Spazz Dad: When Hockey is More than Hockey

How the Smith men bond

Image credit: Jacob Thomas

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Spazz Dad: Across the Great Divide

Simmer Down

By: Todd Smith |   January 2012   |  From the print edition

My brother Tony and I were bumbling our way through a game in last year’s U.S. Pond Hockey Championship, the nation’s premier outdoor hockey tournament hosted on Lake Nokomis (side note: Our team was called Dudeface). After a particularly ragged shift—one in which I tripped in the crease in front of the goal and Tony tried to bank a shot into the net off of my forehead—our dad greeted us on the sideline by joking, “You guys look like two monkeys fucking a football out there.” If you think that sounds like a stretch, well, you clearly haven’t met my dad or seen the Smith brothers play hockey.

Smartass-ness aside, there was a reason why my dad was willing to stand out in the freezing cold and watch his two idiotic sons play a little puck. He grew up in a barebones northern Iowa town and had a somewhat lousy childhood due to the fact that he didn’t have a dad he could count on. So, years later when my parents married, my dad vowed to himself that if they were ever lucky enough to have children, he would always be there for his kids no matter what. And now, some 40 years later, there he was on the sideline of our game in the dead of winter, staying true to his word.

But our bond as father and sons was forged long before my pathetic pond-hockey adventures. My dad had an illustrious career as an athletic trainer, a period that spanned two NCAA Ice Hockey Championships with the Herb Brooks-led University of Minnesota teams in the ’70s, a gold medal as the head trainer for the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” U.S. men’s hockey team, and in the NHL as head trainer for the Philadelphia Flyers in the ’90s. He often brought us to work with him, immersing us in the vibrant world of hockey at an early age.

We got to hang in locker rooms in the bowels of ancient stadiums, got to watch swashbuckling players coated with sweat and blood and listen to pucks ringing off crossbars, as well as the primordial sound of bare knuckles pounding flesh and helmets in fights born of heated divisional rivalry. Players and coaches would often regale us with stories of old-time hockey, none greater than the one I heard about my dad when he was the trainer for the 1976 U of M hockey team and a player from Boston University spit on him in the NCAA semifinal. No shrinking violet, Dad socked the player good, igniting one of the worst brawls in collegiate hockey history.

After all these years, the three of us are all still together down at the rink, tethered by this game we love. More importantly, though, sports are the primary language in which I speak to my dad. I tell him that I love him by calling to talk about the Cal Clutterbuck hit in last night’s Wild game. I thank him for everything he has done for me over the years by asking him to go with me to the Gopher hockey game. I stay connected to my brother by skating with him three nights a week in the winter.

So about that pond hockey game: Tony and I eventually rejoined the action with the same hyper fever we had as kids when our dad first taught us how to skate with folding chairs down at Pearl Park. My dad took his usual front-row seat, his head buried underneath a hat and hood. I skated by him and thought for a second about the thousands of hockey games that he has seen in his career, games that took him to the Arctic Circle and the White House. I thought about the long, hard journey it took for him to get from Iowa to this meaningless game on a lake. Mostly, I thought about how grateful I was that he made it, how there was no place on earth he’d rather be.

A few seconds later, I made a nice pass to a teammate for an easy goal. “Atta boy,” my dad said, pounding his giant mittens together. Hearing his encouragement made me feel, for one moment at least, like I wasn’t a stubby, barrel-chested 39-year-old grinder with stone hands. After a ridiculous foul by an opponent on my brother, my dad once again filled the frigid air with his glorious hockey humor: “Hey, ref! Are you calling this game in braille?”

+ The 7th Annual U.S. Pond Hockey Championship runs Friday to Sunday at Lake Nokomis Park. For more information visit uspondhockey.com.