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The Hockey Dad Chronicles
Episode 5
A few weeks ago, I drove my son to Cincy for a youth hockey tournament. The rolling hills near the Ohio reminded me of Western Pennsylvania. I was born in Western Pa., and I"d also lived there a bit later in life. My son had seen his first hockey game in Johnstown, Penn., at the Johnstown War Memorial. The venue sat maybe 3,000, and was packed for each and every game. My son was about 3 at the time. Johnstown had always been a hockey town. The Johnstown Jets had been the inspiration for the Charlestown Chiefs, the fictional team in the movie Slap Shot. The Jets had been disbanded, and when hockey returned to Johnstown, the franchise had chosen the nickname "Chiefs" to honor the film in return. (The Chiefs" style of play mirrored the film quite a bit, too - fighting was so common the locals decided to sit a priest next to the penalty box so that everybody on the team made it to confession.) A good bit of the film had been shot inside the War Memorial - as well as some incredibly depressing exterior footage. When my son received a small plastic hockey stick as a gift, he immediately set about turning our kitchen floor into an ersatz hockey rink. He"d play, stop, drag a stool to the edge of the linoleum and sit down. He"d tell us that the man in the striped shirt had put him in "time out." That single game he"d seen in Johnstown obviously made an impact. One day we saw our boy pushing his little stool back and forth across the tile and making a motorboat noise. "What are you doing?" asked my wife. "Making zamboni!" replied the kid. For the next two years the boy asked if he could play hockey. He wanted jerseys and sticks for Christmas, skates and pads on his birthday. He begged us to take him out to the local rink. He"d grab the top of an orange safety cone and use it like an old man uses a walker, staggering after it with both hands on the point of the cone until his feet began to glide intuitively. My wife and I thought that this would satisfy the child for a year or two longer, mastering the skates before he took the next awful, violent, expensive step. It would"ve, too - if it hadn"t been for that bastard Emilio Estevez. Emilio Estevez played the role of the reluctant hockey coach in a shlocky Disney film called The Mighty Ducks. (Are you picking up the fact that my family watches a whole helluva lot of old sports movies?) He played the role again in D2 and made a cameo in D3. My son thought Emilio Estevez was the coolest guy in the world. My son wanted to play hockey for Emilio Estevez. Why? Well, simple! Emilio Estevez took a rag-tag bunch of misfits and turned them into a winning hockey team! Emilio Estevez discovered that his old nemesis was coaching the very team that the Mighty Ducks had to beat to win it all! Emilio Estevez could"ve voiced the dialogue for this movie in his sleep, it was so freakin" predictable! On the first day that my son went to practice hockey with his very first team, long before standard equipment had been issued by the league, I looked around at the other parents unpacking their sons" and daughters" equipment bags. Each and every last one pulled out a practice jersey that featured a cartoon image of a waterfowl and block green typeface that read Mighty Ducks. The parents exchanged glances, made eye contact. We all knew what had passed between us. We had all made the same unspoken pact. Should any one of us happen to ever encounter Emilio Estevez, it was now our solemn obligation to drop the gloves and belt him dead in the face. Wank & O"Brien make zamboni every weekday morning on RadioNow, 93.1.
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