Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Canadian Hockey: You should have seen my spinnerama goal

I think I may never repeat such a brilliant goal in all my life - except in my dreams.

Almost guaranteed, whenever the conversation turns to recreational league hockey, the price of a new stick - or even the price of eggs - I’ll try to squeeze in the story about how I deked a young defenceman out of his jock strap and silenced both benches for several seconds before Dougie yelled:

“What the heck was that!?”

And I’ll dream about it too, when my mind drifts back to pond hockey, wind in my face, leather helmets and frozen toes.


[My bloodied leather helmet - circa 1962; autographed by Ken Dryden: photo GAH]

The nifty goal wasn’t too bad for the oldest guy on the ice in my league.

You’d better sit down for this.

First, a diagram - so you can see where I’m going with this and how I got there.


Second, I went north over the blue line with the puck.

One team-mate was on my right but a defenseman blocked my pass.

So I deked left around the first guy and encountered another man in a pink sweater, and apparently, no hockey pants. (Sorry, Ron.)

Ron blocked my path and a pass, the goalie guarded the post, so I conceived a brilliant plan in 0.5 seconds, forever after to be known as the Spinnerama move.

On my backhand I flipped the puck 3 - 4 ft. into the air between Ron and Morgan, the goalie, fully intending to catch up to it momentarily.

To reach the puck I had to either skate directly through Ron as if by magic or... spin around backwards without breaking stride or losing speed and around Ron... which I did - in the blink of an eye.

It happened so fast Ron’s shorts got twisted into a knot, his jock flew into the awe-struck crowd (not illustrated) and I ended up in front of the goalie shortly after the puck bounced onto the ice and... according to plan, onto my stick.

I saw a hole and struck the puck much like Tiger Woods would a golf ball in deep rough, Morgan groaned, stretched to his left and I rejoiced to hear the puck hit the back of the net where it quite obviously belonged.

At least according to the expected end-result (insert laugh-track here) of my hastily conceived plan.

When Dougie, from the opposing bench, hollered ‘what the heck was that’ I calmly replied, “A little spinnerama.”

It’ll never happen again except in my dreams.

But the retelling will.

You’ve been warned.

***

Gotta favourite goal? A home run hit?

Now’s the time to tell me...while I’m enjoying my oatmeal. [See third post below for recipe]

.

2 comments:

Mojo said...

So you're the guy who invented the term Spin-o-rama? Who knew?

Yeah, I'd be telling this story for the rest of my life too. To anybody who'd listen.

G. Harrison said...

Mojo, I'm pretty sure it was me.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

By the time I'm 80 the story will include a second puck and 4 defensemen. Hey, it could happen.

Gord H.