There’s something magical about outdoor hockey.
The venues are themselves a work of art. Backyard rinks that get nestled between trees and in spite of slopes. Ponds that finally got with shovel or snowplow. A community rink with massive lights and warming hut that the fire department floods annually. Then add a beautiful sunny day in January, snow blanketed all around, smell of campfire somewhere close by, and doesn’t get much better.
For youth players, it’s a stress-free, non-structured format to just play and have fun with friends. It’s the hockey player equivalent to the baseball “sandlot”, with players visualizing they’re in that big moment… game 7, overtime, power play, offensive zone faceoff zone, last second shot. Teams uneven? Propose a trade and play on. Someone has to go home for dinner? The big brother becomes the universal player who can only pass. Your only opponents are darkness, or bedtime. Ice getting too chewed up? Take a 5-minute shoveling break…losers have to shovel.
It's also awesome for development. You get a ton of extra skating, often times in tight areas where quickness and edges are demanded. You get a ton of extra puck touches, and the freedom to try new moves without anything on the line besides bragging rights. Kids naturally develop the spatial awareness of how to guard someone, and how to skate open area and call for the puck.
For adults, the joy of pond hockey is experienced on multiple levels. First, there’s the feeling of nostalgia from your childhood years and time with your buddies. Second, experiencing the joy through your children and helping share your love of the game with them. Lastly, the sense of pride if you were the rink builder of all the crappy conditions you had to overcome to create that rink so that others could enjoy (and believe me, no matter where you live, they did), and then to continue keeping it freshly resurfaced.
We even see the delight from NHL players during all these stadium series games, happily dealing with the snow, sunshine, wind, and all the other elements, to experience that love of the game like they did as kids.
So even if your family is shuffling each weekend from game to game, practice to practice, tournament to tournament, be sure to carve out time for your players to hit the open ice this winter. Help them carry the backyard goal to the sheet and lift it over the boards. Tell them not to worry about the pucks that ricochet into the snow…we’ll buy some more and just find them in the spring. When they’re done resting in the basement with the cocoa, put their SKABOOTS back on and walk back out to the pond. There’s no better investment in you can make in their hockey journey.
