Hockey Story: Clinching 2nd place with Dman Between the Pipes

Well, I never thought I’d see it. In our last Midget Tier 2 league game of the year, the team experienced something they may never see again: a defenseman in goalie gear making 11 saves to clinch second place in our league. Mid way through the second period our normally calm, focused, and competitive goalie lost his cool, retaliated after a scrum in his crease, and was ejected from the game. With our other goalie away on a school leadership conference, we were left staring at each other wondering what to do. Taking control of the situation, the players of the team rallied together and voted that the player with the most road hockey goalie experience would be the brave soul to strap on the pads. In the dying seconds of the 10 minutes allotted in the rules for changing a goalie, Ryan Banek emerged from the dressing room like Clark Kent from a phone booth. Not quite Superman, but a feint resemblance of our real goalie: a hybrid of Carmine Gallaccio and a goalie more commonly seen in a late night Division 11 Men’s League game in a rink far off the hockey radar. Warming himself up with a blended series of new-school crease movements and 70’s glove save explosions made famous in Slapshot and Mighty Ducks, Ryan looked ‘focused, prepared, and ready,’ for lack of better words. He played the second half of our game, killed off a 5 minute major, made 11 incredible saves, rushed from his net to thwart a potential break away against him, cleared numerous loose pucks in the crease, and smiled ear to ear. A 3-1 Victory.  The wave of cheers and howls from our bench every time he made a save, the passion in the voices and performance of the players defending our net like a Spirit Bear guarding the last den in all of the Great Bear Rainforest, and the bonding of a team on a mission were only a few of the reasons my initial anger, guilt, frustration, bewilderment, and disbelief faded into rib twisting laughter, cheek aching smiles, and a sense of pride for a group of young men embarking on a playoff run, on a night to remember. On the same night, our last night of regular season play, a team in our league tied a game they needed to win, helping us secure 2nd place in our flight. A true teaching moment: Hockey, like life, brings challenges and factors out of our control more often than we’d like. TEAM. Together Everyone Achieves More, even if someone needs to bring the cape, and find a phone booth. Nice work boys.