The Real Winter Classic
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Posted by senny1-4
Since 2006, hundreds of beauty's, benders, aging vets, and hockey enthusiasts alike have gathered in Minnesota to brave the frigid cold and gusting winds to take part in the oldest, and dirtiest aspect of the game we love and cherish so much. Of course I'm speaking of the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships. From Hockey Hall of Famer's like Phil Esposito to the average lad with nothing more than a twig, mitts, a bucket, and dreams of taking home the Golden Shovel or Silver Scoop, this weekend of nothing but the game we love captures the true essence of hockey....
The weekend started off calmly enough, but you could smell the anticipation in the -5 degree air. As hockey lads from across the nation, and even from Canada, all descended upon Minneapolis, Minnesota, you could feel the building anticipation of a weekend like no other; a weekend of memories that will last a lifetime. The location was Lake Nokomis; a shining speckle in the pepper shaker of lakes that the great state of Minnesota is. The tally was 25 rinks in all that we would play on. It was a site to behold. I have never seen anything like it. If you look in the dictionary (Webster's of course) under the word beauty, the picturesque setting of this spectacle would appear.
My team, appropriately named Team Gongshow, wasn't set to play until Sunday; the final day of the tourney. Myself and a lad I grew up playing with, Joe Bontempo, got in on Thursday afternoon. We got the jets sharpened, got some new twigs, checked in to the tourney, snagged a couple cases of the Great American Lager, and headed to the hotel to set up shop. A couple of girls that worked at the hotel seemed like feasible choices to join us in our conquest of the ultimate Gongshow, but after closer inspection of our targets, they smiled and we knew that neither one of our twigs were entering those punji pits of doom. So we just proceeded to get all sauced up and wreak havoc on the hotel.
After stumbling out of bed on Friday, we decided to head down to the venue and check out the festivities. On our way to the elevator at 9 am, we passed a couple of beauties enjoying their breakfast...... a tall cool Bud Light. We knew then and there that this wasn't going to be a normal weekend. The game was on. When we arrived at the lake, it was a frenzy of activity. All the beauties were huddled in the warm-up tent strapping on their shinny's and firing on the jets. When we walked out to the lake, there were spectators all around and the local news stations and radio stations were there as well. The tourney was in full force. After spending some time there freezing in the -12 degree temps, we headed over to the Mall of America. What a beauty of a mall. This place was ridiculous. If you haven't been there, I highly suggest it. It's an amusement park with 4 floors of stores; not to be confused with the 4 floors of whores that puts Singapore on the map.
Next came the arrival of the rest of the team. Timmy Coleman, aka TAD for all of you beauts, and his buddy Cameron Holmes arrived on the scene. The gongshow was in full force now. After pre-gaming and just simply dominating life at the hotel, we hopped in the car and flew down to the bar. Joe Sensors was the name, and being a horrible bar was their game. So instead of throwing in the towel, we strapped our lids on tight and just dominated the scene. We tossed our spitters in the snow, saving them for the return trip and entered. Being more legit than everyone else there, in our Rockstar Benchwarmer's (gratefully supplied by the boys here at GSH), we immediately set up shop and told the barkeep to fire us up some tall adult beverages. After running our mouths at anything passing by, it was closing time. As we were exiting our place of business, we ran into an aging vet still living the dream. He was a 55 year old beauty simply named Rocky from Chicago. His buddies ran off to the peeler and were too gassed to snatch him up, so we gave him a ride back to the hotel where the party was still going in full force. Unbeknown to us, a family had moved in next to our room, and at 3:30 am, security came a knockin. Apparently they frowned upon a game of shinny in the rooms with smashed beer cans at any hour of the day or night. Our bad.
Saturday was just another day until about 11:30 that night when Rocky called us from the bar in the lobby to come and crush some beers. We weren't going to booze that night because we had our first game at 8:30 the next morning, but you can't be legit and run show by denying an invite to gong it up with the boys now can you? So we flew down to the bar where a bunch of the lads from other teams were tying one on. After hammering down some cherries that were being soaked in a mason jar full of 151, there was no turning back. We were seated at a table with some boys from Chicago, Kansas, Michigan, and Boston. After some more shots and a few beers, one of the lads tossed a tin in the middle of the table and said have at it. Beauty. That whole episode reaffirmed my previous article that the hockey community was a band of brothers. None of us had ever met one another and there we were. Chirping each other, sharing stories, firein' down some sauce, and just living a sick life in general. It's like we've known each other for years. That was the moral of the entire weekend. Just living the dream, even though it was well over for most, but it didn't matter. Most that were there even recognized the Benchwarmer i was rocking and knew that we were Team Gongshow. That's a compliment to the GSH boys. We got compliments and were recognized by a lot that were there. Keep the brand going strong boys!!
Well Sunday finally came around for us. As we peeled ourselves out of bed before the sun even awoke from its slumber, we were reminded of a simpler time when we were getting ready for praccy at 5 am on Saturday. This time, though, our dad's weren't there to take us. As we arrived at the rinks at 7:30, the place was already buzzing for the tournaments culmination. There the 4 of us stood on the precipice of something great... plus Rocky decided to beaut up and play with us. The first game was in short nothing more than a learning lesson. This was not a normal brand of hockey. We lost that game to the tune of 11-7 to a bunch of lads from Minnesota adorned in Hawaiian garb. The second game was nothing short of a slaying. 17-3 the final score read with Team Gongshow the victors. In a show of pure sportsmanship, TAD goes inside out on some poor kid to tack up our 14th goal. How unnecessary... but amusing. It came down to the final game. For those of you playing the home game, we were 1-1. We simply had to win. The team we were playing was 2-0. We had to beat them to even have a chance. After a quick 4-1 lead 5 minutes into the tilt, Team Black Sheep used their 4 man advantage to a T and started to wear us down. By the midway point of the second half, we were gassed. There was simply no more left in the tank. 3 games in 4 hours with 4 men against teams with 7 and 8 players proved to be too much. We lost and our tourney was done.
The moral of the story, I guess, is that this weekend was more than winning and losing; even though losing sucked it hard. This weekend was more about the game we all love so much and the camaraderie amongst hockey boys and girls from everywhere. We made friends that we didn't even know existed, got shout outs from a bunch of people for sporting the Gongshow Gear, built memories that will last a lifetime, and for one weekend, we lived the dream that is still in the 12 year old that lives inside all of us. No one there got paid. It wasn't about that. It was about that sparkle in all of our eye's when we step on that ice. From the 18 year old to the 50+ player there, we were all one. Bounded by the simplest of things. The game of hockey. Till next year boys....