All the Small Things

I average about a thousand photos per game that I sort through during the days they are off.  It's something I really enjoy doing because the photographs slow the game down to frame-by-frame, moment-to-moment. I notice things I didn't and couldn't notice when the game took place.   Habits. Personalities. Slights. Hilarity.  Pain.

After several thousand shots I notice that Simon's mouth is constantly moving whereas his roommate Maxime talks almost entirely through his eyes. Kevin Deeth plays nonstop with his mouth guard, a nervous, worried expression always present.  Tim Crowder sticks his mouth guard nonchalantly out of the left side of his mouth.  Chris Donovan has his, with a calculating glare in his eye, on the right.  Brian Kilburg is always smiling, even when he's asking another man to fight.   Brendan Milnamow is the "King of the Spray-of-Ice" with his abrupt sharp turns and stops, moving about like a cutting horse. Andrew Engelage will take a swig of water when he's frustrated, he slaps the ice back and forth and/or the goalposts with his stick when he's furious.  If he's pissed, the green gatorade water bottle will go sailing through the air halfway across the rink. He also has a frequently itchy nose he cannot scratch. Brock Wilson is a man of almost-as-many-expressions-as-Simon, but when things go awry, he simply shakes his head.  Brett Parnham has only one expression: intense concentration.

I noticed the pain on Maxime's face when his head was slammed hard against the glass by a giant of a defenseman who was once his own teammate.  I'll notice the glee in Giffen Nyren's eyes when he successfully downs an opposing player and the predatory look in Marcus Carroll's as he seeks to steal the puck from the man he is chasing down the boards.   As Simon skates by after failing to make the goal that was entirely his to make, I see the heartache in the bruised color of his eyes, one ear turned to the crowd booing him, another turned to his own whispered curses, curses meant, from the look on his face and in his posture...shoulders curled downward, only for himself.  I could have, I should have, I didn't, he says to the lens. 

I notice other things too.  Things about the opposing team.  I notice that the Alaska Aces goaltender, Coleman, seems to sing to himself when he's all alone.  He slaps the ice with his stick when one of his teammates is seconds from exiting the penalty box.  He fell to his knees and mouthed the word "fuck", face turned to the sky, cursing to no one in particular, when he failed to stand up to a charging Matt Clarke.  I notice Howe's quiet conversations with Simon...and the even quieter conversations between Maxime and his former family,  between Tyler and the Grizzlies he also once called brothers. 

I can see the passion or the lack of it.  I can see the blood, the piece of skin missing from a knuckle, the sweat soaked hair curling at the back of their neck.   I see the penalty that was never called.  The insult and the reply.  I see what others do...the smallest man on the team dropping his gloves against a much larger opponent...but only through the lens do I see that the fight took place not because Kevin was targeted...but because his captain, a man who has defended him in the past, was.

I look at these photos and it's like picking up the epic of Beowulf and wondering if I'll ever truly understand its meaning because it was created by a world to which I do not fully belong.  Even with study, I feel as though I have only scratched at the surface of something that runs much deeper.  People ask me why I love hockey.  Why I think it's the best sport (aside from horseracing) that there is.

This is the answer.  Hockey is like a great lover.  The best always surprise you. You can spend a lifetime with them and never feel you have touched the bottom of the ocean.  They have profound depth.  That is why I love hockey.  It is why I probably always will. Because I will never fully understand it...and I will never stop wishing I did.