“You are the worst goalie in the entire league!”
It was a classic volley of trash talk, spat from the lips of an enemy player, inches away from my goalie mask grill. It was a potentially confidence-shattering comment; the only caveat being the trash talk was dished in the handshake line at the end of the game, right after we had beaten said trash talker’s team, ousting them from the 2016 beer league hockey playoffs.
You could say maybe I had it coming. Like most aspects of sports, it’s arguable. When the final buzzer sounded to end the first round of the Flying Vees playoff series, signaling the trash talker’s team’s exit and our advancement, you could say, as a beer league goalie, I celebrated the Flying Vees’ victory maybe a wee bit too much.
Being a huge Tiger Williams fan, I attempted to ride my stick the length of the ice, like a witch on a broom, just like Tiger outrageously did with brute aplomb in the 1980s after scoring a big goal for the Canucks. It turns out that riding a goalie stick is hard to do, especially in goalie equipment. I got about five feet and keeled over like a dingy in a gale. But my victory celebration didn’t stop there. Once I regained my skates, I pointed and shouted down the ice at the losing team, “THAT ONE WAS FOR NICK THOMAS!”
The backstory: In beer league hockey, just like in any competitive sport, rivalries grow and intertwine like thorny weeds. Our fiercest matchups for the past couple of seasons have been against said trash talker’s team. During one particularly nasty game right in the thick of the Christmas season, one of their defensemen delivered a brutal hit from behind, sending my childhood friend, longtime bandmate, and original Flying Vee, Nick “Lock-Eye” Thomas, head first into the boards. An ugly melee between the teams ensued. Nick never played another game for the rest of the season or the playoffs, out with a concussion. We lost the game 9-2.
We held our cool and our tongues in each and every game we played against them after that nightmare before Christmas, determined to strike back for the offense against Nick by delivering them loss after loss. We swept them throughout the rest of the regular season. Then came the two back-to-back, intense, and very close playoff matches. When that final buzzer sounded and they were finally done like dinner, the pent up emotion of half a season erupted from within my sodden goalie gear like Sam Kinison resurrected.
The trash talker’s team both heard and saw me wildly celebrating our playoff sweep. They went ballistic. Tina the referee corralled me and told me to cool it, warning me not utter a word in the handshake line. Many of the trash talker’s team, seething with anger, either didn’t shake my hand or squeezed it so hard while dishing insults, I wondered if my goalie stick grip would ever be the same.
I regretted the celebration immediately, and offered apologies to my teammates, theirs, and to the league, but… when do goalies get to celebrate, anyway? Apparently, when the losing team has left the ice. I had to make good for my teammates, but found I couldn’t shake the phrase “worst goalie in the entire league,” so I instead I tried to use the words as motivation for the rest of our run, determined to prove the trash talker wrong.
The Flying Vees, a happy hodgepodge of musicians, doctors, and dog-walkers, played in perfect formation in front of me. Our semi-final was a tight, 3-2 overtime victory, which vaulted us into the championship game. We won that final contest 4-0, my first shut-out in eons. I definitely waited until the other team had left the ice before I raised the championship trophy over my head. Maybe that volley of nasty trash talk was exactly what I needed…
Grant Lawrence is the author of The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie.
