Pond Hockey In Toronto

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Having been born and raised in the City of Toronto, a love of hockey was engrained in me from the beginning.  Whether it was watching Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday with my father and grandfather as a child or learning how to properly shoot a puck in the driveway with my brothers, hockey was a cornerstone for me growing up. Now, I had my share of 7:00am practices and 11:00pm games, and I missed high school dances for playoff games. I honed my hockey skills in the middle of the road on the street that I grew up on. I even flooded my backyard on more than one occasion to make my own rink, but there was one quintessentially Canadian hockey dream I had never lived.  I had never played pond hockey.

It only stands to reason that in a country covered by snow for much of the year, a frozen game played on ice would be born.  Having been born in the city and having learned the game with a tennis ball on pavement, finding a frozen pond to chase a puck around on was not in the cards.  A couple of weeks ago that all changed. A friend asked me if I wanted to join him for some shiny, I couldn’t resist.

I couldn’t believe it when I found out the pond we were going to play on was just a few blocks from where I had grown up. “How could I not know about this place?” I thought to myself as I approached the natural ice surface. I quickly laced up my skates, grabbed a puck from my bag and just like that, I was playing. I didn’t wait for my friends to join me. In my head the game was on. I weaved through imaginary defensemen, broke in alone and fired the puck past the nonexistent goalie. 

All told, there were six of us playing that day. Each of us were pushing thirty, but looked more like children as we dashed around the ice with reckless abandon, making bold moves we’d never try in an actual game. A spin-o-rama here and dipsy doodle there.  It didn’t take long to realize that this is the way the game was meant to be played. This is where the creativity of the game originated, where puck handling and skating are emphasized more than checking and shooting. There are no boards, just wide-open spaces with snow piled to indicate the end of the field of play.

We ended up playing three games, each time the winner being the first team reach 10 goals, though the score hardly mattered.  Occasionally, one of us would shout “what’s the score” and an estimated answer would come back and play would continue. Winning and losing was far less important than the simple act of playing. Hockey is, after all, a game.

I was reminded of the endless road hockey games I played with friends during my childhood, games that would go until dark and move under the streetlights after that. The point wasn’t to practice so that we could someday play in the NHL, the point was playing for the sake of playing; for the love of the game. I wish every hockey player could have an afternoon like that one so they could remember why they play the game in the first place.  Maybe then they would re-think yelling at the ref when he’s missed an offside or throwing a punch in a post-whistle scrum. As temperatures begin to rise, I realize that the pond hockey window for this winter is closing.  I still can’t believe it took me nearly 30 years to play my first game on a pond, but I know I’ll be back out there next year.

-Joshua Dawson-