"I wanted to be like you
I wanted everything
So I tried to be like you
And I got swept away"
Michelle Branch: "All You Wanted"I wanted everything
So I tried to be like you
And I got swept away"
I don't know whether any of you out there have read one of the defining books of sports fandom, that little bit of genius by Nick Hornby known as Fever Pitch. But I have, and while staring at a blank screen trying to think of something to write that wasn't simply a "Panthers sign Cameron Mann-he's quite good"-type post, I suddenly had a flash-thought of just how much of my life is now taken up by hockey, whether it be attempting to play it (badly), writing about it, watching it or discussing it with like-minded lunatics who would rather spend their weekends from August to April shivering in a variety of giant fridges then doing...well, normal things, like going out and getting ratted of a weekend.
Not only that, but later, when I was lying in bed after giving up the idea of writing anything productive and turning the computer off in in a hissy fit, the thought recurred to me, along with the disturbing realisation that there are many, many events in my life that, however obscurely, are linked with either a particular game or a season in my mind, especially as I started watching the sport just as the veil of childhood was lifted and all the things that adolescence and adulthood brings, like first love, first loss of love, the move from school to actually having to live your life, and all the other REALLY MAJOR LIFE STUFF was beginning. This, then, led to the idea of using the blog, just occasionally, to produce something similar to Fever Pitch in a Blaze version. It could be horrific, it could be good, you could cringe like all hell as you get an idea of the person who writes these ramblings and his relationship with this great game of ours, or you could even like it.
Oh-and the title? Blame a good friend of mine for that...my personal choice was "Dreams of Winter" until it was pointed out that this "sounded like an emo porn-film", which, while making me laugh far too much, wasn't exactly the effect I wanted.
Oh, and it will jump around a bit-don't expect it to be in chronological order or anything like that.
Anyway...on we go with the first one...
Life, Love and Gareth Owen (Blaze v Dundee Stars, 2002/2003)
I've always had a soft spot for the underdog...the tenth forward, or the journeyman who rarely gets the ice-time or the notice of his team-mates. Like the back-up goalie, they spend most of their time putting their kit on, sitting on the benches, shouting encouragement to their team-mates, but very rarely get onto the ice or enjoy their moment in the sun-even if their team wins a trophy their presence is often something of an afterthought-their laps of honour come and go, and recognition is little more than a few mentions or empty phrases like "a great guy to have around"...
Gareth Owen, at least where the Coventry Blaze are concerned, was always this player. Signed for his second spell at the club during the BNL title-winning year in 02/03, and remaining at the club for their first Elite League season, he was very rarely seen on the ice, but always entertaining on it. So entertaining, in fact he's spawned his own phenomenon among some Blaze fans, adding to the hockey vocabulary and being immortalized forever in the phrase "the Gizmo Shift":
Gizmo Shift (adj.): a phrase used to describe a passage of play whereby a player steps onto the ice, skates around like a bat out of hell, lands a hit or two, gets nailed with a massive check and touches the puck once or twice in the corners, while hacing a shot that fails to come anywhere near scoring. Named after British hockey player Gareth Owen, who was a master of such shifts and became a crowd favourite for them during his time at the Coventry Blaze.
I always liked Owen...mainly because his style of play appealed to me so much...he was clearly nowhere near the most skilled player on the ice, but he simply didn't (and doesn't to this day) give a flying puck. This approaching life with joyful abandon was something that was far from what I, as a 19-year-old who was always running around in the shadow of more popular friends, generally something of a figure of fun and horrifically, pathologically self-conscious around girls, was able to manage...and in my tortured, prone-to-juvenile-association nineteen-year-old-mind, this whole expenditure of effort and doing his absolute best but always being overshadowed by others in just about every aspect seemed to echo the way I felt about myself...I used to wonder if, like me, he ever, just once or twice, wondered if his moment in the sun was ever going to come or whether he'd be in the background, always considered good to have around, and any success he gained being viewed by the in-crowd as a good thing, as long as he didn't try and get up with the REALLY popular kids. while others took the plaudits, glory and, yes, girls.
Reading that back, you probably get the sense that my late teenage years probably weren't the best of my life, emotionally...and you'd be right. But one of the few nights in that season when I was able to look on the future outside with more than apprehension and something of a dark-tinged outlook was the night in 2003 when this happened.
On the surface, it's a fairly simple hockey fight...until you break it down..not only is Gizmo getting a decent shift, but he flattens Tony Hand (who just happened to be considered the best player in the league...he had, and still has, an aura about him which makes flattening him akin to a builder shouting "get 'em out, love" at the Queen as she passes by on the way to Trooping the Colour) but he then goes in on a breakaway, nearly scores (somehow, the fact that he doesn't just seems to fit the whole Gizmo Shift thing) and then does the unthinkable by actually fighting with Tony Hand!
That night, if I remember correctly, Dundee won 5-0, since the Blaze had won the BNL title the week before (that one is another story, in fact) and it was a tempramental battle with Kurt Irvine and Hilton Ruggles both scrapping with Johan Boman and Chris Conaboy, but this has all been absorbed into the mists of time...the Gizmo scrap, however, has become a part of Blaze legend...certainly, he was the star of that game by some distance despite barely getting on the ice.
Looking back on it afterwards, I remember having the phrase "every dog has his day" come to mind...it seemed that this was some sort of proof that everyone gets their moment in the sun, somehow...even if you have to wait for it behind a ridiculous number of other people. Gizmo is now playing in Telford, where he is also immensely popular, but the fans' love for him in Coventry, born largely out of that scrap one February Sunday night in a nothing game, is something else.
He was somebody, finally. And I'm not quite sure what this proves about my thinking, Blaze fans, or whatever, but the fact that even the "little" guy had had life smile upon him cheered me up immeasurably for quite a while after that (and I needed plenty of cheering up thanks to a social life only slightly less hectic and exciting than a night in the deepest and darkest parts of the Gobi Desert)...it was a source of consolation in its proof that if you kept plugging away and waited long enough, life would reward you with a spot in the sun eventually, somehow...
If I'm brutally honest with myself, there are some things that I wanted back then as a nineteen-year-old that still haven't come to me as a slightly-more-grizzled-and-wise twenty-five year old...but if I ever start to convince myself that the girl for me isn't out there or that attempting to make myself a career beyond a job that means you work to live rather than live to work is fruitless, I can watch that fifty seconds or so of grainy footage on youtube, smile and think "well, if a place in legend and people's hearts can be found on a cold February Saturday in a horrifically dull Blaze loss, it can be found anywhere...as long as you keep looking".
Thanks, Giz...
Don't worry...we'll return to news some time soon...along with a few more glimpses into life, love and hockey history. Until then, though, keep keeping your eye on the puck...
Oh-and the title? Blame a good friend of mine for that...my personal choice was "Dreams of Winter" until it was pointed out that this "sounded like an emo porn-film", which, while making me laugh far too much, wasn't exactly the effect I wanted.
Oh, and it will jump around a bit-don't expect it to be in chronological order or anything like that.
Anyway...on we go with the first one...
Life, Love and Gareth Owen (Blaze v Dundee Stars, 2002/2003)
I've always had a soft spot for the underdog...the tenth forward, or the journeyman who rarely gets the ice-time or the notice of his team-mates. Like the back-up goalie, they spend most of their time putting their kit on, sitting on the benches, shouting encouragement to their team-mates, but very rarely get onto the ice or enjoy their moment in the sun-even if their team wins a trophy their presence is often something of an afterthought-their laps of honour come and go, and recognition is little more than a few mentions or empty phrases like "a great guy to have around"...
Gareth Owen, at least where the Coventry Blaze are concerned, was always this player. Signed for his second spell at the club during the BNL title-winning year in 02/03, and remaining at the club for their first Elite League season, he was very rarely seen on the ice, but always entertaining on it. So entertaining, in fact he's spawned his own phenomenon among some Blaze fans, adding to the hockey vocabulary and being immortalized forever in the phrase "the Gizmo Shift":
Gizmo Shift (adj.): a phrase used to describe a passage of play whereby a player steps onto the ice, skates around like a bat out of hell, lands a hit or two, gets nailed with a massive check and touches the puck once or twice in the corners, while hacing a shot that fails to come anywhere near scoring. Named after British hockey player Gareth Owen, who was a master of such shifts and became a crowd favourite for them during his time at the Coventry Blaze.
I always liked Owen...mainly because his style of play appealed to me so much...he was clearly nowhere near the most skilled player on the ice, but he simply didn't (and doesn't to this day) give a flying puck. This approaching life with joyful abandon was something that was far from what I, as a 19-year-old who was always running around in the shadow of more popular friends, generally something of a figure of fun and horrifically, pathologically self-conscious around girls, was able to manage...and in my tortured, prone-to-juvenile-association nineteen-year-old-mind, this whole expenditure of effort and doing his absolute best but always being overshadowed by others in just about every aspect seemed to echo the way I felt about myself...I used to wonder if, like me, he ever, just once or twice, wondered if his moment in the sun was ever going to come or whether he'd be in the background, always considered good to have around, and any success he gained being viewed by the in-crowd as a good thing, as long as he didn't try and get up with the REALLY popular kids. while others took the plaudits, glory and, yes, girls.
Reading that back, you probably get the sense that my late teenage years probably weren't the best of my life, emotionally...and you'd be right. But one of the few nights in that season when I was able to look on the future outside with more than apprehension and something of a dark-tinged outlook was the night in 2003 when this happened.
On the surface, it's a fairly simple hockey fight...until you break it down..not only is Gizmo getting a decent shift, but he flattens Tony Hand (who just happened to be considered the best player in the league...he had, and still has, an aura about him which makes flattening him akin to a builder shouting "get 'em out, love" at the Queen as she passes by on the way to Trooping the Colour) but he then goes in on a breakaway, nearly scores (somehow, the fact that he doesn't just seems to fit the whole Gizmo Shift thing) and then does the unthinkable by actually fighting with Tony Hand!
That night, if I remember correctly, Dundee won 5-0, since the Blaze had won the BNL title the week before (that one is another story, in fact) and it was a tempramental battle with Kurt Irvine and Hilton Ruggles both scrapping with Johan Boman and Chris Conaboy, but this has all been absorbed into the mists of time...the Gizmo scrap, however, has become a part of Blaze legend...certainly, he was the star of that game by some distance despite barely getting on the ice.
Looking back on it afterwards, I remember having the phrase "every dog has his day" come to mind...it seemed that this was some sort of proof that everyone gets their moment in the sun, somehow...even if you have to wait for it behind a ridiculous number of other people. Gizmo is now playing in Telford, where he is also immensely popular, but the fans' love for him in Coventry, born largely out of that scrap one February Sunday night in a nothing game, is something else.
He was somebody, finally. And I'm not quite sure what this proves about my thinking, Blaze fans, or whatever, but the fact that even the "little" guy had had life smile upon him cheered me up immeasurably for quite a while after that (and I needed plenty of cheering up thanks to a social life only slightly less hectic and exciting than a night in the deepest and darkest parts of the Gobi Desert)...it was a source of consolation in its proof that if you kept plugging away and waited long enough, life would reward you with a spot in the sun eventually, somehow...
If I'm brutally honest with myself, there are some things that I wanted back then as a nineteen-year-old that still haven't come to me as a slightly-more-grizzled-and-wise twenty-five year old...but if I ever start to convince myself that the girl for me isn't out there or that attempting to make myself a career beyond a job that means you work to live rather than live to work is fruitless, I can watch that fifty seconds or so of grainy footage on youtube, smile and think "well, if a place in legend and people's hearts can be found on a cold February Saturday in a horrifically dull Blaze loss, it can be found anywhere...as long as you keep looking".
Thanks, Giz...
Don't worry...we'll return to news some time soon...along with a few more glimpses into life, love and hockey history. Until then, though, keep keeping your eye on the puck...
