Evolution sucks!

It may be one of the hardest things to admit for a good red-blooded Canadian, but here goes: I suck as a hockey player!

For anyone who's played with me over the years, this revelation is on par with "gas prices are going up," "there are idiots driving amongst us in Kingston," and "gee, TV is really getting bad!" My dad had me read "Hockey, Here's Howe" cover to cover when I was a kid. Didn't help one bit. I played three years of outdoor shinny in my formative years in Kenora. Nothing. Later in life (my 20's) I got the hockey bug so bad that my wife had to do an intervention to pare things down to just 6 games per week.

And still, my hockey skills never seemed to rise to the level of the effort I put in to them.

Right from the beginning though, I learned that "other" way of making the score sheet: penalties! With the exception of spearing and fighting, I think I managed to spend time in the sin bin for every possible infraction. I still have the distinction of being the only Labatt's League player ever to be assessed 3 minutes in the box for hauling down my own player!

There's something haywire in most male minds that turns us into hacking, slashing, high-sticking morons as soon as we get a hockey stick in our hands. I am a proud member of this fraternity.

About ten years ago, I hung up my skates, and hid my stick away, deciding that I just didn't want to be that person anymore. I played one last tournament (got in a fight), and one ball-hockey tourney (earned the ire of every team for my stick work), but that was it.

But I got the bug again at the last Fronts game at the M Centre. All the good stuff about playing came back to me. Hauling the gear into a too-small change room...staking out a place. Taping my stick just right. Taping my skates just right. Taping my pads. Tape! Gawd how I miss hockey tape!!! Then there's the warm up, where you assess the other team, crank off some feeble slap shots to get your goalie into it and even try to figure out which officials showed up, so you know what you can and can't get away with. The up and down the ice action of the game...the penalties! Even after the game when you sit sweaty, stinking and sore trying to peel off the layers of wet gear, while talking a better game than the one you just played. I miss it so badly!

So I signed up to play in the ball hockey tournament put on by Startek last weekend. As soon as I showed up, I knew I was in trouble. This wasn't going to be a "fun" mixed-gender, no-skills bunch. No, these were the usual bunch of has-beens, would-have-beens, and never-coulda-beens out hacking away at the ball and more often, each other.

My first shift was great. I got my face right into it and scored a cheesy one. By my second one though, my stick was getting up, and I was grabbing, pushing, bumping and basically working my way into getting a well-deserved two-hander. But for once, it wasn't just me! This whole tournament was full of hackers. I'm so glad the Big Brothers (who were the benefactors of the day) didn't bring out any of their little Brothers to see it.

The older, slower and less-skilled the player was, the more apt he (never she) was at those nasty little slashes on the ankle, or the ever-popular awful slap shot into a crowd of unprotected and unsuspecting players.

We lost all three games, even though our goalie stood on his head. We played them all close, but just ran out of gas by the end of each game.

For the past ten years I've turned my attention to a completely different past time from hockey. Triathlon has taken over my spare time. I love the training, the racing, the challenging of what I used to think were my limits. With the exception of the swim, it's relatively no-contact. The only thing close to a penalty was the course marshall who cautioned me about drafting the bike in front of me (which I wasn't).

After a six hour plus tri, I'm usually pretty tired, kinda sore and starved.

Today, one day after my first hockey tournament in a decade, I'm sporting some interesting bruises, my muscles are so sore that I'm walking like a 90 year old, and my back has never felt so sore.

Think I'll stop into Canadian Tire on the way home today and see if they have a good price on that really good hockey tape!