The Locker Room

Once inside Suburban Ice, the local rink, it’s easily recognizable as an ice rink. First, from the cool temperatures radiated from the ice, even in the summer it’s a nippy sixty degrees. Second, by the smell of the place; it doesn’t matter where you are in the building with two sheets of ice, the stench of sweat is everywhere. The smell emanates from the locker rooms, which have barely enough room for twelve or thirteen guys and their gear to sit and change. The cinder block walls have recently been painted light blue, and look good for cinder block walls. The old fluorescent lights are adequate; the floor is soft rubber tiles so the skates don’t get ruined. Players sit on wooden benches with hooks for their cloths behind them. Although the room is washed down and sanitized daily, it still has a disgusting odor that will never go away.

Naturally, I am one of the first to arrive. I leave my two hockey sticks at the battered wooden rack by the door, turn right into the main room and lay my huge bag by my typical seat in the middle of the back wall. I then head out to the hallway to stretch for ten minutes and watch an AAA girl’s team finish up practicing. These girls skate twice as fast as anyone on our team and handle the puck like they were born with a stick in their hands; as back to back state champs, they probably were. I go back in the locker room to change. I joke with Billy Beer and the others that we should wait until the girls are out of the building before we get on the ice to risk embarrassment.

I see the team cooler is in the middle of the room next to a large grey garbage can lined with a black plastic bag. The bag is filled with dozens of the familiar blue and white Labatts cans. After our game we’ll add another couple of dozen empties. This is a beer league and having a good supply of suds is more important than winning. The guys retell the story often of when one teammate, Randy, forgot the beer on his turn. They told Randy, who didn’t even drink, that once they were up by four goals he would have to go out and get beer. Less than twenty minutes into the game they were up four to zero. One of the guys on the bench tossed Randy the locker room key on the ice as he was heading to the bench. Stunned, Randy picked up the keys and came back with two cases just as the game was ending.

Tonight we slowly skate off of the ice worn out and with our heads down. The other team was cheerful and energetic. No one would have to look at the scoreboard to know who won and who lost this game. I’ve been on the wrong end of the score hundreds of times before, and although I never like it, I can accept it when we play hard or loose to a better team. On this night the other team was better, however they definitely weren’t more skilled than us. They just worked a little harder going after every puck. On the first shift I went to the corner to the left of our net thinking I would get a shot off only to have one of the opposition grab the puck from in front of me. Afterward I went harder to the puck and got most of them, although I was usually contested, however many of my USA teammates never picked up the pace. As I watched from the beat-up bench while trying to catch my breath, it was very apparent that team Canada beat us to the puck nearly every time. Chalk this loss up to lack of effort, so let’s learn from it and move on. What I learned is that I need to give one hundred percent every second I am on the ice. To do this I need to get in hockey shape, not beer shape.

Back in the locker room the mood was somber. Several recapped the game and complained about our lack of effort and complete inability to get the puck out of our zone. Blue Light were handed out by Chris to most of the players and were downed very slowly as we changed. The air was heavy with sweat and body odor, so much so you wonder why anyone would sit in here longer than they would have to. Was having a beer with the guys that enjoyable? As usual, the conversation migrated to juvenile insults and jokes. In many cases they were the same jokes from last week and the week before. Predictably, we made fun of how odd the goalie is, like all goalies. After all, would a sane person willingly let a hard piece of rubber come sailing at their head at one hundred and ten miles per hour? Perhaps this is why men long past their athletic prime, men that can barely skate and handle a puck come out week after week to sit in a stinking locker room and drink beers. I guess it beats sitting on your butt at home or at a bar.