“You’re a hell of a goalie,” the skater told me.

We had just finished playing at the lunchtime drop-in session at The Pond in Newark, Delaware.  His accolade was deserved, at least when judged by my performance during the skate: I had stopped pretty much everything that came my way.  However, he did not have the necessary data to determine if my puck stopping prowess was true talent or merely luck.

It can be hard to separate the two.  Were all of the shots that were hitting me center-of-mass (i.e., in my chest) the result of my good positioning, or were they the result of poor shooting by the skaters?  Did the skaters on the breakaways miss the net because my aggression rushed them into poor aim, or were they just having off days?  Did I really intend to make that glove save, or did my glove just happen to be in the right spot?

Perhaps it wasn’t so much that the skaters were having off days as it was that I was having an on day.  I was feeling really good going into the skate, and once I found some pegs for the net, that feeling continued on the ice.  I was watching the puck all the way in, reacting quickly and decisively, and staying solid on my angles.  I was in the zone.

It’s a magical thing being in the zone as a goalie.  It’s like being on some sort of crazy puck-stopping drug.  The biscuit stands out sharp and crisp, high in contrast against the ice.  Everything else becomes blurred.  The noisy clamor of the game gets muted.  It’s sublime: goaltending flow.

You see the puck, you see the play, you see all of this in the sense that you feel it. You instinctively know what must happen, and it does.  The angle of the shooter’s stick, his legs, his arms, his eyes; everything telegraphs where the puck is going like it’s in neon lights.  The pace slows down until it’s almost comically slow.  The moment of release becomes a foregone conclusion, not a surprise.

It’s concentration on an entirely different level, something that makes you wonder — later, after the moment, when there’s time for reflection — just what might still be possible for humans to accomplish.

Me in net at the University of Waterloo, a night in which I was "near-zone" but not quite fully there (Credit: Sarah)

Like any drug, once you’ve had a taste of the zone in its purest form, you’ll do anything to experience that bliss again.  I’ve experienced it doing only four activities: writing, hacking code, playing hockey, and taking photos. When I leave the zone and look back on what I did while in it, the product is sometimes beyond that which I consider within my skill, an observation which then occasionally leads to a flare-up of impostor syndrome.

Then there are times, dreadful times, when it seems like I have a total inability to stop the puck.  I’m a few degrees off my angle, a few tenths of a second too late on the reaction, a few inches too low on my glove position.  I let in goals like it’s going out of style.  The puck seems practically invisible; I’m not following it into my pads, I have no idea where the play is headed, and I seal up about as well as a door on a 1970s Chevy.  I’m embarrassed and an embarrassment.

That’s what separates me from the professionals (a label I’m applying in a broad sense).  I am either really good or downright terrible.  I am wildly inconsistent.

The mark of a professional is to turn out decent work even when not in the zone: sometimes spectacular, but always at least decent.  Not every session will be the best of the best, but even the mediocre ones are still pretty good. Anybody can be hot one night or a couple of nights, but turning in decent performances day after day, game after game, is very, very difficult.

I can do that in some disciplines, but hockey is not one of them.

Still, I don’t lose hope that I will one day enjoy, if not higher peaks, then at least shallower lows.  Practice, practice.

The sun had set, and I had 100 miles to go.  Sam’s wipers were on high, but the rain was so intense that they did little to keep the world from looking like a million tiny dots.  My complete focus was on driving.  I knew from the numerous signs along the road that moose, thousands of them, lurked in the shadows.   I should have waited it out, but doing so would have made me miss the overnight ferry back to Nova Scotia.

Three days earlier, I had arrived on Newfoundland, the penultimate province in my trip.  I was giddy with excitement.  Newfoundland had a certain mystique in my mind that had only been intensified during my time in the other provinces.

Port aux Basques, NL at dusk, eh b'y?

All across Canada, people had told me about how wonderful everybody was in Newfoundland.  Sure, they might have teased the “Newfies” a bit, much as some Americans characterize certain people who live in Appalachia as “hillbillies,” but any such mockery seemed always to be followed by notes of admiration.  Newfoundlanders, they said, were some of the nicest people on the planet.  So went my experience.

While I did not have the legendary adventure of being invited into a home for a cup’a tea, many little encounters combined to give the flavor of the culture.  There was Gerard, a kind old man in his 70s who I found admiring Sam in the parking lot of a grocery store in Deer Lake.  Then there was Tom, a retired teacher with a red convertible in Gros Morne National Park who chatted me up about many things, including the virtues of high-yield American REITs.  And of course there was Pete, who chatted me up about photography for the better part of an hour in Corner Brook’s Brewed Awakening coffee shop.

It's a 5+ hour ferry ride between Port aux Basques, NL and North Sydney, NS. Plenty of time to engage in some self photography, eh b'y?

Was there hockey?  Well, there was certainly interest in hockey.  The local paper, the Western Star, wrote up a piece about my trip, and the local CBC station interviewed me at the rink in Corner Brook, where I would go on to play at the lunchtime skate.

People were as nice at the arena as everywhere else I went on the island.  Turn-out was a bit light, just five skaters and myself, but we made the most of the situation.

The arena itself was slightly annoying, in that they were the second arena on the trip (the first being in Montreal) to charge me, a goalie, for playing in a drop-in skate.

I felt a bit guilty about my irritation when one of the skaters, a man named Tyrone, came up to me after the skate, wished me luck, and told me that he had a son of his own.  He then pushed $20 into my hand, which I attempted to decline, but he insisted I take it.  “I know it gets expensive, being on the road,” he said.  I was touched by his generosity — for he did not seem to be a wealthy man — and I thanked him profusely.

A rainbow near the road near Stephenville, NL, eh b'y?

The only problem I ran into on Newfoundland was the dialect.  Most of the people on Newfoundland seemed to speak standard Canadian English without much of an accent, but a few of the guys sounded like they had just gotten off the boat from Ireland.

One man in particular tried to talk with me in the parking lot of a Tim Hortons while I was tending to the air in one of Sam’s tires.  It took considerable effort to figure out that his name was Russ and that he worked as a hunting guide.  I think he was trying to convince me to go on a moose hunting trip, but I’m not certain.

Small building seen near Rocky Harbor, NL. This was as far from Port aux Basques that I ventured. St. John's will have to wait for another trip, eh b'y?

Fall colors in Corner Brook, NL, eh b'y?

Waterfront view near Norris Point, NL. The hills in the background are part of Gros Morne National Park, eh b'y?

Back on the road, several hours slowly passed,  and still Sam and I were plodding along through the inky black. Unknown danger continued to lurk just beyond the white boundaries of the road.  It was a lonely pursuit, but then a large number of trucks began to appear going opposite my direction.  I looked at the clock; the 7:00 p.m. ferry from the mainland must have arrived not long before.

An orange sodium glow appeared on the horizon and gradually grew to surround me.  I pulled into the ferry dock.  Sam and I had made it safely.

As for the moose?  Well, there were supposed to be 150,000 of them there, but I saw exactly zero during my time on the island.

It’s a question that must be on the minds of goalies everywhere: do goaltending skills translate from sport to sport?  I decided to find out.

Fundamentally, goaltending in all sports is a matter of geometry and timing.  There are obvious differences in the projectiles, net dimensions, and game rules, but the basic idea remains the same: prevent the opposition from scoring by either catching or deflecting the shot.

My friend Tyler (of waterfall and grizzly bear fame) happened to be in New York for the week on business when I arrived in the City.  He had connections to the indoor soccer community from back when he lived there, so he thought that there might be a way to finagle me onto a field for at least a few minutes.

I arrived at Chelsea Piers in the evening.  I had played hockey at the Sky Rink earlier in the day; in my return, I was to experience the field house portion of the expansive complex.

On my walk over from my friend Travis’s apartment in the East 20s, I had stopped by Modell’s on Avenue of the Americas to pick up the only really specialized component in a soccer goalkeeper’s ensemble: gloves.  Fortunately, basic gloves can be had for under $20, so it was nothing like the bank-breaking experience of getting together my current set of hockey goalie kit.

Tyler was subbing for one of the teams playing that hour.  We reached an agreement with the team captain that if the score was decisive in the last few minutes of the game, they’d send me in.  It was not to be; the game was within one goal until an empty-netter was scored in the closing seconds.  I stayed on the sidelines.

Tyler, who actually is a soccer goalkeeper, makes a save on a shot by a celebrity (blue #12). Bonus points if you can identify the celeb.

We were left with a few minutes between the end of that game and the start of the following game.  It wasn’t much time, but it would be better than nothing.  I jogged to the goal and started taking shots.

Since we were on an indoor soccer field, there were immediate similarities to hockey: the field was the size of a rink and was bounded by boards.  There were differences beyond the obvious lack of ice: the goal was set into the back wall instead of being in front of it, the penalty area (where the goalkeeper is privileged) was far larger than the crease, and the net itself was much larger than a hockey net (though smaller than a field soccer goal).

Taking shots felt similar to hockey.  I had to think about angles, predict whether the shots would be high or low, and so on.

Although I wasn’t very aware of it in the moment, inspection of photos from the event shows that I executed the saves themselves in a hockey-esque manner.

Making a save. It kind of looks like I'm trying to butterfly. Note how my ankles are locked: it isn't possible or desirable to have much lateral flex in one's ankles while wearing skates, so my instinct apparently carried over to the turf. (Photo: Tyler)

When shots were low, I butterflied.  When shots were high, I moved into them as if to block with my chest (though in fact I used my hands).

The most notable carryover from hockey was in my feet.  In hockey skates, it isn’t possible or desirable to have one’s ankles bend laterally.  Shoes don’t have the same restrictions, but I think that instinct got the best of me: my ankles were locked in almost all of the photos I have of me playing that night.  It was as if I was trying to have my non-existent skate blades bite the ice.

Again, my trailing foot is not planted. I'm not sure what motivated me to move like this. If a similar shot were coming at me on the ice, I'd probably be using a butterfly slide, and for that my legs would be in entirely different orientations. (Photo: Tyler)

It was nice to have the object coming at me be so large.  A soccer ball appears as a circle about 8.5 inches in diameter.  Compare that to a puck, which, when properly shot, appears as a rectangle 1 inch by 3 inches.

I’m not sure how fast the balls were coming at me on the shots I faced, but they certainly seemed slower than the hockey shots I face on a regular basis.  I did notice the sound of the ball flying through the air more than I notice the sound of the puck doing the same.

So, how was it?  For the few minutes I was out there, it was fun.  Enough fun that I’d like to try it again — hopefully in an actual game.

“When are you going to Hawaii?” “So, are you doing Hawaii?” “Wait, they have ice rinks in Hawaii?”

Not only does ice hockey exist in Hawaii, I’m going to experience it first-hand!  I booked my flight this morning, and I’m going to be there November 12-16.

Anybody want to start a betting pool on how much extra United charges me for my hockey bag and sticks?

EDIT: Looks like I’ll have to make this trip “powered by Subaru” in only 49 of the 50 states, since you can’t rent Subarus in Hawaii. 🙁

NOTE: In this post, we skip ahead to Connecticut, but don’t worry Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island: I’m working on your posts, too.  I’m just going out of order for a bit.

Remember how the rules of the trip were simply that I be on the ice and make at least one save?  Or, more specifically, remember how I never said I needed to play an entire game?  Well, I had to use that loophole in Connecticut.

My plan had been pure genius: I would go into the belly of the Yale Whale and emerge with Connecticut checked off my list.  State number 30 would be glorious, I tell you; glorious!

The smile on my face got a big slap when I walked into the rink.

“No goalies allowed”

Ok, not really.  There was no sign, but there was another goalie.  He told me that the lunchtime skate registered its goalies ahead of time.  Both nets had already been spoken for.  Would he mind rotating, I asked?  No, he replied, and suggested that I come back some other day.

In Calgary, I capitulated, but I wasn’t on such a tight schedule back then.  I couldn’t wait another day in Connecticut, and it wasn’t clear that waiting another day would have gotten me a net anyway.  Thus, I did the only thing I could do: I played the trip card.

“See, I’m on this trip to play hockey as a goalie in every state and every province, and this was supposed to be my Connecticut stop.  I’m leaving for New York tomorrow morning.  Is there any way we could work something out?”

“Well…”

“Please?  As a favor from one goalie to another?”

“So you just need to play a little while?”

“Yeah, I just need to be on ice and make at least one save.”

“What if I give you my net for the first 10 minutes?”

“You’d do that?”

“Yeah, I mean, that trip does sound amazing, and we wouldn’t want Connecticut to be a black spot on the record.”

“Great!  Thanks!”

Bill, for that was the goalie’s name, looked to be pushing 50 and spoke in an assertive manner.  It was no surprise to learn that he owned a metal casting company specializing in lead.

In the dressing room, all of us skaters and goalies shared laughs and told lies of past glory.  It was a decidedly older crowd, but it’s amazing how sport has a way of melting away the years.

On the ice, I took warmups for a while and then guarded the net for real.  I could tell that something was wrong with the middle of my left skate blade, but I played hard regardless.  I was pretty solid.

The only goal came on a rebound.  The shot came from the high slot a bit left of center, near but not quite on the ice.  I flared my right leg out in a half-V near the top of the crease and made the pad save.  I directed the rebound way out to the right, but I had failed to check the destination first.  The puck went right to the stick of an attacker sitting in the face-off circle and he one-timed it.  Because of the mechanics of the half-V and my position in the paint, all I could do was dive across the crease, but the puck was in the net before I got over.

After 10 minutes of play, I slapped my stick on the ice a few times and looked at the bench where Bill was sitting.  He motioned for me to stay a bit longer, and I happily obliged.  Five more minutes went by before Bill hopped over the boards and skated to the net.

I tagged out and headed to the dressing room. It was a short skate, but it was enough to let me bag another state.