{"id":5653,"date":"2020-05-19T10:38:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-19T10:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/2020\/05\/19\/five-little-things-i-miss-about-hockey\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T16:31:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T16:31:23","slug":"five-little-things-i-miss-about-hockey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/five-little-things-i-miss-about-hockey\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Little Things I Miss About Hockey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Original story posted ici<\/a> on Silver Seven Sens.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Typically, we reserve this space for our thoughts on the\u00a0Ottawa Senators, the NHL, and sometimes hockey at large. There\u2019s usually more than enough going on in the wide world of the sport for us to ring out five thoughts to share. But when I sat down to start writing this week\u2019s piece, and I combed through the dribs and drabs of news, I couldn\u2019t quite find the motivation to write about any of it. The Sens played in the NHL\u2019s last game over two months ago; today, maybe more so than any other day since that time, it really hit me that there just isn\u2019t anything going on at all. I was also really struck by how much I missed hockey. I don\u2019t just mean watching the Sens or hockey in general, I mean the actual game of hockey. I\u2019m a regular participant in adult leagues: before the shutdown, I was playing three nights a week. I miss that. I miss my friends, I miss the camaraderie. I miss a lot of it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the big, obvious things like I just mentioned above, but in today\u2019s piece I wanted to give a bit of space to the \u201clittle things\u201d that I love about hockey. Here are five of them, in no particular order:<\/p>\n

The Smell of an Arena:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The obvious joke here is that a hockey arena smells bad \u2014 mostly like sweat. But there\u2019s also a more subtle smell that hits you when you first walk through the doors from the lobby into the pad itself, before you get into the dressing room and the stench of your least-hygienically inclined teammate overwhelms your senses. I\u2019ve never heard a good answer for what exactly the smell is, maybe some sort of mix of zamboni fumes, but I get the same rush every time I inhale it as I did when I was 10.<\/p>\n

The First Few Strides on a Clean Sheet of Ice:<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re lucky enough to be skating on a clean sheet of ice, the first few strides as you step on are always the best. I\u2019ve been playing hockey for over twenty-five years now, and I still get a special feeling in my stomach when I do my first few cross-overs on an immaculate surface. I imagine it\u2019s similar to the feeling that artists experience when they are staring at a blank canvas. I wouldn\u2019t know because I have exactly zero artistic talent, but I think the analogy still holds.<\/p>\n

The Friendly Banter with Referees:<\/strong><\/p>\n

You might say that I\u2019ve mellowed with age, but in recent years I\u2019ve come to derive great pleasure from some friendly back-and-forth with the referees. You play in the same leagues for long enough, you start to get to know the folks in the striped shirts. Sure they\u2019re getting paid to be there, and I\u2019m definitely not, but they\u2019re just regular folks who also love hockey. It\u2019s like seeing an old friend \u2014 who might send you to the penalty box because they didn\u2019t like the way you got your stick in on your opponent\u2019s hands back there.<\/p>\n

The Sounds of the Game:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already talked about the smells of the game, but there\u2019s also something distinctly pleasing about the sounds of the game of hockey. There\u2019s a visceral thrill when a hard stride really digs into the ice, and there\u2019s no other sound like a slap shot that rings off the crossbar. I also have a deep appreciation for the sound, or lack thereof if you cradle the puck right, when a player receives a\u00a0hard\u00a0pass in stride. Close your eyes and I bet you can recall the soundtrack that\u2019s distinct to the game.<\/p>\n

A Nice Saucer Pass:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nothing makes me happier when I\u2019m playing than squeezing a pass into a tight window by saucering it over a defender\u2019s stick, or \u201csaucing it\u201d as the youths of today might say. There\u2019s something uniquely pleasing about the saucer pass, a change-up of sorts. Right when you release the puck, there\u2019s always a split-second where you\u2019re not sure if it\u2019ll work out; maybe the trajectory will take the puck right over a defender\u2019s stick and you have to hope you\u2019ve caught them unprepared; the doubt is part of what makes the success so worthwhile.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll turn it over to you then, readers. What are some of the little things that you miss about hockey?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original story posted here on Silver Seven Sens.\u00a0 Typically, we reserve this space for our thoughts on the\u00a0Ottawa Senators, the NHL, and sometimes hockey at large. There\u2019s usually more than enough going on in the wide world of the sport for us to ring out five thoughts to share. But when I sat down to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"segment":[],"class_list":["post-5653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5655,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5653\/revisions\/5655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5653"},{"taxonomy":"segment","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iplayhockey.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/segment?post=5653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}