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MuNk22 · 11-29-2024, 12:03 AM

The lost pucks are found at Washington Park when the winter melts away. The frozen rubber pucks are found beneath the soft snow. Our jackets are unzipped and our gloves are off. The sun is out, heating the cool landscape up to forty degrees; the first signs that winter is loosening it's grip on Madison. We uncover the lost pucks from the wet snow like they're some mysterious treasure from years ago.

But in reality, they've only sat in the snow from a few weeks to a few months, likely from a slapshot that went over the boards into the darkness of night. Or a deflection off the post, flying out of play. Or perhaps a resting puck fell off the top of the boards when no one else was looking, jostled off its perch into the snow from someone jumping over the boards.

However it became lost, there was likely a ten minute search trudging through the snow with skates on, using the blade of the stick to shovel away snow in search of the black piece of rubber. Finding a black puck within the contrast of the white snow sounds like it would be an easy task but could actually prove quite challenging, especially at night.

The lost puck could've been five, ten, or twenty feet away from the rink, depending on how hard it was shot. You'd never know unless the snow was hard and crispy on its surface, which left the puck laying on top of the snow. If the snow was drier and fluffy, the puck would be buried immediately, leaving the whereabouts of the puck to your memory or any witness's memory as to where it landed. Eventually, they'd give up on the search and use another puck.

On our spring search, we'd wipe the snow off of these pucks to reveal their scratches, chips, and faded logos: Koho, Bauer, Cooper, Dick's Sporting Goods. We'd even find another kid's initials carved into the puck, as if that would help find its owner. If we were lucky, we'd hit the jackpot by finding an official game puck from a SHL team we knew. Those kids were brave for using such an expensive puck at the park rink.

Each scratch or chip out of the puck held a story. It had history. It was worn. Used. Played with. One way a puck's history began was with a game. A game where at the start, teams were selected by having all the kids throw their stick into a pile in the center of the rink. Typically the youngest player then pulled his hat over his eyes, picking teams by throwing each stick to opposite sides. After adjusting the randomized teams for fairness by moving a better player to a weaker team, the game would begin at five versus five with everyone else sitting on top of the boards, waiting for someone else to get tired so they could be swapped into the game.

The game would be played one of two ways: using the posts or boards. With posts, the puck would have to be lifted off the ice to hit the posts, crossbar, or inner posts within the interior of the metal goal structure. Playing using the boards would consist of turning the goal around and placing it roughly a foot away from the back boards. The puck would then have to be bounced off the boards then into the net via the small opening.

There were never any goaltenders. There were never any helmets or pads. Our only protection consisted of the winter clothes we wore to keep warm. We simply looked out for one another by not hitting or lifting the puck when others were nearby. Remarkably, injuries were rare.

During this Saturday night game illuminated by huge lights mounted upon wooden posts, pucks were shot over the boards and never found until spring. With an earthly aroma in the air and the melting snow seeping through our boots, making our socks wet, my brother and I would stuff our collected pucks in coat pockets or in our jean's pockets. We'd keep them for next winter. We'd keep them as mementos. We'd keep them just because searching for them was something fun to do on an otherwise boring spring day.

Today, I find those lost pucks in my basement. I find them in the bottom of my childhood hockey bag as if they were lost again, only to be found at ten thirty at night in a dimly lit basement. They wait there in that hockey bag, waiting to be found again. Waiting to be dropped on a cold sheet of ice. I show them to my kids, showing them how I put them in the freezer before we go to the park so the pucks wouldn't bounce when we played. I tell them what hockey at the park was like when I was a kid and what it meant to me. I tell them how finding these small black rubber discs created such profound memories that later developed into a lifelong love of hockey.

In the SHL offseason, I drove to home to Madison to see what once was the hockey rink now turned into a large field of mud. Like a puck lost in the snow, it was erased. The boards. The lights. Gone, to only exist in our memories as a time bygone.

I came flew from Philadelphia back home for Thanksgiving later that year to find a baseball field with shiny new fencing, elaborate dugouts and perfect grass replacing that hockey rink. The Thanksgiving night was perfect hockey weather: 26 degrees with light flurries coming down. On a night similar to this, my brother and I would skate and skate until the lights turned off.

What was lost was more than just a few pucks shot over the boards. More than floodlights shining on the ice. More than painted, warped wood surrounding that sheet of ice. More than metal fencing at each end of the rink. More than the game of hockey itself.

But can what we lost be regained? Perhaps the climate crisis makes it nearly impossible for those ideal ice conditions to last long enough anyways. I don't know but when I saw that rink torn down, it felt like my childhood home was torn down.

Skating on that sheet of ice was my home in the winter, my escape from the normal world. And when homes are torn down and never rebuilt, where's the next generation going to turn to? Certainly, not the game of hockey.

Words: 1099

***Acsolap*** · 11-29-2024, 11:25 AM

Damn what a nice piece of writing. As a newish dad it really made me think about the things that I had as a kid that my boy will never get to experience due to changes in both society and the climate.

Credit to Ml002, King, Wasty, Carpy, Bruins10, Rum_Ham, Turd Ferguson, Ragnar and Enigmatic for the sigs.
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