I Dream of Hockey

I lived the same dream…the dream of working in the National Hockey League. As a young eleven-year-old girl, I fell in love with hockey the moment I saw Bobby Orr fly through the air after scoring the winning goal to capture the Stanley Cup for Boston in 1970. At that dramatic moment, I wanted to work in the higher echelon of hockey. I wanted to coach the Boston Bruins, be a public relations director, or take over Dave Hodge’s broadcasting job on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Hockey Night in Canada.

Over the years, I devoured everything I could find on hockey, clipped the daily statistics from the newspaper, while keeping files on every player from professional, junior to minor leagues. I watched Hockey Night in Canada religiously, listened to whatever radio broadcasts I could find, and trekked to as many minor hockey rinks in Edmonton as I could on any given week.

Like many youngsters growing up in Canada, I was consumed by hockey. I never wanted to actually play the game, but it’s all I ever thought about. Ten and even twenty years later, if you would have shaken me out of a deep sleep and quickly asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I would have shouted – work in the NHL.

It’s the common theme I discovered with everyone involved in the game. Whether it was a player, media scribe or administrator, everyone had the same dream. For Canadian players, it began as early as five and six years old – the time they began to play organized hockey.

In my hometown of Edmonton, there was an outdoor hockey rink on every street corner. If it didn’t hold an organized hockey game, the rink was used for unplanned pick-up games. Neighborhood kids and adults trekked to the rink with a stick in hand and their skates thrown over the shoulder. Stepping onto the ice, they’d meet up with friends and strangers, and as long as somebody remembered to bring a puck, there would be a scrimmage. No matter where you stood outside during Edmonton’s urban winters, you could hear the distant sounds of skates, sticks and pucks.

Hundreds of thousands of kids enroll in minor hockey throughout Canada every year. Many of them dream about playing in the NHL. Of those who made it, former minor league player and NHL star right wing Jarome Iginla, fondly remembers:

“It’s the most fun that hockey can be. You get up early for the 8:00 AM games and you can’t sleep the night before. In St. Albert, we had an outdoor rink in every neighborhood. My friends and I used to go there after school, skipping supper sometimes and staying out until after the lights were turned out. While we were practicing and working really hard, we were still having fun. Those are some of my best memories…just being amongst your peers, learning what you could do or couldn’t do and what you could get away with. It gave me a lot of confidence. Some of my best friends today are the guys I played minor hockey with. By the time I got to age 15, it was the time I had to decide if I was going to go away from home to take a more serious approach to hockey.”

Only a limited few get to have their NHL dream become a reality. For the players who do make it, most of them live on the bubble. That means at any given moment, they can be traded or sent down to the minor leagues, regardless of their personal commitment or skill level. This is a part of the game few ever get to see: what happens to players when transactions are made? What happens behind the dream?

The fan’s perception is somewhat limited to what they see during the two to three hours of a game or in the headlines of the media. Back in 1997, I sat down one-on-one with Trevor Kidd, who at the time, was 25 and played goal with Calgary. It’s true the local media had labeled him years prior and he recognized that. When I asked him what the biggest misconception was about him, he replied it was that he was cocky or that he didn’t want to talk to the media. In reality, he was shy. He had a difficult time adjusting to the attention and all the other aspects of the game. I spoke with him after he was traded to Carolina and he was much more relaxed. The media attention was far less and he wasn’t under a continuous microscope.

None of us can know what goes on in the mind of a player. Who knows if that particular day, he just learned his wife has cancer, or that he is playing with a severe muscle pull, has a headache or just learned his best friend has died?

People don’t see the sacrifice of time and family commitments, the physical sacrifices, how much of the day is involved in dry-land training or the fact that players are fresh meat for the taking, of which there’s no better example than the NHL Entry Draft or a trade.

And what about the guy who lives on the bubble? Imagine what it’s like for him to be sent up and down from the minors two or three times and get traded in the same year. How does that affect his family?

Few players will ever complain publicly because they realize how blessed they are to be living their childhood dreams. And yes, the money does compensate for it.

It’s when their playing career ends that they truly realize just how great the dream really was. Some players have a difficult time adjusting to retirement. All they ever knew since they were five and six years old was hockey, and it may have been the only job they ever had. Unless they are lucky enough to transcend into coaching, management, or the media, it’s a difficult process to discover who they are and what they want to do with the rest of their lives. How do you find another job that can even compare to playing out your childhood fantasy?

Everyone who lives the dream will tell you it didn’t come about without hard work and sacrifice. I’m fortunate to be able to identify with some of these individuals and use their stories as encouragement for others to follow their own dreams, regardless of what that might be. Perhaps the strongest message is that these athletes never gave up trying. That sends a signal to you and me that anyone can live their dream if they want it bad enough. Just never give up.