A word or two about getting cut from a Hockey Team
Let me sh*t bag the team on the bottom of the Bronze league.
It stung. Like getting picked last in grade school gym class stung.
“As acting GM for the Ex Presidents it falls on me to have to let you know that you’ve been relegated from the (squad) for the upcoming Fall season. I’m confident in saying that everyone loves having you on the team and in the locker room but the on ice production is just falling a little short.”
Until that e-mail, I didn’t know our team had a GM. I mean, we played Late Night hockey on the kiddie rink.
But here he was telling me I was relegated. Relegated. By e-mail. From the GM.
I read it again. He was good. He had learned his trade in the corporate sector. And now he was using those skills of professionalism as acting GM to whack me from a hockey team called The Ex Presidents.
Allow me to share a brief history of the Ex Presidents hockey team. They suck. Historically. Not just because the squad routinely had adult men who run summer camps for children get thrown out from games for starting fights with drunken referees. But because we had no real leader. A GM, yes, but not a captain. We did at one time, but that guy had twins and couldn’t hang with the late nights when most Bronze League games were played. He choose diaper exchange and late night feeding over playing a high contact sport that should be banned.
Once he left, the bullies took over. Nothing is funnier or more sad then watching grown ass men take something meant to be fun so seriously. I often wondered what the rest of their lives were like that they would play the game (on the kiddie rink) with that level of intensity.
I get it, losing sucks. But once you get the hang of it, as my character in the Ducks (Averman) says… It’s not that bad.
But all kidding aside, it hurt. You see, I play hockey because it is a great place for me to stand up to my anxiety. I spent a lot of my life afraid someone would pass me the puck. On ice and off. I would tell myself, ‘don’t pass it to me, I’ll miss, I’ll miss.’ And then I would miss.
But playing the game helped me challenge that belief. It helped me make friends with the little critic that lives inside of me. In a way, hockey was therapeutic. I mean I am sure there are better modalities that don’t leave you with high ankle sprains or bruised ribs, but it was the way. I loved the game. And it was a way for me to be bad at something and still enjoy it.
I just needed to find people who loved it the same way I did. I was basically looking for the Ducks. And didn't realize that I had been playing for the Hawks. (For those who don’t know, that’s the villainous team in the film I was in). The only difference between the Ex Presidents and the Hawks is that the Ex-Presidents sucked. The Hawks won. The Ex Presidents didn’t. And aye, there’s the rub.
The problem with our Bronze league was that more and more of the players from the Silver and Gold leagues were recruited as ringers for other more ambitious Bronze league teams who had their eye on the trophy.
For context, Silver and Gold players usually play or had played division one hockey or semi-pro, at least. Needless to say, these ringers would skate circles around us scrubs. On the kiddie rink. Who knows what motivated these mercenaries. Maybe they didn’t get enough love when they were children. All I know is that there is a certain level of hell reserved for people who deliberately play with those below their skill level and then rub their superiority in your face.
Maybe that frequent occurrence was what motivated our unelected GM to want to retool the squad through some money-ball quotient and have me relegated. My only hope was that I wasn’t replaced by some Gold league ringer.
The game is hard enough, but it becomes impossible when you routinely play against players who are way above your level. The margins are just too much in hockey. It moves too fast. Which is why there are levels in skill. But the problem is most hockey players are manboys who work in branding and drive a Tesla. It is true. Not all. But enough to perpetuate the asshole stereotype. That number of assholes may be inflated because a lot of hockey players come from Boston, but I’m not an anthropologist. And assholes do asshol-y things, like beat up on ankle benders for late night delight.
Sadly, those who play hockey in warm weather states often come from money and therefore have privilege, and some of those people with privilege are not very nice people. They are not nice because to gain that privilege in a warm weather state, they usually work in corporate America. The competition that drives our whole society finds its way on the ice. At least the ice in Southern Cal. Time and time again, the people I truly enjoyed playing with had beat up cars, could barely afford the ice time and lived in studio apartments. And often, they came from the Midwest or Canada.
Where ice freezes. Or used to. Out where Ice hockey is only played by a small fraction, that fraction is often elite. And elite people, well, they kinda ruin everything.
So I am a free agent again. It’s been a year and I still haven’t found a team. Maybe I should just stick to what I know best. Hollywood hockey; which is much slower, and pre-determined to have the good guys win.
Oh and if it wasn’t clear, fuck the Ex Presidents.
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(Photo credit Justin Wong Playing Hollywood Hockey)