MORE Nostalgia …
I love swapping tall tales with old-time hockey geeks!
“THE OLDER I GET... THE BETTER I WAS!”
Let’s start a little blog to tell us your funniest ice pond, parking lot, and
small-time indoor rink tales!
Send
us your tales and I’ll post the best ones!
I’ll start you off with a couple...
I played college hockey for IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology – Chicago).
We only had a club status team, but I seem to remember that we actually
joined the NCAA by my senior year... something like Division ZZZ.
I organized the first IIT team my freshman year.
15 guys showed up to the tryouts... 15 guys made the team!
Go figure!
We played mostly
smaller colleges around the Chicago area, but then again, we played a few big
schools too... like Purdue University, University of Illinois – Chicago, Chicago
State University, and Northern Illinois University.
Purdue didn’t have a varsity hockey team in those days.
It was more like the Purdue Varsity Football Team on skates... all
linebackers, I think!
The first
place we played them was in a brutally cold inflatable building in Lafayette,
Indiana.
The ice was hard as steel,
and slap shots hitting the boards sounded like rifle shots echoing in the woods.
We lost 2 to 0.
The Zamboni
really didn’t need to resurface both ends of the ice between periods...
We didn’t scratch their end up very much.
Someone keeping track on the Purdue bench told me I made 81 saves that
day... my finest hour, I suppose.
We drank with some of the Purdue team at a local restaurant afterwards.
My good friend, Paul (our only “ringer”... looks a little like Bobby
Hull) got stuck paying the drink tab for some of our guys who “dined and
dashed”.
Paul administered suitable
payback at our next practice.
Our road games to Northern Illinois University were probably the most
intimidating.
They usually had
about a thousand fans in attendance.
We had a little guy nicknamed “PJ” on our squad who idolized Keith
Magnuson of the Blackhawks, and the way Magnuson would be the first out onto the
ice... skating tight circles... cutting edges just within the red line to rile
up the fans while he mugged the opposing team... home or away... didn’t matter.
I didn’t exactly appreciate PJ’s Magnuson impression... like throwing raw
meat in front of the enemy!
Well, our guy PJ darts out onto the NIU ice... immediately falls on his face...
gets up... falls again... and again... and again... to the roar of a thousand
howling NIU hockey fans.
Apparently, PJ stepped on a piece of friction tape in the locker room just
before entering the ice!
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