The sweet smell of air conditioning hits my face with a big swoop, lifting my hair in the slightest way. I am the one who likes the smell of the rink, with the Zamboni’s exhaust, sweat, the rubber floor, and even the ice. You might think I’m crazy, but it’s my favorite smell. Honestly I wouldn’t care if my house smelled like it.

I walk over to the food court and get my usual- a Hot Dog and a purple PowerAde. Probably not the healthiest choice, but it doesn’t matter. I always reason with myself that I’ll work it off on the ice. I grab two ketchup packets and one mustard, spreading it over evenly as I can. I never use the whole mustard packet, because if you put too much on, you over power the ketchup, and if you over power the ketchup, it over powers the dog, and you over power the dog, it tastes like your just eating a tube of mustard, and eating a tube of mustard doesn’t taste too good. Yeah… I pretty much have it down to a science.

I finish my hot dog and sip the last few purple drops from the bottle, walk to the garbage can, take ten paces back, hold up three fingers, yell, “Three!” and shoot the bottle like a basket ball. My shot percentage is probably 0.01%. Today I make it though, and I know it’s going to be a good day.

Often I base my life on that sort of stuff. For example, there is this yard decoration in someone’s lawn on the way to my house that spins in the wind. The shape of it is strange; it stands in their yard towering at about six feet. On top of the “pyramid” is a long, steel arm. At one end of the arm is a disk standing straight up. One side of the disk is yellow and the other side is gray. If the yellow side if facing the road, it means it’s going to be a good day, if the gray side is facing me, it’s going to be pretty sucky day. And I know it sounds pretty stupid thing to make up, but its’ something I kind of look forward to it when I drive by.

I look up at the big old score board, the scoreboard I look at 100 times a game, holding the score, the minutes, and most of all, the seconds. The seconds count the most in my mind. A game can be decided with just a fraction of a second of play left in time. Bob Mosienko (NHL player) scored three goals in 21 seconds, deciding the final period in a meaningless season finale game. It’s happened to my team, scoring with only a couple seconds left in play. Sometimes this devastates me, and the other leads my team to great victory.

The time is fifteen past twelve, Stick and Puck starts in a few minutes, about the amount of time it takes to put on my skates. My bag is outside where I left it before I came in. I jog across the rubber to the entry where there are about eight doors.
Every time it seems like different doors are unlocked and locked. Today I try the sixth one the left. It’s locked. Now I guess the fifth door to the left. Still locked. This time I guess the second one to the right. Finally it’s unlocked. If I got that one wrong, I probably would of looked like a total moron.

My bag sits by a cement pillar, waiting patiently for me as it always does. I reach my arm out and grab the handle on top, tip it off balance and wheel it to the door I just came out of, not taking any chances.

Again the door swings open and lifts a little tuft of my hair, this time smelling more familiar than before. The sounds are different though. The Zambonis horn is beeping as backs up on to the ice. The Zam is a pretty cool thing. Basically, it’s a huge car-like machine that refurnishes the scarred ice. Its a lot boxier looking than just a regular old car though. But how it works is even cooler.

So first off, there is this large blade that scrapes the ice flat, while screw conveyers pick up and remove the shavings into a bin known as the snow tank. Right after this happens, small jets of water flush out all the tiny particles of dirt and debris. Last, a huge thin towel “drags” across the ice surface that is wett by tiny “fountains” of water spurting up. This replaces all the little carves, nicks or holes in the ice, making it as smooth as possible.

As I’m walking to one of the locker rooms, Gary passes by on the Zam, rattling the boards on his turn. I wave to him, and he waves back with his half-toothed smile. He’s a crusty old guy, always at the rink doing something like checking the oil in the Zam, scrubbing down the bleachers, picking up garbage, working on his computer, sharpening skates, anything that relates to managing the place.

I keep walking until I come to the skate shop with the broken sign standing overhead. Eamon is testing the sharpness of the blade of one the rental skates with his fingernail. “Hey, Eamon,” I say, trying to catch his attention.

He looks up and replies, “Yeah, what’s up?” in a casual voice.

“I’ve got some skates for you to sharpen,” I say.

“Alright, it’ll take about ten minutes, I got some skates I got to lace really quick,” again, in his casual voice. I drop of my skates on the counter and roll my bag to one of the locker rooms.

All the nice locker rooms are taken by birthday parties and hockey teams. So I find myself getting dressed in one of the crappy, cold, dim, plywood ones, locker room six. The only up side is the overhead heater that gives of a three foot radius heat.

The zipper crackles as I open my bag. A heavy, musky odor flushes out of the bag, which holds all my sweaty gear. My gear sits in there four months a year, baking, gathering sweat three times a week, probably growing some sort of deadly fungi. Every year we wash it though; it gets about a whole pound lighter. Its actually surprising difference when you play.

I let my gear air out for a while until I notice my stick needs a new tape job. Most of the white that was once there has been covered up by the rubber stains from the puck. The other half is ripped or torn by a skate. Tape jobs really only last about three games, but I usually wait until it gets so bad my dad forces me to do it. Today is especially bad though, and I don’t need telling to do it.

I walk over to my stick, dark flat black with a hint of yellow peeking out on the shaft. I pick it up, light as a feather, yet strong as steel, and prettier than Megan Fox herself.

It’s hard for me to believe how light the sticks are today. A couple centuries ago they were just using sticks carved out of trees. Back then, the sticks weighed about 700 hundred grams; today the sticks are only weighing 400 grams. That’s only 14 ounces, as much as a small book.

I start ripping the old tape off strip by strip. It takes about two minutes of tape ripping and picking gooey pieces of glue off the blade.

After all the gunk is off, the blade is slick, smooth, and ready to be taped. So I reach into my smelly bag and come out with a thick roll of white hockey tape. I spin the roll to find the end, spinning it about twice, and dig my fingernail under it. At first the tape is resistant, but I manage. It gets easier once I get a little tag to pull on. I stretch it out about six inches, pick up my stick, flip the blade over, and lay the tape on the runner of the blade (the bottom). My dad taught me this trick, it makes the bottom less likely to wear off so quickly. He has a lot of these sort of tricks up his sleeves.

Soon I see I need to pull more, so I do, and run it around the toe of the blade. This helps even more with the toe. Its really surprising actually; it makes it stronger somehow. If you don’t have it taped at the end, the toe will literally shatter and fray until you have about an inch shorter blade.

Now comes the hard part, the wrapping and cutting stage. This is the reason I don’t like to tape my stick. I always mess up on like the first three wraps. Sometimes, I even get my dad to do it, but he’s not here right now, so I force myself to do it. And again I pull the tape out and start to wrap the blade.

I’m on my eighth wrap when the tape starts to stick together and becomes uneven. I give a brief grumble as a sign of my frustration, and unwrap and tear off the now useless tape. I try again, and this time I take my time. To start it, I place the beginning of the tape at the heal of the blade. Soon I pass my eighth wrap, and on to my ninth. This is where I have to start cutting. So I begin by slowly and cautiously wrapping the toe, and cutting little slits in the tape. This is another trick my dad taught me. It makes it so the tape lays flat instead of making little bumps and ridges.

I finish my taping, and I hold it back to see the final job. It looks pretty good. The white tape pops out from the black surrounding. I run my hand over the rough tape, smoothing down any creases. Then I reach into my bag and pull out my stick wax. I pull the cap off unveiling the sweet coconut smell, taking in the deepest breath I can bare. No one really knows why it smells like coconut, must just be the concoction of the many different chemicals. But I don’t need it for the smell, I need it for my blade. It basically gives me more grip to the puck, wich gives me a more wholesome and powerful shot. So once again, I pick up my stick, and evenly as I can spread it across my tape. Just like the hot dog and ketchup.





I then remember my skates at the shop. I walk through the dim light in my socks, almost cringing at the feeling of walking on the cold rubber floor. I walk past a few locker rooms, when I come around the corner, I find the Zam pulling off the ice. Its horns beeps in a steady pattern, warning anyone behind it. To most people it’s just an obnoxious, noisy horn, triggered when in reverse. But to hockey players, it basically just tells us when the ice is done, or in other cases we’ve only got two minutes to get dressed.

My skates sit upright against the counter, perfect as could be, waiting for me so very patiently. So I go over to them and pick them up by the Tuk (the part of the skate that separates the blade from the boot). I lightly touch the stainless steel blade, when suddenly I jerk back my hand. The blade is still hot. I always forget this. The spinning wheel that sharpens your skates causes friction when it comes in contact with the blade, which obviously causes strong enough heat to burn me. If I could only remember that.

I see sparks flying in the back of the shop, and I know Eamon is sharpening another pair of skates. I don’t bother him, and this time pick up my skates by putting my hands in the boot. It’s surprisingly warm in there too.

When I get to the locker room, I place my skates on the ground and sit down onto the splintery, lead painted bench. They’re not the greatest benches… by that I mean the worst. Every time you slide you get about fifteen tiny splinters in your butt. The amount of pain packed into one slide is about as equal to getting both of your legs amputated with a dull spoon… in my perspective anyway.

As I’m trying not to slide, I pick up my left skate and try to put it on. It’s a little tight, so I loosen the laces a little bit and try again. It slips right on. My skate molds around my foot, kind of comforting me in a way. Then I pick up my foot, and tap my heel on the floor, making the skate secure. I reach down for the laces, grabbing the fourth “rung” up, pulling them up only about a half inch up. The more laces I pull, the tighter my skate gets. And finally on my last rung I wrap the lace around my hands and pull as hard as I can, almost burning me once again.

I do the same with my other skate, finishing them off both with a double knot. But as I’m doing that, I suddenly realize how strong and stiff skates are. Don’t get wrong, I love stiff skates, almost everyone does. Yet I remember this project I did in school about the history of hockey, and I distinctly remember one thing. The first skates were made in 300 B.C. from a leg bone of a reindeer. They would sharpen it, and then bore a hole at each end of the bone, making it so an individual could just strap them to their moccasins. I just can’t imagine how difficult that would have been. But people still did it, they still skated just for the love of skating.

Breaking the silence, I hear a loud crash from the rink, letting me know once again the ice is ready. So I as quickly as I can, I grab my helmet and swing it over top of my head. I bring the cage down, resting my chin on the smelly chin strap. Then I reach for my left strap and pull it back as far as I can, buckling it at the back half of my helmet. And again I do the same to the right.

I reach into my bag, feeling around for my gloves. I find one, my right, so leave it on the side until I find my left glove. It takes a little bit, but I soon find it and put it on… then put on my right. It’s kind of another weird thing I do; I always put on my left side of my gear on first. It’s of one of my hockey rituals.

I get up, leaving the splintery bench behind, grab my stick, and start to head out the door. But I’m forgetting one thing… my puck! I jog back to my bag, zip open a compartment, and come up with thick black puck. The burnt biscuit some people like to call it.

I walk past locker room 7, locker room 8, the skate shop with the broken sign, the food court with pretzels turning in a glass case, the bathrooms that smell of urinal cakes, the overpriced vending machines, and finally come to halt at the door leading to heaven. I walk over to it, my blades sinking into the rubber floor. Then turn my hand over, and reach out to the big, heavy industrial door handle. I push down on it, and open. I can only imagine what it would be like to play in the United Center, the cameras flashing, fans cheering, Megan Fox in the crowd.

I toss my puck onto the ice, and step onto the clouds.