Ode to the Zamboni: in honour of the new hockey season

For my friend, the writer and Zamboni expert Mark Oshinskie

By the time our first son was a pre-school tot, he was a rabid hockey fan. Growing up in Quebec City, he lived in a hotbed of hockey frenzy where the local media blared news of the NHL Nordiques 24/7 in every bus, bar, or convenience store. In those days of yore, any news of the world announcing the zombie apocalypse would have been relegated to the back pages of the Journal de Quebec, giving way to the latest scores, prognoses, and scurrilous gossip about the Nords.

As theatre lovers, my wife and I tried to interest our freshly minted offspring in all things thespian, but to no avail. When his daycare put on skits for fawning parents, he chose to collect the tickets. Hockey was his passion. And he was especially keen on the fights.

At four years old, he began playing at the insect level, randomly called MAG in our community, and developed a well deserved reputation for being ”scrappy,” much to the chagrin of his peacenik parents, who frequently cringed with shame and blanched with trepidation over the course of his lengthy kid hockey career whenever he would receive a suspension for too many penalties or for fighting.

Now 43 years young, our hockey son has always been a honey badger, no more so than on the ice.

But his pre-competitive tyke hockey days provide my most cherished memories. Even before he began kindergarten, we would attend games at the old Colisée de Québec, both professional matches and pee wee tournament contests. The honey badger loved the games, but what he really longed for, working himself up to a  state of effervescent excitement, was the between-period appearance of the Zamboni, the resurfacer for cleaning and smoothing the ice surface. Zamboni drivers were his heroes. His fervent goal was to take up Zamboni driving as a career.

When we watched games together on our rabbit-eared television in the mid 1980s, especially jousts between the Nordiques and the Canadiens during which vicious donnybrooks were the order of the day, our honey badger pined for the Zamboni between periods, expressing deep discontent with the garrulous talking heads, repetitive replays, and inane commercials that crowded out crucial Zamboni watching.

 

As the new hockey season begins, I fervently wish a Zamboni could erase all the accumulated ruts and snow of life’s trials and tribulations and that my son could relive that time of wonder and innocence, before his inevitable fall from grace, a fate that befalls us all.

 

“Zambonis quietly and efficiently turn beat-up ice into a beautiful, clean sheet before dumping the harvested snow on a mound outside the rink. Even those who aren’t skaters or hockey players like watching the ice resurfacing process. It’s satisfying to see, in a few minutes of swath-by-swath passes, something thoroughly damaged turned into something smooth, shiny and new. If only life were so easy.”-Mark Oshinskie

Your friend,

Robert

https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/

 

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For more hockey stories, please click here: The Happy Brothers/ Les frères Šťastný – Robert McBryde (robertmcbrydeauthor.com)