Newark, February 5, 2020
-- By Tom Phillips
Thus did one item get crossed off my bucket list. I had always had a passing interest in hockey, along with every other kind of game covered in the sports pages. But it was a game I never played. Not having grown up with frozen ponds at hand, I can barely skate, much less juggle a puck through a hostile crowd at 50 miles an hour. So I was a pure fan; and I was agog.
Half an hour before game time, the lights suddenly went up and both teams swarmed onto the of ice for fifteen minutes of shock and awe. My friend Ivan and I were twenty feet away, behind a pock-marked plexiglass wall. On the other side les Canadiens circled furiously in choreographed waves, charging the goal and firing hundreds of pucks in rapid succession at their own crouching goalie, who nonchalantly caught most of them with his free gloved hand. Other missiles smashed into the plexiglass, delighting a crowd of little New Jersey devils with their hockey coach.
The beauty and the violence escalated as the game got underway. Now bodies as well as pucks smashed into the plexiglass, bouncing off and resuming their flight as if nothing had happened. You can't take your eyes off a hockey game, because the puck can travel in an eyeblink the length of the rink, and a scoring play can develop with just one lightning pass, a shot, a rebound and a roar as the goalie flops on his back and the puck flies into the net. The first goal of the evening unfolded right before us -- a Devil broke loose, raced past the goal from left to right and then fired a shot at the last possible instant, across the goalie into the one open corner of the net. The goalie and I shared a moment of astonishment. Was that perfection, or just luck?
Later the Devils' goalie -- named Domingue, like a bullfighter -- faced a shot at point-blank range from Tomas Tatar, the Canadiens' top scorer. Domingue was on his knees blocking the lower half of the goal, so Tatar fired it just over his head. With the puck launched from twenty feet at a hundred miles an hour, Domingue gloved it. Tatar gave him a nod of approval.
A fight enlivened the proceedings. It unfolded like a ritual dance -- a Devil and a Canadien suddenly shed their gloves and circled each other, hands up. The other players -- and strangely, the referees -- formed an outer circle to witness the clash. Suddenly the two rushed together and their skates scuffled for a grip on the ice as they wrestled, punched, pushed and hauled, until one man fell under the other and the refs stepped in to separate them and send one off to the penalty box, furious and cursing. It was like the Trojan War in Homer's Iliad: all the passion and pettiness in men's hearts on display. Except this is sport and not war.
A sportsman and a fan all my life, I've been sheepish about it, thinking that I should occupy myself with more serious pursuits. Now I realize that sport is life, with only life's impact on history removed. In this way sport can be discussed without unnecessary solemnity, without pontification, with no need for sober judgments. In this way it is exactly like art -- it is art, existing solely for pleasure and edification. And hockey is the greatest of the visual arts; it includes every element at unthinkable speed and intensity. (This is why the New York area -- not exactly the ice capital of the Northern Hemisphere -- can support three losing hockey teams with triple-digit ticket prices.)
The train back to New York was full of happy Canadiens fans, celebrating an artistic success. One of their stars, the former New York Ranger Ilya Kovalchuk, was booed mercilessly by the New Jersey crowd every time he handled the puck. So it was Kovalchuk who decided the shootout, in which individual players go mano a mano with the opposing goalie. Kovalchuk darted, weaved, faked and flicked the puck past Domingue's left shoulder, then laughed all the way back to the bench. Homer would have celebrated it, Shakespeare would have parodied it. I just ate it up.
-- Copyright 2020 by Tom Phillips
-- By Tom Phillips
 |
| Tomas Tatar at full tilt |
The Montreal Canadiens defeated the New Jersey Devils 5 to 4 last night in a thrilling overtime contest decided by a shootout after the Devils tied the game in the final minute. No one in the crowd of 15.000 was more thrilled than a gray-bearded New Yorker in the fourth row behind the goal, attending his first professional hockey game at the age of 78.
Thus did one item get crossed off my bucket list. I had always had a passing interest in hockey, along with every other kind of game covered in the sports pages. But it was a game I never played. Not having grown up with frozen ponds at hand, I can barely skate, much less juggle a puck through a hostile crowd at 50 miles an hour. So I was a pure fan; and I was agog.
Half an hour before game time, the lights suddenly went up and both teams swarmed onto the of ice for fifteen minutes of shock and awe. My friend Ivan and I were twenty feet away, behind a pock-marked plexiglass wall. On the other side les Canadiens circled furiously in choreographed waves, charging the goal and firing hundreds of pucks in rapid succession at their own crouching goalie, who nonchalantly caught most of them with his free gloved hand. Other missiles smashed into the plexiglass, delighting a crowd of little New Jersey devils with their hockey coach.
The beauty and the violence escalated as the game got underway. Now bodies as well as pucks smashed into the plexiglass, bouncing off and resuming their flight as if nothing had happened. You can't take your eyes off a hockey game, because the puck can travel in an eyeblink the length of the rink, and a scoring play can develop with just one lightning pass, a shot, a rebound and a roar as the goalie flops on his back and the puck flies into the net. The first goal of the evening unfolded right before us -- a Devil broke loose, raced past the goal from left to right and then fired a shot at the last possible instant, across the goalie into the one open corner of the net. The goalie and I shared a moment of astonishment. Was that perfection, or just luck?
Later the Devils' goalie -- named Domingue, like a bullfighter -- faced a shot at point-blank range from Tomas Tatar, the Canadiens' top scorer. Domingue was on his knees blocking the lower half of the goal, so Tatar fired it just over his head. With the puck launched from twenty feet at a hundred miles an hour, Domingue gloved it. Tatar gave him a nod of approval.
A fight enlivened the proceedings. It unfolded like a ritual dance -- a Devil and a Canadien suddenly shed their gloves and circled each other, hands up. The other players -- and strangely, the referees -- formed an outer circle to witness the clash. Suddenly the two rushed together and their skates scuffled for a grip on the ice as they wrestled, punched, pushed and hauled, until one man fell under the other and the refs stepped in to separate them and send one off to the penalty box, furious and cursing. It was like the Trojan War in Homer's Iliad: all the passion and pettiness in men's hearts on display. Except this is sport and not war.
A sportsman and a fan all my life, I've been sheepish about it, thinking that I should occupy myself with more serious pursuits. Now I realize that sport is life, with only life's impact on history removed. In this way sport can be discussed without unnecessary solemnity, without pontification, with no need for sober judgments. In this way it is exactly like art -- it is art, existing solely for pleasure and edification. And hockey is the greatest of the visual arts; it includes every element at unthinkable speed and intensity. (This is why the New York area -- not exactly the ice capital of the Northern Hemisphere -- can support three losing hockey teams with triple-digit ticket prices.)
The train back to New York was full of happy Canadiens fans, celebrating an artistic success. One of their stars, the former New York Ranger Ilya Kovalchuk, was booed mercilessly by the New Jersey crowd every time he handled the puck. So it was Kovalchuk who decided the shootout, in which individual players go mano a mano with the opposing goalie. Kovalchuk darted, weaved, faked and flicked the puck past Domingue's left shoulder, then laughed all the way back to the bench. Homer would have celebrated it, Shakespeare would have parodied it. I just ate it up.
-- Copyright 2020 by Tom Phillips
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