Nets, Sticks and a Tennis Ball
There’s a back lane behind our house. It’s an unusual feature on the west coast, and presumably it’s a reflection of the neighbourhood being at least a hundred years old. As children have done for at least that long, there’s a couple of kids who haul nets, sticks and a tennis ball into the lane to play hockey. They’ve even chalked out a little ice rink, with faceoff circles and a centre ice line.
As you probably know, the NHL playoffs are winding down. In fact, if Detroit beats the Pittsburgh Penguins tomorrow night, they’ll hold aloft their fifth Stanley Cup in 12 years–a remarkable feat.
I was walking down the lane the other day, and noticed a new addition to the chalk-and-cement rink. Somebody drew an oversized, stick-wielding bird with legs akimbo at centre ice:
The lane is sloped, so you pay a price when you miss the more southerly net. I instantly recognized this as a kid’s decent interpretation of the Penguins’ logo, which appears at centre ice in Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena:
Here’s another view, for some perspective. Clearly the kids are pretending to be Crosby and Malkin, not Zetterberg and Datsyuk.
I was a pretty solitary kid growing up. I preferred to tape out a goal on one wall of our two-car carport, and shoot tennis balls at it from the far side. If a ball took a particularly bad bounce, it ended up on the steep, wooded slope between our house and the neighbours. I had to psych myself up to retrieve those wayward balls. The neighbours had a surly Doberman named Sasha, and she didn’t care for children.
Mellon arena photo by EnsErmac.
Adriana