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Z0REM · 11-23-2020, 09:20 AM

(3057 Words)

Nothing quite beats that anticipation you have before the regular season begins. Preseason is helpful because it help you get the jitters out, but at the end of the day you know these games are light hearted and that neither team is skating as hard as they can. It’s no indication that you are going to do badly or even succeed.

So here I am, in the Rage locker room going over my gear before the last preseason sim. I sit on the bench in front of my locker where #17 has proudly been on display for the last three seasons. I have nothing to regret as I have put everything on the table each year and have left better than the season before. So now instead of the rabid paranoia and nervousness that accompanies the first 3 seasons, I am able to calmly sit here and stare at my skates. Well to be honest, I am not staring at my skates, I have my sharpener in my hand and I am moving it along to finely hone the blade. I think there is a lost art to doing your own sharpening, too many skaters hand their skates over to the gear manager who does the rest. Gone are the days where as a child I would sit for hours in front of the tv going back and forth with a stone while watching my favorite SHLers battle it out on the frozen arena. Shlik, Shlak, shiiing. A common grinder wont get you that same sound as a stone running back and forth over the length of the blade. Next to be I have an apple. One of the last tests I do with my blade before I know it is ready is to try and peel and entire apple in one go with just the blade of my skates. It’s a fun challenge and one that I steadfastly complete every seasons before the game opener.

I look down and realize that I have been working this edge for almost the right amount of time and sigh with satisfaction that I still have at least an hour with the other skate to get it to perfection. This is my zen time. No one else is in the locker room yet so I get to be surrounded by the jerseys of my teammates both new and old and I get to reflect. I take these reflections seriously, some of the reflections are catered to remembering how my teammates move with the puck, pass, and what preference of lead length they want from a pass. As I close my eyes and really lay into my skate I can feel the tension leaving my body.

Sure I played third line this past season. In technical terms you would see this as a demotion as the season before I was on the first and 2nd line trying to lead from the front, but in another entry of my life I addressed this problem. If we look at the facts, I had my best season as a depth player playing on the third line. While I didn’t always et to face the same quality of opponents as the first and 2nd lines, I know my GM had me in mind when he put me on that line. He wanted me to score. When it comes to hockey no goal is too dirty and no one looks at a puck at the back of the net and says to themselves that the buzzer shouldn’t have gone off. Note this might be different for the opposing team’s goalie. And nothing beats the feeling of having a team rush you for some celebratory hugs and fist bumps. This feeling only intensifies in the playoffs and rises exponentially in the finals.

Shlik, Shlak, Shiiing.

I was 4th in goals for the Rage last season and I sure hope to improve upon that. This season we’ve picked up some more offense pieces so the competition will be steep. I’ve been hitting the gym to work on my strength in front of the net as well as got to participate in a new Rage Olympics this offseason where we basically played our own version of Wipeout.

Let me tell you a little bit about that training hell. We woke up about a week after we had been eliminated. All of us had emails or voicemails telling us that instead of heading back to Manhattan, we would all be meeting up in Florida. A little unsure as to why the managers wanted to reward our early exit, I can confidently tell you that every one of us was excited until we read/heard the next line. Bring your pads and a set of roller skates. Well, I guess it was too much of a good thing to expect that the brass in charge were going to give us an all expense paid vacation, but I wont turn down training outside of the frozen tundra once in a while. So I wish my parents goodbye, I ruffle my dogs ears as hes staying with them, and I head out the door to the airport.

Getting to the airport was pretty simple. I took a bus to a bus, then had to take the train into town, then another bus, and finally a shuttle to the airport. It could have been way worse! But I got there for only $20 so I call that a win. I mentally note to pocket the money I saved from not ride sharing to the Get Dog Bacon fund. I am going to miss my dog. I am a get to the gate early kind of guy, and when I am mean early I mean I was 2 hours early when I got to my gate. So I set up near a plug, jacked some headphones into my phone, and started up Miracle on Ice to be cliché. It’s been a while since we had some serious competition from the Russians, but memory lane is always fun to go down. I get on the plane with no issue and my flight is uneventful. I sign a few autographs, a girl makes some eyes at me and I get her number, and for the rest of the time I was snoozing.

When we land, I am greeted by one of the staff members who is waiting for a few guys to come in before driving us all to the hotel that we will be staying at. It is a cool 95 degrees Fahrenheit and humid. So basically every hockey players dream… yuck. I am already missing the tepid north but at least were doing something new. I settle into the hotel and find out that my roommate is going to be Jukka, I guess they like to keep the younger guys together. Something about bonding and responsibility, but Jukka and I know that what is really going to happen is shenanigans, sudoku, and bars if we can get some free time.

We are told that our time is our own until 9pm and then everyone was meeting in the Planetary conference room for a season review from the coach and planning sessions with the GMs. I quickly nod my head and do some cursory lip service to get the hell out of there while there is still some light out. It’s time to hit the beach!. Sunscreen on, shades over my eyes, and a body board make it down to the beach with me. In no time I am rushing to the waves to get some body surf on. I now some people come to the beach to sit around and do nothing but sunbathe, read, and pick up chicks but that is not me. No sir, no way. I am the kind of guy that gets in the water and only comes out once my skin is so pickled I feel like a 90 year old diva. After a while, I see the telltale signs of the pickling and it comes none too soon as I am dragging myself to get out and catch waves now. Something about the water and sun really made a dent in my stamina for the day but it was so damn refreshing I could not care less.

At the conference we are given a detailed work out plan for the next 2 weeks and what kind of training camp we are doing here in Florida. As you can guess, it was chalk full of runs in the sand, hitting the gym, and a then each day had a ??? for a 4 hour chunk before our wind down gym time. Color me intrigued. I mean I was literally blue all over in anticipation that someone came over and asked if I was alright. I was simply just choking down some excitement. Time to turn in for the night…. PSYCH. Time to be young, dumb, and stupid more like it. I got that girls number from the plane and I decided to give it a call. Turns out she lives nearby and I ask if she has any friends she would want to invite to the bars. I am not going to leave Jukka alone in this room if I can help it. She says yes and I tell Jukka to put on his not game face (that one usually scares the ladies… defensemen…I tell you). We sneak out without the staff seeing us and head downtown to meet up with the girls. It was a long night of disco inferno and educating Jukka in the ways of the American dance clubs (or lack thereof). After getting separated for a few hours I call him on his phone to meet me at a waffle house near by the hotel for some morning nourishment and coffee. We are going to need it. Needless to say the team wasn’t surprised to see Jukka and I walk into the morning training with smiles as wide as the ocean. I look around and I see some of the others look equally as drained and I inwardly smile that I am glad I am not the only one who decided to break the rules to get some R&R.

Morning run on the sand, some ocean swimming, basically whatever the coaches could come up with to challenge our stamina. They wanted us tired out. The day is slowly ticking by and were getting closer to the first surprise. When the hour finally comes we see the staff start giving each other a knowing elbow here and a smile there. They are clearly up to something. The surprise began with all of us grabbing bathing suits and piling into a bus. After a 20 minute drive we get to the giant complex. I am talking like 2 football fields in length and width. It is all enclosed so at this point we still didn’t know what to expect. The moment we get inside it is like a child dreams. A GIANT PLAYSCAPE suspended over a tank of water. One look at the playscape and you could see a lot of moving pieces swinging, gyrating, and oscillating at various speeds. There was some spiel about if you can dodge this then you can dodge that on the ice, and some safety lesson. I was barely listening. Before too long, I was climbing a ladder to the start area of something that looked like a combination of American Ninja Warrior and aforementioned Wipeout. We were told that we simply needed to complete the course once in the next two weeks be able to go back to Manhattan. Failing to complete a course in the allotted 3 hours would result in remedial runs and the right to be ridiculed. Game on.

So at first I thought it was going to be easy. We knew that it wasn’t a straight shot, the path zigzagged and the way the structure was built, you couldn’t see past the first corner. The first to make the charge is David Vent. After a lot of pushing people around and no one wanting to be first, it was good guy vent that stepped up to the challenge. He took a deep breath, and right from the get-go he decided that he was going to just scream the whole way through the course. So here we are just all lined up (or mobbed up) and David lets out the booming shout as he take a nice running step past the start line. It was a thing of beauty really. One second he had it. He slid under the first obstacle trying to ram him off. Jumped from one small pedestal to the next without skipping a beat, and then ran straight into a flipper that knocked him clean off the path. Which was strange because watching the movement of the course, there was nothing there a moment before. We hear some snickering in the background and the next thing we hear is that there are some places that are triggered by motion. Well there goes my idea of being a cool ninja that keeps moving without stopping until completion. After an unfair curveball it seemed like it was none too soon before everyone in front of me had made an error here and there and been knocked into the water. So far no one had even approached the bend.

Ok hero time. I line up with the start line and take a breath. Visualize success, visualize the path to the net where the other team wont be. Pick up the extra space, move to where the puck will be and not where it is. I am ready. I explode. I vault over the first trial (its two foam paddles moving towards each other pretty quickly, with the right time you can jump slap your hand on one and clear it in a single bound). I leap from pedestal to pedestal. Land, pause, the motion activated foam logs swing right in front of me. I get to the moving stair case. It seems like a straightaway, but there are foam blocks moving in different directions. I take my time and jump to each one. I am determined to be slow and steady. I make it to the bridge of death where we are suspended and have to tightrope across. I am almost at the first bend. One wall run and I hit the corner only to be surprised with a foam bat to the face.

Splash

Ok so I got the farthest of all the team so far (there was over half left to run the course) but that ending is just unfair. I swim back to the exit zone and get ready to climb up for round two. On my second try and slipped and fell at the bridge of death. On my third try my slightly wet foot failed to find traction on the wall run. Before we all knew it, it was time to go home as our allotted time was over. The only person who made it past the first bend was David Kastraba and he wasn’t telling anyone what got him.

As the days went by we kept on attacking the challenge with the best of our abilities. We saw little improvement but at least there was improvement. Nights were filled with some fun and games. One day, we scheduled ourselves into a beach volleyball tournament to break up our training into something a little more fun. I was on a team with David Vent and Andrej and we managed to storm up to the finals where we faced our top line of Luke, Ola, and Austin… AND CRUSHED THEM!

I seriously might take up beach volleyball if this hockey thing does not play out for me. It was a lot of fun running and jumping in the sand. And the ladies who watch you play are not a deterrent at all. I noted to myself that I needed to do more research. Although living in Florida would not be great for my dog as it’s a little warm for him.

The days were passing by and I would say that I managed to conquer about 85% of this maze based on looking at it from an outside perspective. At this point I was tied with the team for who had managed to solve certain sections and were able to get by the monstrosity. Of course going into this day, Dave had managed to solve the whole thing, but he was not telling anyone his secrets. Mostly because management was paying his bar tab as long as no one found out so he had no incentive to share with his teammate.

As we all lined up for our runs at the rig I was nervous because I had promised myself that today would be the day that I managed to cruise straight through to the finish line. I was ready.

It was finally my turn to go and I readied up. As soon as the whistle was blown, I tore out of the starting gate like a bull. Leaping here, jumping there, twisting and turning. I was a floating leaf on the wind and nothing could touch me. Spin, swerve, jump, duck. All of it was in perfect rhythm. I was getting to my usual section a slowed down a tad so that I could have all of senses aware.

I finally passed the point of no return and I was in unknown territory. Conscious that at this point anything could happen I was not prepared to almost get to the ending to see management on the other side holding a congrats sign when something trips me out of nowhere! I go down hard into the water below and I am pretty sure I blacked out for a good chunk of minutes. The next thing I remember is waking up in my hotel bed with a slightly embarrassed Dave sitting next to me. Usually not much of a talked all he said was “Sorry, they asked me to trip you.”

Well at least I passed on the penultimate day of our training. So I spent the last day living in the comfort that only this city could provide. Good days for the Manahttan Rage.

Credit to Vulfzilla for the awesome render pic

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