It has been well-documented that the four Staal brothers (that would be Eric, Marc, Jordan, and Jared, all of whom play in the NHL) spent a good chunk of their youth on their backyard rink in Thunder Bay, Ontario. NikeBauer did a…
Nearing the endgame
This post was inevitable. But I still hate writing it. Because it is beginning to look more and more like Sunday, February 14th was the last skating day of the 2009-2010 backyard rink season. I spent about an hour on the…
On hockey, life, and waiting for the things we want
The sport of hockey is powerful.  I have never been able to find another activity that so perfectly blends the physical with the mental, the instinctual with the planned and practiced. It is art and violence and poetry and fury, all…
Tools of Ignorance
The term “tools of ignorance” is generally applied to the equipment that baseball catchers wear. Coined by Muddy Ruel, a major-league catcher in the 1920’s, it loosely implies that smart folks would never don such gear and play such a…
