Stick figures

Like a child's drawing, pond hockey has its allure rooted in simplicity

By Lynn DeBruin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 25, 2008 at 12:45 a.m.

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Photo by Steve Peterson / Special To The Rocky

Former Detroit Red Wings player Reed Larson, foreground left, Patrick Martin and Aaron Laaveg skate during the Rocky Mountain Pond Hockey Championships last weekend at Nottingham Lake in Avon. The format is four-on-four with no goalies or checking.

Photo by Steve Peterson / Special To The Rocky

Dennis Hextall, a 13-year NHL veteran, works on patching the ice between games.

Photo by Steve Peterson / Special To The Rocky

Scott Worden, left, Chance Thede and John Phelan take a well-deserved break after the third and final game of pool play last weekend. Participants range in age from 21 to 62.

Photo by Steve Peterson / Special To The Rocky

Joe Histed smooths the surface at Nottingham Lake with a small Zamboni pulled behind a tractor. The equipment is light enough that it won't fall through the ice.

Photo by Steve Peterson / Special To The Rocky

Nicolette Dais, left, assists Tish Plavec with garters that will hold up her thermal leggings. Three women's teams participated this year.

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Some came dressed in threadbare college jerseys, or with helmets barely secured to their heads with jump-rope-like chin straps.

A few came without their teeth - the consequences of a puck or stick gone awry years ago.

No matter the age or the skill level, most of the men - and women - who braved subfreezing temperatures at the second Rocky Mountain Pond Hockey Championships were warmed by fond childhood memories.

"This is what hockey is about, playing outside like this," said Wolcott resident Brian Houlihan, who had no trouble lacing up the skates at age 56.

He thought back to growing up in Tarrytown, N.Y., and playing the game on a frozen spit of water called Catfish Pond, even though there were no catfish in it.

"My mother used to pack a lunch for us. We were out of the house at 8 o'clock in the morning and didn't come back till dark," he said.

As he reminisced on those days of youth, one could almost smell the New England clam chowder, cooked in a Campbell's soup can tossed in a fire they built next to the pond.

It's a stark contrast to the NHL All-Star Game this weekend in Atlanta, where multimillionaire players will skate on perfect ice inside Philips Arena and tickets to fully catered suites for 20 might fetch $40,000.

But even the NHL realizes the allure of hockey played in the elements, as evidenced by the popularity of a recent outdoor game in snow-swept Orchard Park, N.Y.

Snow wasn't falling Saturday at Nottingham Lake, flanked by views of Beaver Creek Resort, but this was hockey at its roots nonetheless.

Players age 21 to 62 slid pucks along hand- staked 2-by-10-inch boards, and off snowbanks, all the while avoiding potholes and creases in the ice that could trip them up like a ragged piece of carpet.

Better than the small bonfire was the price of admission: zero.

And it didn't cost much more to rent a former NHL player (Dennis Polonich, Shawn Burr, John Ogrodnick and Reed Larson were among those participating) to buoy one's team in the round-robin portion of the 24-team tournament.

"We bid $45 on Billy Evo, but we told him it was $450," Houlihan said of the former Detroit Red Wings draft pick who was part of the alumni group that has come to Vail Valley the past 16 years to help raise money for youth hockey.

Turning back the clock

Though it was 9 degrees when the first games started Saturday, no one seemed to mind - not the children sliding down snowbanks next to the makeshift rinks or the adults fetching pucks that careened off the 6-inch-high wooden goals into the snow.

In between games, players chipped in with shovels to get the ice back into shape or skated playfully outside the main meshed- in rink with their young children.

"It's just like we used to do as kids - go scrape the ice, get some friends together and go have a shinny game," said Dennis Hextall, a former left winger who played 13 years in the NHL, mostly for the Minnesota North Stars and the Red Wings.

The first time Hextall put on skates, at age 3, was inside Madison Square Garden because his father, Bryan, played for the New York Rangers.

But by the time he was 5, his dad had retired and it was back to Manitoba and a small farming community in the prairie province.

Those outdoor venues, whether ponds or actual rinks, he believes, made for keener skills.

"It's hard to handle a puck. It's like a tennis ball out there, bouncing around. But that's the way a lot of kids learned, years ago," Hextall said.

He lamented that many kids today don't have those same opportunities, and with indoor rinks renting for up to $180 an hour, hockey is expensive.

"The kids today, it's often an hour and a half of ice time, and when they get on the ice, the coach blows the whistle and it's a very structured practice. Then, when time is up, the whistle blows again and everybody is off the ice," he said.

It's not like the good old days when he remembers skating until frostbite was about to set in.

"A lot of European players you see are very handy at handling the puck," Hextall said, noting Detroit's Henrik Zetterberg, in particular, probably could maneuver one inside a phone booth.

"If you go to Europe, there's a lot of open- air arenas, and that's where these kids learn the puck control. . . . You've got some good American hockey players, but I don't think they can handle or control the puck the way most Europeans do."

Wings connection

Before Colorado had the Avalanche, members of the Detroit Red Wings Alumni Association came to Vail Valley to ski and stage games against teams such as the Vail Mountaineers to raise money for youth charities.

Two years ago, Andy Clark, president of the Vail-Eagle Youth Hockey Association, had the idea to host an outdoor tournament in conjunction with that annual game played in Vail's Dobson Ice Arena.

In Minnesota, from where Clark hails, the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships began three years ago on the ice of Lake Nokomis.

The four-on-four, no-goalie, no-checking format has grown to 225 teams, with some 1,500 participants playing the game the old-fashioned way.

"In Minnesota, we would always go to the outdoor rinks for enjoyment," said Clark, who played hockey at Saint John's University in Minnesota.

"That really stuck in my psyche, and when I came out here to Colorado in 1987, they really didn't have anything like that in Vail. Over the years, I've been the director of the youth association and a lot of other positions and always (thought) back to, 'Wouldn't it be nice . . .' "

When a childhood friend called and raved about the huge event in Minnesota, Clark thought of Nottingham Lake, where a Zamboni already is used to clear the ice for public skating.

"I thought it would be a great way to introduce kids to what I used to do as a kid and get the adults back together the way they used to play," Clark said.

All walks of life

This year, the youth tournament was canceled because heavy snow caused seepage in the ice and a plow fell through on the north end of the lake during Christmas week.

That left room for only five rinks - and one weekend of tournament games. Still, the event grew from 18 teams last year to 24 this year. Clark hopes to expand it to 40.

As the second tournament showed, anybody and everybody is welcome.

On Saturday, blue-collar workers skated alongside Fortune 500 executives, with bus drivers and ski instructors battling for pucks with attorneys, physicians and even a World Cup ski racer (Kristina Kosnick).

Chad Warren, a 25-year-old framer from Eagle who has been on skates since he was 2, wasn't about to miss it - even though he lost two teeth and broke a cheekbone playing pond hockey as a youngster.

"Who cares who wins out here? It's just fun," he said, likening the camaraderie to that of rugby festivals.

Mark Graham, who came from Detroit to play, agreed.

"How many players who played serious football, serious baseball, serious basketball are playing serious football, serious baseball, serious basketball now?" asked Graham, 48. "Softball doesn't count. Flag football doesn't count. Shooting hoops in the backyard doesn't count. Now, (hockey players) at 50 years old can still play with guys 50 - they can still be angry for that one hour and go and have a beer with them afterward."

The idea suited 50-year-old Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Company and great-grandson of Henry Ford. He laced up his skates Friday night for the Red Wings alumni in his personal Field of Dreams, then broke a sweat outdoors with his own team from Detroit the next day.

Ford, whose team lost in the over-40 final to the local Geezers, said he has been playing since he was a boy growing up on the shores of Lake St. Clair in Michigan.

"I remember Christmas Day, after we opened presents, we'd go out and play for hours and hours. I just loved it," Ford said. "You never got cold, and if you did, there was no one to complain to anyway."

'It's all about . . . playing'

Everyone had his or her own way of staying warm, just as fans and players did earlier this month when more than 71,000 watched outdoors at Ralph Wilson Stadium outside Buffalo as Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby won a shootout for the Penguins against the Sabres.

Goalies wore toques atop their masks and fans bundled up in ski or ice-fishing outfits during the frigid game that proved a TV ratings hit.

"We found out right away that normal scarves don't work," Clark said of growing up in St. Paul, Minn.

What did was an old hockey sock with stirrups, pulled up over the head.

"As long as you had a couple of hockey socks, you were pretty well insulated for the afternoon," he said.

That is, unless someone broke through the ice over the shallow water. That didn't happen last weekend. But one hockey fan from Indiana who heard about the Avon tournament grew nostalgic as he thought back on his own childhood games.

He recalled one evening in March when the ice began to thaw.

"One of our guys fell through up to his chest," Neill Klatte said. "By the time we walked him home, his pants - back then we didn't have thermals - all three layers had frozen solid to the point we had to carry him because his legs wouldn't bend."

To make matters worse, the muck on the bottom of the pond had sucked the kids' skates off. They weren't found until the Fourth of July.

Like others hooked on the game, he kept playing - albeit in boots, until his parents could afford a new pair of skates.

"It doesn't matter if you're good or bad, it's all about coming out and playing," said Sean Vollner, of Steamboat Springs, who played for the Colorado Hockey Insiders last weekend. "It's scrappy on the ice, but once you're off, everybody's friends."

debruinl@RockyMountainNews.com

Women, girls lacing 'em up, too

Who says hockey is just for guys? Don't tell Jill Weinstein, a traveling nurse in Denver, or Jodie Whitehead, a Denver engineer.

They are members of the Hellcats, one of three women's teams that participated in the Rocky Mountain Pond Hockey Championships last weekend.

Whitehead, who is on the board of the Denver Women's Hockey League, said hockey is the fastest-growing sport for women and girls in Colorado. She estimated as many as 500 participate in the statewide Women's Association of Colorado Hockey and perhaps just as many play in nonwomen's leagues or on coed teams.

Weinstein, a former gymnast and cheerleader, said her guy friends always were hockey players, as is her boyfriend, whom she coaxed back into the game after she took it up.

"A lot of women that are having children now are getting their kids into hockey a lot younger and a lot of girls are starting to play at younger ages," said Weinstein, 31.

Whitehead said her brother played pond hockey on a rink her father created in their backyard, but she didn't get the opportunity. Now she has given up all other sports, even skiing, because hockey is so much fun.

The Denver Women's Hockey League provides instruction for novices, with players from 18 to 65 lacing up the skates.

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