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Hockey Chat: After being picked up in an NHL draft, many players spend time in the minor leagues. It is there that they work hard to prove themselves worthy of moving up to the major league team. When they are called up, they are given a little bit of ice time. Then a bit more as they continue to prove themselves. It’s a matter of earning their ice time and spot in the NHL by proving themselves in the lesser leagues.
After watching Texas quarterback Colt McCoy succeed for four years, not many would have predicted that his college career would end this way. Four years of preparation and hard work. (Five, if you count his time as a redshirt.) Four years of sacrifice and dedication. Four years of hoping and dreaming of hoisting the ultimate trophy. All of it came to one last shot at the national title. By the fifth play of the game, it was over. McCoy went down with a shoulder injury that took him out of the game he’d waited so long to play.
Big Red was a hot head. He was a part of the team, but wanted nothing to do with team activities. He was selfish and arrogant, and he made life miserable for his coach. All in all, he was the most difficult player on the team to work with. And his twin brother Jake? He was as deceptive as his brother was angry. The combination of the two boys wore their coach out.
Sound familiar? Isaac’s sons Esau and Jacob were definitely unique. Esau was the hunter and outdoorsman who wanted nothing to do with his father’s God. Jacob was the mama’s boy who would do anything to gain his father’s love. Here is their distinguished list of “dis”:
Hockey Chat: There is a term in hockey known as being “back on your heels”. It means to be playing lazily and timidly. Hockey is not a game for the weak hearted because it takes desire to want the puck, strength to work and win board battles, and clear mindedness to know the right plays to make.
Hockey Chat: Goal judges were first used around 1877 in Montreal and stood right behind the goal (a brutal job for someone with no pads). Years later, they sat in elevated cages behind the glass and when they would see the puck cross the line, they’d turn on the bright red goal light to signal to everyone that a goal has been scored. The red light is a hockey icon now being a symbol of scoring a goal.
A recent response to the gospel illustrates how coaching in the inner city blesses me. While waiting with my junior varsity basketball team for an evening game, I sat on a shiny gym floor and leaned against its closed wooden bleachers. A girl from the track team, who had been attending our Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings, came and sat next me.
Hockey Chat: There is a technique play in hockey know as “cycling”. It’s a matter of one guy skating with the puck then passing it off to another player, moving the puck in the same way while the first guy takes the second guy’s position. Sounds confusing? It’s much harder to defend than to understand. The premise is to skate until you get in trouble and then pass the puck back. When that guy skates and gets in trouble, you’ll have skated back to be open so he can pass it to you. The constant helping out the guy in trouble becomes a “cycle” that draws the defense and helps keep control of the puck.
My oldest daughter, Stephanie, graduated from Millard North High School in May 2004. Just a few weeks later, on June 16, 2004, she was a passenger in a car that ran into a tree, and instantly she was taken to be with the Lord. Stephanie was never interested in sports like our other two children, Jacob and Abby, but she did understand that to have a team, you need at least two. She wrote the following poem, "A Team Needs at Least Two,” about a year before she died.
Hockey Chat: On the business side of hockey, it’s all personal. Although the good players create a fun game to watch, many teams (all that I know of) spend time with the community as well. In turn the community spends money on tickets and merchandise which in turn goes back into the players salaries. Both the players and fans appreciate each other and enjoy the relationship. If the players were rude and disowned the fans then the fans would fall away and not support the team.
Hockey Chat: When you’re on defense, one of the worst things you can do is let your opponent stand in front of your net waiting to tip the puck, get a rebound, or just screen your goal tender. Detroit scored buckets of goals against Colorado in 2007 doing just that and swept them right out of the playoffs. You cannot let that guy stake his position there. It takes work to get him away but if you let him stick around, he’s bound to cause trouble.
In the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, sprinter Bob Hayes tied the Olympic record on his way to winning the gold medal in the 100-meter dash. Just a few months later, Hayes was dashing past defensive backs as a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys. Turning a world-class sprinter into a football player was a radical concept at the time, yet Hayes’s success altered defensive strategy and changed how football is played.
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