Haunted, or Ghosts of Seasons Past

A quick heads-up...if you're looking for factual stuff or rumours, that lot will come tomorrow. Today sees me getting in touch with my inner Jack Falla (if you're a hockey fan and you haven't read "Home Ice" or "Open Ice" yet, then you really should)-although there is a Summer Hockey Watch at the bottom for those who crave on-ice action...

"And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
'Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone..."
Evanescence: "My Immortal"

"In a world where you are possible,
my love,
nothing can go wrong for us."
Frank O'Hara: "Taxicab Song"

Ice-rinks, if you look hard enough, are full of ghosts. The banners commemorating past triumphs and (sometimes) dead teams hanging in the rooftops, occasionally stirring when capricious breezes, which the romantics amongst us would say are caused by the spirits of skaters long-gone passing by, swirl around the rafters. Walk into an empty changing room at any time of the day or night, and if you've got an especially sensitive nose you can smell the many, many kitbags that have passed through the door-the sweat seems to soak into the walls, so that if the light catches them right you can almost see the sheen of many layers of steam and sweat on them. If you've got especially sensitive hearing, or you're the last one left in there after your team-mates have departed, the silence seems full of echoes of the joy, sadness and everything-in-between of every other player who's ever shared that bench with you...just occasionally, you can hear them.

And then there's the eerie experience of sitting in an empty rink after the last competitive game you know you'll attend of a season, whichever team it is that shuts the rink down for the summer. This time round, the game was the women's match between Coventry Phoenix and Peterborough Penguins, played in front of about fifteen people (a match report of which will appear later in the column), but still no less a game for the lack of spectators. After the final buzzer, and the players' departures, the Skydome went dark as the lights were turned off for the public disco session following afterwards, and the ice sat, shimmering whitely in the darkness.

In the real world, current chart hits began pumping out of the speakers at far too loud a volume, and the ice was quiet for only a few seconds before the first of the Saturday night crowd stepped on and the disco lights began tracing their patterns...

But for me, packing away the music box in the stands, in that few seconds and for several more beyond, the ghosts performed again, as they do every season.

The sounds coming through the air were not the vocal stylings of some American teenager, but the roar of hundreds of hockey fans, with the bass note of a goal horn. On the ice, championships were won and lost, goals were scored, players laughed, yelled and cried, and history repeated itself again and again...as those ghosts that inhabit the Skydome raged, raged, once again, against the dying of the hockey season's light.

And then, reality intruded again as Britney (or it may have been Beyoncé) warbled over the speakers with redoubled force. This was it.

See you next season.

There may be sadder combinations of four words in the English language, but few, for those of us who are sometimes called "rink-rats", are laden with such a mixture of sadness and hope...

Sadness because, from the time the first puck drops every year, we know the moment where the ghosts rage is coming, and we're powerless to stop these four words of farewell being uttered once again to friends, team-mates, and acquaintances everywhere, and that there will be several months when part of your life and many familiar faces will simply disappear from view.

But the hope is always there, burning, with the knowledge that these four words aren't a farewell, so much as an "auf Wiedersehen"-when uttered, they're less words of parting, and more a promise that sometime soon, the rink will not be a cold place where hockey is played only by the spirits-and you and the addressee will be there as the ice is once again used for the purpose it's designed for-making dreams come true and memories that will last long after the last goal-light goes out, and even the ghosts cease to play.

And it's this yearly cycle and the moments like this within which give every building in which hockey is played its soul, and contributes to making this sport of ours the greatest one on earth...

Summer Hockey Watch

And now, as promised, a brief report on the game mentioned above...there may be some problems with the orders of the scorers given that I'm having to run off memory thanks to my pen running out...

Coventry Phoenix 5, Peterborough Penguins 0 (English Womens Div 1 (Midlands)

Technically, the Phoenix could still finish second in the division, although given that their winning margin would have to be 51 goals or more in order to do so, the game was played in the manner of a typical dead-rubber end-of-season encounter, but was no less entertaining for that. The home side quickly established the pattern of the game, with the Phoenix forwards setting up camp around Mandy Ferleyko's net despite the best efforts of the Penguins to clear the puck-indeed, the opening period saw the line of Jenny Adams-Hannah-Maurice-Sarah Powell continue right where they'd left off the week before, Powell finding a gap under Ferleyko's pads after three minutes to open the scoring off after her two linemates combined to work her some space. The Phoenix pressure was relentless, with Tam Donoghue enjoying a restful afternoon compared to her Penguins counterpart-she and the Phoenix defensive unit were dealing comfortably with the few Penguins attacks while Ferleyko was channeling Gandalf at the other end in stopping 21 of 23 shots in the period, although she was eventually beaten by Rosie Adey to leave the score 2-0 at the end of the first.

The second period saw more of the same-both Phoenix forward lines, freed somewhat from their defensive responsibilities by the calm play of those behind them, went straight for the jugular, although Ferleyko and her defence put up stern resistance once again. However, a speculative shot from Adams found the smallest of gaps in the wall and crept through almost un-noticed-indeed the puck sat just over the line for a few seconds before Maurice made doubly sure-an action which probably contributed to her being awarded the goal on the game sheet. This was the only goal of the period as the Penguins defended tightly and came close to scoring themselves through Laura Batchelor...

Into the third, and the game seemed to run out of momentum as the season of both teams ended not with a bang, but rather by simply fading away into the ether. That's not to say that the effort wasn't there, or that the two Phoenix goals, scored by Hannah Southam and (I believe-apologies if I'm wrong) Adey again weren't well taken, but the end-of-term-ness of the game was perhaps best summed up by the Phoenix putting all five defenders on the ice as a line for the last ninety seconds in an attempt to get one of them a goal...an attempt which succeeded just too late as Hannah Bridges got the final touch in a scramble just after the clock ran down...

There you go...that's a decent mixture of philosophy and on-ice-action for a Monday afternoon-

Next time (tomorrow or Wednesday) we'll take a look at the latest rumours flying around and react to any signings...keep keeping your eye on the puck...