of leukemia and lymphoma that an adult her age almost never gets and the ones that do have a 15% survival rate.
We walked into the hospital room just minutes after she had received this news. Her husband wasn’t there, because doctors told them they would not have results for hours if not a day and to go on to work and take care of their teenage son (one of Logan’s teammates and buddies) and young daughter who oh by the way has Cystic Fibrosis. There isn’t a word for the emotions in that room. It was me and Liz, Stephanie and her sweet mom. Devastated and in tears hearts broken.
I mostly was angry. I know some huge asshole people that Lord forgive me have earned a diagnosis like this. Stephanie most certainly has not. She has dedicated her entire adult life to educating and counseling kids. I could not understand one, how one of the doctors just went ahead and dropped this bomb on her without her husband there. Two how in the great F is it fair for Stephanie to get this bullshit version of cancer after being assured it would not be this serious, because she was not the right age and too healthy for it.
I wanted to hunt that doctor down and throw him out of the 9th story window. After punching him repeatedly that is. As I paced around the hall, I realized we were surrounded by kids that also had the same diagnosis. It just made me angrier and so incredibly sad.
Right on time in walks hockey. Stephanie’s head nurse was well aware she was a hockey mom and her husband was a massive Blues fan, former college hockey player, and current hockey dad. He told us that the Blues were sending by a special visitor to see the kids in her hall and Stephanie. She asked me to get on the phone with her husband Dan who still hadn’t even heard the news of her dire situation. I had to call him to tell him to hurry up to the hospital, but not why. That was a painful and awkward situation before and after, but that’s another story.
Once Dan got there and been handed the news his life would be turning upside down forever, in walks Blues former player and its greatest ambassador, Bobby Plager. He wheels the Stanley Cup in with him. Not many people wanted the Blues to win the Stanley Cup more than me and Dan. Once they had won, we were actually out with Stephanie and Dan on their boat in much happier times with the Cornell’s homemade Cup cruising around the lake screaming “Champions” and singing “Gloria” over and over again. Drinking a lot of beer in and out of the replica Cup. We had hoped to one day see it around St. Louis, but it didn’t seem like it was going to happen.
Not only did we get to see it, we got to touch it, hold it, hoist it, and sit around it with Stephanie on her hospital bed. For just those few minutes tears and broken hearts turned into smiles and laughs. Her status as a hockey mom earned the real Cup coming to her room first. Bobby could not have been sweeter or more encouraging. He hugged Stephanie and told her, “You’re tough kid, you’re a hockey mom, you’re going to kick this thing’s ass.” Of course, we would trade the Cup for a healthy Stephanie every day in a second. It turned out that Bobby was right. Stephanie is tougher than any odds or doctors gave her credit for. I am so happy to say she has kicked cancer’s ass handily. Not only cancer’s ass, but she got the damn COVID while in treatment which sent her alone to the ICU where she also contracted pneumonia when her immune system was as weak or as non-existent as it could be from all the radiation and chemo. Still she walked out of there on her own in a week.
Now obviously I am not saying the Stanley Cup healed Stephanie of cancer. Stephanie and God as far as I am concerned did that. But that day in those moments it most certainly healed all of us in that room enough for what felt like a dark physical weight to lift out of that room. I could see in Stephanie’s face she had every intention of proving Bobby right and kicking cancer’s ass no matter how ugly it got.
In the boys’ club and high school hockey careers there are some profoundly serious rivalries. Clubs or team names that instantly make us want to fight. Jerky kids and even bigger jerk parents. There have been epic and embarrassing yelling matches, threats, ejections, and even some pushing and shoving and fist fights at kids’ games.
All incredibly sad I admit, but true. Hockey is a violent sport and that tends to wind up the emotions in the stands quite a bit more maybe than some other sports, maybe not. That said, if we see a Facebook message from the club or the kid’s school of a seriously injured, or sick kid, or the tragic death of a hockey parent from the most bitter rival team, every club and school with a hockey team jumps in to help. Meals, money, auctions, special games, t-shirts, jerseys and patches. It doesn’t matter who they play for just that they play.
It is a fact in club and high school hockey. It is a fact amongst hockey fans. For the St. Louis Blues Warriors and myself it is a motto, mantra. “Hockey Heals.” It’s a bit more PC than our internal team motto which is, “We Are a F’ing Family First.” Hockey heals. Hell yes it does.
Jacked Up Dad 