Hockey for the Old

Playing with high school teams can be tough

Howie Hanson

You can find me at the new Duluth Heritage Sports Center a lot these days, skating with the Denfeld, Duluth Central and Northern Stars high school boy's and girl's teams. My wife, the lovely Bethy, says I should bunk there so I won't miss a hastily-organized, 6 a.m. Sunday pick-up game between the Kozy Bar All-Stars versus the Duluth Fire Department Boot-Filler Fundraisers.

"Perhaps you can score a goal and get your name and picture in the paper," she spouts.

Bethy is always looking out for my best mental health, while taming my ultra-ego.

Several of the local high school players I'm hanging out with have commented that I don't skate my age -- 54. A few Hunters even call me grandpa, probably because my hockey whiskers are half gray. They think it's funny when I flick out my fake teeth which hide no-big-deal mouth injuries I suffered when the sport was played without helmets and faceguards.

"Picket-fence chops," one hockey jargon-wise player spouted.

"Ya, old-time hockey, Slap Shot hockey," I joked back. "You know those Carlson brothers in the movie, the guys with the long hair and the black-rimmed, taped glasses, they were from Virginia, Minnesota, and I played against them. They weren't that tough, actually, except for Jack who was big and liked to drop 'em. The way they played in the flick, that's the way it was. Even the fighting. If you were a small fart like I was, you never dropped your stick. Never. And I had big wingers."

"You've also put on a few (pounds) and lost a few (head hairs)," another player joked from across the locker room.

It's been a hoot to lace 'em up again after nearly three decades away from the rink. The good news is high schoolers don't check in summer workouts, so I haven't taken any major hits. I'm competing -- and wearing full gear, including a helmet and half-face shield (Pride won't allow me to wear the full-face wire mask) and participating in all the drills and scrimmages.

My dad, who died recently and never watched me play (he was a professional alcoholic who smoked about three packs of cigarettes a day, which eventually fried his lungs and led to his ultimate death), said I should "get back to skating".

The bad news is my blade of my old Christian wood hockey stick is cracked and frayed. Bethy says I should Duct-tape and Super Glue it back together -- "Just like everything else you fix around the house.

I love that woman.

I witnessed a big-league collision this summer between 86-year-old hockey legend Mark Sertich, who collided with a current UMD women's player at center ice during a pick-up game between the Bulldogs' 1960's alumni versus a makeshift team of current Bulldogs women's players and a few media types.

Sertie and the Bulldogs player collided at center ice, with neither player seeing the other. Bang, they're both out flat on the ice, both nearly unconscious. It was a major-league collision. I was particularly concerned because I had passed the puck in Sertie's skates, setting him up for the shot with a so-called "sucker-pass".

The large crowd and players were relieved when both players shook off the cobwebs and eventually skated to their respective benches, though both rubber-legged. As Huffer Christensen and Pat Francisco and I helped Sertie to the bench, he said, "I've always wanted to run into a young, beautiful woman again, but not that way!"

Classic Sertie, who obviously had not suffered a concussion. Both players never missed a shift for the rest of the game.

Hockey has changed a lot since the early 1970's, when I played in high school. Hockey still isn't brain surgery -- it's still skate-shoot-score. But players -- though bigger and stronger -- are not nearly as creative with the puck and, quite frankly, they don't seem to have as much fun playing the game as we once did.

Sitting in the locker room before and after workouts, players listen respectfully yet are confused when I share that we used to walk up to ten miles to skate on outdoor rinks or frozen ponds (when we weren't walking ten miles in a blizzard to get a book!). I tell them that many times we'd shovel the rink, lake or pond before playing pick-up games with a puck or tennis ball. We'd skate from morning to night, long after they'd close the warming shack and under only a street light or moon light. Eventually, we would get too cold, tired and/or hungry and would head home, but only after removing our skates while sitting on our coats in a snowbank.

"Didn't you feet get cold?" one Hunters player asked?

Weekends were especially special, since we could stay at the rink from 8 a.m. until midnight. They called us rink-rats. We lived at the rink, in good weather and blizzards, and on a good weekend could organize at least a half-dozen hour-long pick-up games. We got by on only vending machine food and drink.

Disappointingly, I've met only one fellow rink-ratter this summer, who not surprisingly is Denfeld's best player: Cody Hotchkin. Short and stocky, he reminds me of another rink rat I played against many times during my youth and high school career --Mark Pavelich. "Pav" skated for Eveleth and the Bulldogs, and later played on the gold-medal winning Miracle on Ice Olympic team in 1980 and later for the New York Rangers. (By the way, I saw the socially-elusive Pav about a year ago. We joked about our high school wars against each other, as opposing centermen. He said he still bears un-healed physical scars of me spearing him during weekly, three-hour scrimmages between our teams at the legendary Eveleth rink).

Anyhow, Hotchkin has Pav's skating, stickhandling and goal-scoring skills. He's the first one on the ice and the last one off. He'd drive the Zamboni, if they've let him. When his teammates leave the ice after practice, he skates stops-and-starts conditioning drills on the unflooded, snowy portions of the rink, and until the Zamboni drive honks on his horn to order him off the ice.

Hotchkin desperately wants to play at UMD. He's a local kid, with big-time talent. And though I've spoken with Bulldogs coach Scott Sandelin about Hotchkin, I'm afraid he might slip away to another Division I school.

Amateur hockey is big business. Icetime averages about $145 an hour, which players' parents cough up for practices. Equipment is a little pricey, though not off-the-charts, and all the best players skate full-time during the summer, and elite teams play in tournaments. The economic impact for communities hosting tourneys is significant.

Duluth-Superior-Hermantown has hosted several weekend tournaments and various instructional camps this summer, at the various indoor rinks. Most of the teams and camp attendees are from out of the area -- mostly from the Twin Cities, it appears to me -- so local hotel-motels and restaurants are getting a significant bump in traffic. And hockey parents spend money.

I'm a hockey nut, so I might pen more about hockey in future blogs. In the meantime, find me playing old-time hockey and not acting my age with the preps at the Heritage Center. Bethy knows where to find me.

Veteran journalist Howie Hanson publishes The Duluth Journal, a website dedicated to community news, and Duluth2, a local sports website.