The Roar Says It All

     The eruption rivals that of a volcano. Our verbal explosion of euphoric joy shoots out of us like pyroclastic flow.

   We are the champs three seasons running, but this year new teams join the league. Teams bigger and stronger than us. The pressure builds as we are knocked from our comfortable perch at the top early on and spend the rest of the season trying in vain to catch up with these hot-shot newcomers.

      The playoffs don’t look promising, but we squeak out an overtime win in the first round to stay alive. In the second round, we get lucky; our opponents are missing a bunch of their best players, so we cruise to victory and into the championship game.

     This is classic “David versus Goliath.” As our opponents lace up in the dressing room next to us, we remind ourselves that we’ve lost seven of the last eight meetings with them. They are young, strong, talented, and confident. Puck Dynasty is their vision casting name. They are the men who have climbed the mountain of beer league hockey and plan to be on top for a good long while.

     They swarm us the moment the puck drops. We are overwhelmed and find ourselves down by three goals before the first period is even half over. In desperation, we shorten our bench and put only our best talent on the ice. Even still, our best talent includes John, me and Ann, three 50 something-year-olds well past their prime, and my 15-year-old son Darve, who still has a long way to go before he hits his prime.

     Our young guns are good. They can hang with the best Puck Dynasty can throw at us, but I worry that the three past-primers and the one pre-primer might be the fatal chinks in our armour that prove our undoing. John, Ann and I latch on to the lyrics of that famous Toby Keith song. “I’m not as good as I once was, but I am as good once as I ever was,” and pray it will be true of us tonight.

     Ann corrals a bouncing puck just inside Puck Dynasties, blue line and chips it to me in the slot. I turn and fire, denting the twine in the closing minutes of the first period. Game on! The young guns do their thing, soon it’s 3-2, then it’s tied at three, but Puck Dynasty isn’t going away without a fight. They score, and we are down by one going into the third.

     It’s only beer league hockey, but the third period’s intensity rivals any sporting event I’ve played in. Bodies start flying even though it’s a non-contact league, soon a parade of fellons on both sides are forced to make their way to the sin bin. The penalties hurt us, we had managed to tie it up, but concede another goal late in the thrid period. Puck Dynasty is up 5-4 with only four minutes remaining.

     John grabs a loose puck and fires it around the boards. Picking it up from behind the net, I dart around the far side of the goal and spy a maroon jersey open in the high slot as the defence closes in on me. I fire a hard pass toward our player, it lands right on his stick, he is wide open. This is our chance! It feels like slow motion, but the shot is hard and true. The puff sound and the white netting filling with black rubber tells me this game is tied. A huge cheer errupts and we mob the goal scorer. Who is he? It’s Darve!

     Four minutes of insanity follow. One of our guys gets ejected, and we have to kill a four on three penalty, but the game ends in a tie. In beer league you go straight to a shoot out. Our coach is in a bind, because if you are in the penalty box at the end of the game you cannot participate in the shootout, and a couple of our key shootout guys are in the box. He looks down the bench, and decides that the old dogs will get their shot at glory. As the one on one dance plays out, the potential game winning goal falls to John. As he skates straight toward the goalie, he spies a tiny gap between the pads, the five-hole is open, from distance he takes his shot, low and hard along the ice. The goalie can’t close the wickets in time. As the puck slides in, John’s hands shoot skyward and we all go crazy. Sticks and gloves fly in the air. The roar is deafening. The Greyhounds have won their fourth championship in a row.