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The Good News Bears

By Guest, 04/11/13, 2:30AM CDT

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White Bear Lake spring league team of all goalies skating out puts fun first

Goalies Revenge before they hit the ice in North St. Paul.

Any goalie parent will tell you playing goalie doesn’t have a lot in common with playing hockey. It’s a whole different deal, and there isn’t much joy in it. When the team wins, no one notices the goalie. And when they lose, it’s often the goalies fault (or if we’re lucky maybe the refs).

As a goalie parent it’s damn near impossible to sit in the stands by the other parents because all it takes is one comment after a goal to set us off. My personal favorites are passive aggressive gems like, “Aww, they work so hard to get back in the game and he just gives it back like that.” Or the filled-with-surprise, “how’d that one slip in?” Even the most normal of us goalie parents will find themselves eventually relegated to standing by the glass in the corner of the rink alone – likely talking to ourselves, pacing, or both.

It’s not all bad, there are those one or two games a year where your kid stands on his head and grandparents from the other team are looking to shake his hand in the locker room after the game. But those days are few and far between.  For the most part playing goalie in youth hockey is a thankless job.

Like most goalie parents I’ve tried to talk my kid out of the net on more than one occasion. But as they say, goalies are goalies.  It’s true they’re a different breed, so I was never quite able to excommunicate my kid from the crease. What’s that old phrase, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?” This approach led to an idea just crazy enough to go down as one of the better hockey experiences of my life.

A few months ago I signed up to have a team in the Original Spring League in North Saint Paul. Being from White Bear I, of course, asked for the color orange and submitted our team name as Goalies Revenge. I then sent an email to every goaltender in the association at the Peewee age level:  A, B, C, boys, and girls, even Squirts goalies coming up to Peewee.  My recruitment email was not your normal rah-rah note about an off-season training opportunity. I clearly stated that I was putting this team together purely for fun and didn’t care if we won a single game. The goal was for the goalies to make some highlights outside of the crease. And more importantly I wanted them to have a hockey experience that was pressure free. Part support group, part liberation army – Goalies Revenge was there to remind these kids what hockey felt like before the weight of the world sat on their chest protectors.

The reaction I received shocked me as literally every goalie signed up.  Maybe it was the point in the season I sent my note, but something was in the air. Across all levels goalies (most who didn’t really know each other) replied back with a simple “Cool.  Yes, put us down.”

I have to admit I was a bit nervous before our first practice. I had scoured an old file for some drills but I really didn’t know what the kids would be capable of on the skating side of things. And while the Goalies Revenge idea seemed fun on paper, I didn’t truly know if it would work on the ice.

We worked through some drills and mostly just played four on four at our first and only practice, but we also made an important decision that night. The team decided rather than rotate through the net themselves – they would prefer to have a skater come in for each game and be the honorary “Guest Goalie” for our team. If you’re keeping track that meant the official recipe for Goalies Revenge was to have all skaters be goalies that never skate out, and have our goalie be a skater who never played goalie.  Nice!  Bring on the Blackhawks!

I arrived at our first game wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt under my jacket. Rather than a Herb Brooks speech in the locker room this shirt would be a constant reminder all season why the Goalies Revenge exists in the first place. Our entire reason for being was to have fun.

Going into that first game I didn’t know if we’d be good, terrible, or average.

Our guest goalie played out of his mind, but that wasn’t my favorite part. After the game his dad described the experience of handing his son off to Goalies Revenge as “bringing my kid to some sort of cult.” We prefer “gang” to “cult,” but you get the idea. And there was another unexpected benefit of the guest goalie role. Driving home after helping us win our first game our guest goalie told his father that for years he had heard kids say stuff on the bench after a goalie gave up a goal. When his dad asked what he’d say if he heard that again, the kid smiled and said, “I’d tell them to be quiet. And I’d ask them if they’d ever played goalie because it’s not as easy as it looks.”

Four games into our season our gang of goalies has added an appropriately dangerous logo, some neon orange t-shirts, and a winning record. But that’s not what’s special about this team. I’ve loved seeing all of these kids, and their parents coming together around a hockey team truly built for fun. Hockey is a wonderful sport but at a very young age it becomes about identification and selection. It’s about doing the right things, being on the right teams, and staying ahead of your neighbor. Goalies Revenge gives a giant poke check to all that garbage.

Years ago I had the pleasure of writing an article with Herb Brooks. One of his big ideas was to somehow organize youth hockey by neighborhood again. And while teams would resemble Breakfast Club and Goonies more than the AAA machines of today, Brooks believed the game would flourish if you could have Elm Street play Oak Street like they did years ago., He felt too many players were scared away from the game at a young age after being prematurely labeled a “B” or “C” player. He believed neighborhood hockey would broaden the base and keep kids playing longer. The best players would improve emerging from a bigger pool, and late bloomers wouldn’t give up on the game at an early age.

In some ways Goalies Revenge resembles what Herb was talking about. Our team wasn’t picked at a tryout or by outside evaluators. It’s just ten boys, a girl, and a brave buddy willing to strap on the gear each game. They only thing they have in common is the position, but it’s funny how quickly they’ve become a team. And Goalies Revenge is a team unlike any other.

A Goalies Revenge game day is a sight to see. Most of our games start with our team walking out of the locker room only to have the other team (often pint sized Squirts moving up to peewee) stare with jaws dropped when they see our considerable size. Often the opposing coach will stammer something about going easy on them. To which I’ll just smile and say, “they’re big, but none of them can do a hockey stop. It will be a close game.” And close games they have been. It helps that every single one of our players even though they’re skating out still blocks a half dozen shots a game. We’ve even had a few of our skaters actually drop into the butterfly from time to time, but luckily only one penalty (so far) for a skater closing his hand on a puck in the crease. Our entire team sees the game well and know what the right play is; the only trouble is their bodies usually can’t keep up with what their minds are telling them to do.

Judging from the reaction we’ve been getting from opposing teams people don’t like losing to Goalies Revenge either. The optics aren’t great as our island of misfit toys slams into boards because they can’t stop, fall regularly, cheer on every unorthodox save from their guest goalie – and somehow still find a way to win once in a while. This skill disparity led to my favorite exchange of the season. While shaking hands with a team we had surprisingly just beat, one of their players said, “Your team is pretty good, but your goalie is terrible.”

The Goalies Revenge crowd is different too.  Our parents roar with approval for every single save our guest goalie makes. They laugh often, they sit together, and we never have a volunteer to work the clock because they’ll miss the game. And no one is pacing down by the glass in the corner.

I’m sure if we did it long enough the Goalies Revenge would start to feel more like a hockey team than it does a gang or cult. Parents would start talking to their kids about what they did or didn’t do right on the car ride home. Practices would be added. Nicer sticks would be bought and ice time would be monitored. But for right now the Goalies Revenge has draped a big Hawaiian shirt over the net taking a short vacation from hockey stress and pressure.

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