When he was a kid, he'd be up at five. Take shots till eight. Out after school, back on ice. That was his life, he was gonna play in the Big League.

For whoever still comes here to read the posts I put up, I thought I would share a more personal post with you than I usually do.

Some people may know that my “screen name”- goal10der – comes from the fact that I play ice hockey and that my position is, well, goaltender! I can hear people now going “goal-10-der, oh, NOW I get it!” Anyway, I’ve been playing hockey for as long as I can remember. I started skating around the age of 2 and I think started playing organized around 5, but my dad could tell you for sure. I love hockey. I wish I could explain it in more detail, but that’s it – I love hockey. For baseball fans, you can relate this way: you love the smells in the ballpark, the grass, the hot dogs, the peanuts; I love the smell of the rink, the fresh smell of a clean sheet of ice. For football fans, we love the contact and the intensity. For basketball fans, well, sorry basketball fans, that sport is just stupid and I don’t understand how a team can have so many timeouts in one game! I don’t mind shooting hoops, I used to be pretty good at it, but basketball is not a sport I enjoy at all. All that being said, basketball players are special athletes that are in tremendous shape and do some incredible things, I don’t take that away from them, I just don’t like the game.

Ok, that’s a whole different rant in itself, so where was I again? Oh yes, hockey. A couple months ago, at one of our league games, we had to wait for the Zamboni (the machine that cleans the ice) to work it’s magic and a friend and I were sitting on the bench patiently waiting. About ¾ of the way through the cleaning, he turned to me and said, “I love soccer, but I was born to play hockey. Every time I see a fresh sheet of ice, it reminds me of how much I love the game.” I think that accurately sums it up for me too, but it also goes so much deeper than that.

My father played hockey, my uncle played hockey and was a goaltender as well. One of my first memories as a child is going to my first hockey game in Buffalo with my dad. I’m not sure how old I was at this time, but I know the details. He had season tickets in the Oranges, the top section of the old Aud. Center ice, literally right on the red line. They were almost all the way at the top, which in the old buildings was still right on top of the ice. The Sabres were playing the Minnesota North Stars. Don Beaupre played goal for them, Bob Suave played for the Sabres. The rest of the details didn’t really matter; I only wanted to watch the goalies! Years have passed, I’ve been to 50 games or so in that time, I sat 13 rows from the ice during Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals in '99, but I still remember that first one over all the others.

Last weekend, when I was back in Buffalo, my dad and I got the opportunity to sit down and watch the Sabres come from behind to beat the Montreal Canadiens. It was a pretty special night, dad and I drinking a couple beers, watching, talking and living for nothing but the hockey game. The comments we made throughout the game were observations and thoughts stemming from years of playing and watching intently how the game has evolved and in many ways become better. We had a lot of fun and I wish I could do that more often, but living so far away from him now makes it very difficult.

At any rate, I’ve completely gone off course from where I intended this post to go, so let me right myself now. Since moving to Houston, I've joined 2 leagues, some of the same guys are on both teams, but they are decidedly different. The one team that I'm going to concentrate on here is a great group of guys who I just started playing with last summer. This team has really changed in the last 32 games. Most of them have been together for a long time and the team had it’s share of ups and downs. We started out last season as an OK team, winning some and losing some, but never really playing with much confidence or emotion. We made the playoffs in December, seeding ourselves 6th. To our fortune, the 2nd seed fell in the first round and we shutout our opponents. Having an easier game than we might have had if the 2nd seed had won, we cruised through the 2nd round as well putting us on our way to the championship game against the #1 seed. We played them close, but their youth and speed overwhelmed us in the 3rd period and we lost 3-1. In those 3 playoff games however, we became a team, more than we had been all season.

The season that began in January had us changing our name to a new sponsor, Houston Strength. With a name change, new uniforms and a newfound “team”, we set out to have a successful season; and we did. We started out 7-0-1, but stumbled late, going 2-3-1 in our last 6 games to finish at 9-3-2. We were seeded 2nd going into the playoffs, which began last night. We watched the excitement in the game before us with a shootout ending that wound up with the 8th seed defeating the 1st seed 1-0 in the shootout. We knew our game would be tough as well.

Are you wondering where I’m headed with this? Well, keep reading, its coming up right now.

I mentioned how we became a team in the last playoffs. This is one of those things that I’m sure other sports are similar in, but for me, its hockey and this is one of the many reasons I love it. It’s all about the team. Last night, we had 3 players who showed and played sick. I’m not talking, “I’ve got a stomach ache.” I’m saying they were vomiting, had diarrhea, fever and cold sweats. They were dehydrated and their muscles were aching; that kind of sick. Nevertheless, they came and they played anyway. They left whatever energy they had out on the ice and played their asses off. They didn’t even look healthy. They knew how much it meant to the team that they play though. They were willing to give up their bodies to play a game; to be a part of the team.

I get a lot of accolades for playing goal. Sometimes I can single-handedly win a game or keep us in a game when we shouldn’t be close. Sometimes I don’t make a big difference, but this team congratulates me either way and I give them their credit as well. It’s all part of being a team. I’m not big on being the focal point because I only want to win (no, I’m not competitive at all!) and I don’t care if I make 50 saves or 5. Last night, I played well, I made some big saves to keep us in it, but despite all my efforts, we lost. Despite all of these other 3 guys efforts, we lost. Did we lose because of them? Hell no. As I said, they played their hearts out, the whole team did, but we just didn’t play well enough to win.

I can’t quite put into words how I felt after the game. On the one hand, I felt a huge amount of disappointment. The 2nd seeded team loses a game they should’ve won. I took my share of the blame as well; I could’ve saved at least 2 of their goals, but as a team, nobody really stepped up. On the other hand, I felt this amazing sense of pride. We had a great season. We played well all season and won a couple games that maybe we shouldn’t have. But the one overwhelming feeling I had was the sense the we are a team in every sense of the word. Three players come to play sick, knowing their not at even 60%, they played anyway. The rest of the team didn’t make excuses after the game because we didn’t have our best team on the ice. In my view, we had more than our best team on the ice; those guys played with some serious heart and I am so proud to be able to say those are my teammates.