The Meaning of Hockey, Chapter 39

A few times players almost came to blows over the team philosophy. One day it was Buckinghorse and Vicente arguing over whether or not to put more work into the power play or four-on-four. Of course, it was an absurd argument, resulting more from personality than any real disagreement.

“It’s not either-or,” said Bobby, trying to broker a compromise. “We need to practice both.”

“I disagree,” said Vicente. “There’s a principle involved here.”

“What’s that?” Buckinghorse sneered. “You get more powerplay time than four-on-four?”

Vicente jabbed Buckinghorse’s shoulder. Chedomansky and Lalli quickly got between the antagonists.

“Come on,” said Bobby. “You guys know better than that. If this consensus stuff is going to work, you need to treat each other with respect.”

“Ya, like no fucking punching,” said Troy to Vicente.

“And no sneering,” said Bobby to Buckinghorse. “Let each other talk. And listen.”

The two feuding teammates glared at each other.

“Now,” said Bobby. “Vicente was saying there’s a principle involved.”

“There is,” said Vicente. “I thought the plan was to be more of an attack team than a defensive team. Because if we’re going to be mostly offensive-minded, then that should be the main focus of our practices. Therefore, we give more priority to the powerplay.”

A few of the players nodded in agreement.

“But you can be offensive on four-on-fours,” said Buckinghorse. “And doesn’t good offence spring out of solid defense?”

Other players nodded in agreement.

“I’m not saying don’t practice it,” said Vicente. “But we need to agree on a team philosophy before we can figure out all the nuts and bolts of practice.”

“I agree,” said Kiniski.

“Me too,” said Chedomansky.

“Maybe he’s right,” said Lalli, mostly to Buckinghorse, who shrugged.

“Right now we need to skate,” Troy shouted, interrupting the conversation.

Some of the players began picking up their sticks and gloves, but a few stared at Troy.

“Who says?” said Vicente.

All eyes shifted to him and then to Troy, who was obviously angry.

“I thought we’re all supposed to get our opinions heard,” said Vicente.

“There’s a time and a place,” said Bobby, trying to intervene between player and associate coach.

“Sure, but who says the time and the place?” said Vicente. “Us or you?”

Troy was about to pop Vicente.

“We should talk about that,” said Bobby.

“When you want to or when we want to?” said Vicente.

The muscles on Troy’s arms danced the jitterbug as the entire team waited for the inevitable confrontation. Would it become physical or remain verbal?

“Coach is right,” said Hollingsworth, immediately easing the tension, by picking up Vicente’s gloves and stick. “We need to skate. Loosen up. We all can agree on that. Right?”

Most of the players nodded and voiced assent. Vicente, however, glared at Hollingsworth.

“Let’s listen to coach now and talk later,” said Kiniski, backing up Hollingsworth. “That’s no big deal, right?”

Finally, Vicente nodded. Bobby took a deep breath.

“Skate them,” he said to Troy.

***

“You’re too worried about this consensus stuff,” said Mike.

“I agree,” said Frida. “Doesn’t the fact that they all ended up agreeing to skate mean that consensus actually worked?”

“Maybe you’re right,” said Bobby.

“It’s not an anarchist collective anyway,” said Mike. “You own the team.”

“So?” said Frida.

“So anarchism means we all own the team,” said Mike.

“But that’s like saying we live in a capitalist society and so everything is capitalist,” said Frida. “We do what we can do where we can do it.”

“All I’m saying is you shouldn’t get so hung up on anarchism or socialism or consensus,” said Mike. “What’s the core? What do the players want? What do you want?”

“To win?” said Bobby.

Mike shook his head.

“What?” said Bobby.

“To be respected,” said Mike.

“Something we all want,” said Frida.

“A team where everyone is treated with respect,” said Mike. “And the team is treated with respect too, by other teams.”

“A society where everyone is treated with respect,” said Frida.

“I still say they only respect our team when it’s winning,” said Bobby.

“Who is they?” said Frida.

“Other teams,” answered Bobby.

“You can’t control whether you win or lose,” said Mike. “You can only control how you play the game. Every coach I ever played for has said that.”

Bobby nodded. It was a cliché that existed for a reason.

“I have a question,” said Frida. “How would you treat Mike, if he were a player on your team?”

Son looked at father.

A good question, thought Bobby. And then he had a revelation.

***

“Anarchism means expanding the circle of who you consider family. On this team we are all family. A healthy, happy family. Anarchism is like treating everyone as family. We want each other to succeed. We help each other succeed. We nurture each other. We share in each other’s success. Each of us is important, but the family is important too. The family is the sum of all the individuals in it and more than the sum of the individuals. The family is also the spaces between the individuals. In this family there is no head, no boss, no father, no mother. But that doesn’t mean some of us don’t know more about some things than others. We respect wisdom and experience, but we don’t worship it. We give to the family and we receive from the family. The family wants each one of us to succeed and we want the family to succeed. That’s what anarchist hockey is. It’s treating each individual with respect and it’s treating the team with respect.”

***

“Six individuals out here on the ice will lose every time to six members of a team. Why is that? Because winning hockey exists in the spaces between you. Puck movement, control, traffic, defense, most essential elements of the game are products of what you do with the other members of your team. Listen to that again. Puck movement is not what you do, but rather what you do with the other members of your team. Defense is not what you do but what you do with the other members of your team. The team is greater than the sum of its parts.

***

“Hockey can never be centrally planned, that’s why anarchism rather than socialism is the proper ideology for this game. It’s a team game, but it depends on the creativity of individuals working together under circumstance so rapidly changing that they can never be charted before hand. We can practice patterns but there are no set plays. Success depends on learning from the patterns but not being limited by them.”

***

“I miss you,” Bobby said from his Prince George hotel room. “I wanted to hear your voice. I need to think about something nice. Something other than hockey and stuff.”

“Stuff?” Frida said.

“Can you tell me a story?” he said.

“A story?”

“I’ve told you lots of stories,” he said. “Now I want you to tell me one. Something about your life. Something funny or interesting or important or all three that’s happened to you.”

“A story?” she repeated, surprise in her voice. “Me?”

“Come on,” he said. “I need a good story to help me sleep. Something that will help take my mind off money and hockey. Tell me a detail of your life. I want to know everything about you.”

“I don’t know what …”

“Tell me about growing up in Moose Jaw.”

“I didn’t grow up there,” said Frida, with a touch of irritation.

“I guess I knew that,” said Bobby.

“If you remember anything about our time together as teenagers,” said Frida.

“But that’s the thing, I don’t,” said Bobby. “I remember kissing and touching. I remember walking in Crescent Park. But I don’t remember talking.”

“We talked,” said Frida.

“About what?” said Bobby.

“About our dreams,” said Frida. “My painting and your hockey.”

“Why don’t I remember?” said Bobby.

“Maybe you weren’t listening,” said Frida.

Bobby sighed.

“You don’t remember when I told you about my relationship with my mother? We were at the Exchange Café. I told you how I hated her. How she embarrassed me.”

“I’m sorry,” Bobby said. “I was so full of myself, I guess I never listened.”

“I remember what I told you and even how you responded,” said Frida. “When I said I was worried about turning out just like my mother, you told me I could be whoever I wanted to be.”

“Was it good advice?” said Bobby.

“I thought so, at the time.”

“That’s good,” said Bobby.

“I guess I just wasn’t as significant in your life as you were in mine,” said Frida.

“You were very significant,” said Bobby. “You are supremely significant.”

“So significant that you don’t remember anything I said or even what I looked like,” said Frida.

“That’s not fair,” said Bobby.

“It was two sessions in my office before you even knew it was me and then only because I told you.”

‘We remember in different ways, that’s all,” said Bobby. “I remember how I felt about you. That’s what was important to me.”

“That and the screwing?” said Frida.

“Sure, that was important. Why should I deny it? It was good and I loved it and I remember it very fondly and I’m not ashamed of it. I only wish we could do it again.”

Silence.

“And I promise I’ll remember whatever story you tell me this time,” said Bobby. “I promise.”

Bobby held the receiver to his ear as he lay on the bed, listening to Frida.

“Okay, I’ll tell you a story.”

Bobby found a more comfortable position on the bed.

“I was ten when we moved to Moose Jaw. After living in Vancouver and Mexico City until then, it was a shock.

“I was very angry with my mother for a long, long time. Not just because of the moving, but because of how she treated my father. He was from Saskatchewan originally. His family had a farm northwest of Swift Current. Lancer, I think the nearest town was called. During the Depression they didn’t have any crops for a few years so my Dad started riding the rails. He ended up in one of the work camps in B.C. and then he got involved in the Onto Ottawa Trek. He was in Regina for the big riot where the RCMP shot a couple of trekkers. Then he went off to fight in the Spanish Civil War. After that he lived in Paris for awhile and then in Mexico City. He came back to Canada during the war and met my mother a few years later in Vancouver. Her parents were Finns who grew up in one of those anarchist communities up on northern Vancouver Island. Before the First World War thousands of Finnish settlers started towns based on anarcho-communist principles.

“Anyhow, my mother had come to Vancouver to go to art school and when she learned my dad had known Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, I guess they got married and moved to Mexico City. The thing was, my father didn’t really have a source of income, except when he was in Vancouver and got work as a boilermaker in the shipyards. So they were always moving back and forth and that’s how I spent the first ten years of my life. Then, just after my tenth birthday, my mother dumped my dad. She got this job teaching art and design at the technical school in Moose Jaw and told my dad she wanted a divorce. We argued for years about why she did it. She said it was because they were incompatible, but that was just code for getting tired of living a working class life with a working class guy. She started to hang around with artists and poets and I hated her for it. Looking back, I’d have to say I still have some trouble with what she did, but it was her life. I went to live with my dad when I got pregnant. He was really, really supportive, which was not exactly normal back then. He died from asbestosis about a year after that. He was one of the first shipyard workers to die from handling asbestos. His union fought eight years to get workers’ compensation to recognize his disease as work-related.

“Moose Jaw was tough. I was already feeling alienated from the world around me and moving to a small town made things even worse. I never did fit in. Sometimes I think, unconsciously, getting pregnant was my way out.

“The first couple of months were the worst. I remember walking home from Tech after an evening art class. I was all by myself walking down Oxford Street. The northern lights were incredible. I had never seen anything like that before. The top of the sky seemed to be on fire and stars were close enough to touch.

“Then there was a shooting star and just as it burned out a thought came to me. It seemed like a message from somewhere out there in the solar system.

“‘You are not of this planet,’ I heard a voice say. Then I understood. I was put on earth by creatures from millions of light years away to observe human beings. It was my job to learn all about them and while I might look like an earthling, I was not one. This explained my alienation. This explained why I never fit in.

“I’m not saying I ever really believed that I was an alien, but it seemed a plausible explanation of how I felt. It wasn’t until I met you that I began to feel like an earthling again.

“Even today sometimes I feel like I was put on this planet to listen and learn about human beings. It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I’m best at. Maybe I am an alien.”

It felt good to be told a story. Maybe he had fallen asleep. Maybe it was all a dream. Frida hung up the phone.

Next Chapter: Wednesday

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