My First MHL Game

    I know that, to a lot of you people reading this, you'll find it a rather rambling tale.  This is necessary, unfortunately, because I have to fill you in on the strange events leading up to the subject of this opus.  I imagine that some readers, who are old enough, will remember Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant", where the singer says he wants to talk about the draft but it takes him about 20 minutes to get to that subject.  I'll try not to take as long.

    I lived in the town of Belleville, Ontario, back in those days and was in grade 11 at Quinte Secondary.  I had quite a few friends and we all played hockey together whenever we could.  Most of us had done Midget and Pee-wee earlier.  Some of the guys were passing around a rumour that we were being scoped-out by some scouts and these guys supposedly were not from any Junior A or B teams.  I figured it was bullshit for awhile and then I noticed strangers in the stands during practices and games.

    Oh, yeah! I almost forgot to introduce myself: my name is Dick Thompson.  Great name, eh?  I remember one suppertime asking my parents, "Why not Richard, with Rich, for short?"

     Mom looked at me patiently and replied, "Because you are named after your grandfather and he was born 'Dick'."

     I started to grumbled through half a mouthful of french fries, "Huh!  I wonder how many times he was called "dick-weed" or  "dick-head”, when I noticed Dad was showing his bottom teeth and was making a almost sub-sonic growling noise.  This was a warning best not to ignore so I shut up.  (Believe me, I loved the guy; still do.  This was the period in our relationship were usually he was saying to me: "Don't be such an ass!") Sorry!  As I said, I will degress from time to time.  Getting back to the story, my friends didn't give me problems about my name and if they did, I knew they were kidding.

    My best friend was Sammi Vashta, who I had known for about 10 years, ever since he and his family had moved to Canada from Sweden.  He spoke better English than most of us in town.  Since he was the new kid, some of those guys around town tried to bully him but he had a sharp wit, which either confused his opponent or, surprisingly, often set Sammi up with a new friend. The bugger!  He was a good-looking guy, too: shoulderlength curly blonde hair, dark blue eyes, a good build, and, while the rest of us entered puberty looking almost like lepers due to acne, Sammi was without a blemish.  He was  also the only guy that could make girls swoon just by giving them a kiss... I swear to God it happened at two separate parties!  Of course, all this did give Sammi a bit of an ego but he never held it over the heads of his friends.

    I had two other close friends:  Igor Raglin and Sylvester Bume.  I had known the two of them not quite as long as I known Sammi but we were really tight, too.  Igor had come a few years before from Kazakhstan, where his family had been forced off their small farm.  He was a big guy even then, and by the time he reached grade 11 he was 7 feet tall and weighed around 260 pounds, most of it muscle.  He was older than us, but he took English lessons and was able to do an equivalency exam which dropped him right into grade 11.  Like the rest of us, he was hockey-mad and, as soon as  he was able, he signed up to play with rest of us.  When he  was skating towards the goal, the goalies must have thought he looked like some horrible combination of Rocket Richard and Rasputin, the Mad Monk ( he was the center on the line, where I was left  wing, and we had Paul Vue on right).  Igor was a natural goalscorer.

    Sylvester, on the other hand, was a defenceman.  By the time he reached grade 11, he was 5'8" tall, had arms as thick as my thighs and was probably morbidly obese... I mean, that guy could eat!  He was what you would call a stay at home defenceman, as he had difficulty rushing up the ice.  However, when the other team entered our defensive zone, they had to get by Sylvester and that was usually an extremely painful experience... and, of course, then they had to get past Sammi.  Goaltending was in his genes: his dad had once played for Sweden's national team in that position.  He was the best goalie I've ever played with and if it wasn't for his one weakness (cannabis), he may have made it to the NHL.  There were two other guys I often chummed around with, who were also defencemen: Caleb Stenzl and Jack McAvoy who could be pretty brutal to the opposition, too.  The difference from their style of play and Sylvester's was the fact that they could skate quite fast and they were about the same size as Igor.  When they were in the defensive zone, no one from the other team would want to go in there.  As it turned out, these two younger guys would soon be my teammates.

    There I go, off on a tangent, again!  Okay, I think I have the setting ready now.  As it turned out, we were all approached by these men, who had been watching us play.  Several other young guys in Belleville were also interviewed by these "scouts".  We were all invited to join a new hockey league that was being set up in southern Ontario.  Eight towns were going to be involved, a team drawn from students at one school per town.  The team names, logos and staff had all been set up.  We were told the average age of the players was around 17, although a few older guys were playing, too.  The big draw was the fact that we would be paid $50 per game!  Some of our excitement died down when we found out that our team' s name was the Quinte Quasimodos and our team's logo was a variation of the one the Minnesota Fighting Saints of the WHA had used (a little Dennis the Menace type, in hockey gear, although no halo, a hunchback instead).  Another thing that kind of gave us all pause was when we found out all the teams were owned by one man.

    There was an extremely rich man by the name of Oskar Kramer Mann, originally from Germany (he was so rich that nobody had ever heard of him!).  He was as hockey-mad as any red-blooded Canadian boy.  We all decided he might be a bit senile...  I mean, I saw the guy and he looked two years older than God!  His son, Kramer Mann, was the coach of our team and the old man showed up a few times and gave us all a little speech in heavily-accented English about how he wanted us to put on a good show and generate "numbers".

    We were all scratching our heads as he left and Igor came to me, asking, "Numbers?"

    Our coach returned from walking his dad to the huge limousine he was driven around in and explained to us his father's plan: he had always wanted a hockey league of his own so he could keep track of all the statistics (goals, assists, etc.)  as he believed handling all that data kept his mind sharp.  Kramer Mann just about laughed his ass off as 25 young lower jaws dropped in unison.  Then we all decided that $50 a game was $50 a game, so what the hell.

    Now!  I finally get to the subject of this story: my first MHL game.  We were playing the Deseronto Dreadnoughts (Hey!  I didn't think up the names!), a team and town, just down the highway.  This team was predominantly made up of young lads from the nearby Mohawk reservation.  They turned out to be a talented and tough team; for example: I was crashed into the boards by one of their defencemen and, while he held me there, he used the words "kill" and "motherfucker" at least six times in one sentence.  Fortunately, the linesman blew his whistle for an off-side right then and the bastard allowed me to live.  As he skated away, I saw the number 13 on his back and his name, H. Maracle...  I decided to avoid him the rest of the game.

    But what happened prior to the game makes up the major memory of that event.  We were in the dressing room and I looked over at Sammi.  His eyes were red and glistening and he had a dreamy smile on his face.  I got up and went to him, fast.

    I hissed at him: "Holy fuck, man!  Have you been toking before a game?!"

    "Hell, no!  Before a game?  Nope... just a dozen hash brownies.  Walbridge had some really cheap shit... couldn't  pass it up!"

    I motioned for Igor and Paul to come over to where I was standing.  I filled them in.  Sammi looked on, and finally said: "Ragtagavich!  Dickless!  Parlee Voo!  Everything is fine... I play better when I'm toasted!"

    He had nicknames for all of us when he was stoned.  "Dickless" for me, just because he knew it pissed me off;  "Ragtagavich" for Igor because of the shabby clothing he wore when we first met him (he did have better clothes by that time); and, finally, "Parlee Voo" for Paul because he had a French background (we got him back, later.  Quinte Seconday's English department was known for supplying us with obscure novel and short stories to study.  There was one about a kid and his pet ferret(?) by somine with the pen-name of "Saki"... the ferret's name was "Shredni Vashtar", so... well, you can see where this is going!).

    The three of us were able to get Sammi to his feet and he seemed to be able to stand okay.  Right at that moment, one of the linesman poked his head in the door of the dressing room and said, "Gametime."

    So out we went...

    Mr. Mann obviously wanted us to feel like we were in the big leagues, because we actually had the national anthem played before the game.  It was probably on a eight -- track and came over the PA system, but still...

    I could hear Sammi giggling and mumbling to himself behind me.

    Heaven fuckin' help us!  I prayed.

    About five minutes in, I'm sure everyone on our team knew we were outclassed.  The Deseronto team was faster, more organised and  far tougher than we were.  They were just peppering our goal with shots.  It was just a matter of time...

    It says here that use of cannabis causes "depression of motor impulses".  Well, I guess Sammi Vashta never read this book.  He made save after save, laughing like a loon the whole time.  This had two positive effects on the game for us;  the first being, we didn't get scored on and the second being, the Dreadnoughts got frustrated and angry, thereby causing them to commit many penalties.  This in turn allows us  several power-plays in a row.  We were able to score three power-play goals and the maniac at the other end would not let one puck over the goal line.

    I was not much of a scorer but my passing was excellent.  I  threw the puck to Igor twice and Paul onceand it was all we needed to take the win on home ice.  The small audience gave us a good round of applause and the team went wild on the ice.  Sammi ripped off his face mask and jumped a Deseronto center, who had been whacking at his pads all night and started to pound on him.  This turned the celebration into a riot.

    About half an hour later, when all had quieted down, I was sitting beside Sammi in our dressing room.  He looked at me, split lip, black  eye and all, smiled painfully and said, "God, Dickless!  I love this fucking game!"

    He then pitched forward off the bench onto the floor, where he lay almost comatose for the next half hour.

    Then, what else, we went out and partied until near dawn (we all got shit for that!).  I mean, how often are you in the company of a guy who was the first star in a hockey game and also received a match penalty?

The End

   N.B. "MHL" stood for the Mann Hockey League, of course...  although some of us said: "Well, it is not Jr. A and it's not the NHL, so I guess we're somewhere in the middle."