I was inspired to write this as I just finished reading a book put together by Brian Urstadt called "The greatest hockey stories ever told". It reminded me that no matter what your conection to hockey is, the NHL and that damn Cup are the ultimate in hockey. There are many leagues, the Olympics and various forms of the game but the NHL is hockey at it's best.

On many levels, the NHL is not all there is to hockey. Hockey is bigger than the NHL. Or is it?

There are the thousands of us who played ice hockey. The thousands more who play roller and street hockey. Whether organized or not, kids in Canada as well as here in the US play the game in one form or another. Plenty of Europeans play too. So just how important is the NHL to the game itself?

My earliest memories of playing were out in front of my house in Levittown, NY. Bent lane to be specific. In front of house number 20 the neighborhood kids would gather and we'd choose up sides. The games were hotly contested but rarely caused a serious injury. I remember one year the snowfall was tremendous and the plows were removing the top layer of snow while compacting the layer underneath. The ball or tape we used was replaced with a real ice hockey puck. This was as close as we could get to "real" hockey at the time and each of us asked for and received a real hockey stick. Not the wood shafts with a plastic blade, a real stick. As luck would have it, I was the one who lifted the puck that struck the face of my younger brother. He needed a few stitches to close the cut. It really was close to the real thing.

Our street hockey team started to challenge other blocks to games and for a two year stretch we remained undefeated. We all enjoyed other sports and played them, but speaking for myself, hockey was what we were best at and loved most. It was apparent in the way we played. At eight years old we already understood that in hockey, one would do anything for the team, anything for a win. As we got older the passion for hockey grew. Honestly, I don't remember the Bent Lane team ever losing. We loved hockey.

As we got older, the Bent Lane team went different ways. Hop, Gonzo, Richie, Mana and Dinkie developed other interests. But a new group of guys took their place. These are the guys I played roller hockey with. We no longer represented a block.....we represented Levittown. Most of us were pretty good skaters as we'd spend the weekend nights at a few local roller rinks. It was where we'd try and pick up girls. I no longer played net, I was an offensive defenseman paired with a guy who was even smaller than myself. Getting to Eisenhower Park each summer day was not so easy but we'd get there. My partner and I could pass, shoot with accuracy and believe it or not, present quite a physical force in front of our keeper. We each played without fear and for two of the smallest guys on the rink became quite intimidating.

I recall feeling "at home" while on the rink during a game. I somehow knew I belonged there, breaking up two on ones, blocking shots and firing laser beams from the point. Steve Hadnagy, my partner could rush up the rink with blazing speed and I'd hit him on the tape with an outlet pass. Oh, those were the days. Our team was tough too. Fighting was part of the game we watched on TV so it became part of our game too. Levittown was a blue collar town and we played a blue collar game mixed with speed and skill. I can still recall a game where one of our better forwards, Troy Moore played with a cast on his wrist. He not only fought, he beat a guy senseless with one hand (his good one).

During those days, icetime was just not available. Few if any of us would try and make the jump to ice.....I of course knew that it would be on ice that I would feed my ever increasing passion for the game. In my freshman year of highschool, the hockey coach had me convinced I'd make the varsity which was funny because he had only seen me play roller hockey. Of course, the town voted down the school budget and the hockey club was among the first programs to get scrapped. Disappointed I left the game to pursue a career in music. It would be years before I'd play again......but play again I would.

During my time in music I never lost my passion for hockey. In 1979 I was a senior and the Rangers went to the finals. They of course lost but the following year would see the sport I loved so much become much more popular. First, the entire country rallied around a bunch of college kids who some how managed to defeat the Russians at the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid. You don't need me to tell you the impact of that event. The "Miracle On Ice" was followed by five consecutive trips to the finals by the NY Islanders. It seemed like all of Long Island paraded spontaneously up and down Hempstead Turnpike after Bobby Nystrom scored in Overtime to defeat the Flyers in six games for the first of four Cups. Long Island was now officially a hockey hotbed.

Rinks opened. Hockey pro shops opened. Kids of all ages and even adults started playing ice hockey. All the while I was working my way up the ladder in the music biz. It wouldn't be until I walked away from music that I would get out on the ice again. But the game was calling me....I could hear it, loud. I could no longer resist even though I hadn't skated in over ten years. I bought skates and equipment with the intention to learn to skate again, hoping I could get good enough, fast enough to play in an organized league.

Getting on the ice instantly brought back the feeling that I belonged on ice. I was home once again. It took me a while longer to regain my skating than I had hoped. I knew I would never be able to play defense they way I used too. But that was OK. I needed to get good enough so I could then invest three thousand dollars in goalie equipment. Once I did that, rapid improvement came easy. I lived at a few different rinks playing in any open hockey I could find and a coach at a local rink allowed me to play net for his clinics. In less than a year I was asked to join a team (they had no clue I hadn't played in years) and we went to four consecutive finals with three championships. I later won another with a different group of guys but by then I was already losing my quickness and skill. Injuries and age caught up to me and a decade of wonderful hockey memories came to an end.

Stories like mine can be told by thousands and thousands of guys (and even girls) all over the world. The game of hockey is so much more than the NHL....or is it?

The Bent Lane team was created because of the NHL. I was Eddie Giacomen when I played net. My neighbor was Bobby Hull. Another teamate was Phil Esposito. We idolized the guys in the NHL. In later years in roller hockey, all of us tried to emulate what we'd see our favorite players do on TV right down to the fighting. Even when I finally returned to the ice it was a reverence of the NHL players that inspired me to practice sometimes twice a day. Of course, getting to play with and against real NHLers made it even better.

In one respect, you could say that hockey has very little to do with the NHL as the games we played as kids....all the pee wee and midget teams, the highschools and other leagues continue even while the NHL is dark. Somewhere right now there are kids playing street, roller or ice hockey. But The NHL is what we all wanted, what we all dreamed about. The NHL is where the very best players in the world do what we all wanted to do, play for the Stanley Cup.

Today as I write this I am trying to justify my love of the sport even if the NHL never plays again. I am trying to figure out just how separate I can make the game I love and the NHL. It occurred to me that throughout my love affair with the game, it is the NHL, it's history, it's players, it's legendary stories that made me love the game the way I do. They are in fact inseparable for me. And that is a crying shame. With the NHL and the NHLPA unable to come to an agreement I feel as if the love of my life has been taken away.

No one can take away my memories. Not even Gary Bettman can lockout my championships or childhood hockey fun. Don't even try to take what happened in 1994 away. But they have managed to ruin the NHL, the one thing I could look at with pure enjoyment. Being at last years finals was a thrill....and at the end of game seven when they brought out the Cup to present to Tampa Bay I felt the special aura that only that trophy can produce. I had no idea that it was going to be my last kiss with the one I love. I'm glad I didn't know it then....it would have ruined that too.

Thanks a lot NHL for ruining one of the best things on earth.

----}- Bird

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