Ice Hockey and Checking

I received an e-mail from the Minnesota Hockey Association with the following:

Minnesota Hockey families:
Due to the tragic injury suffered recently by Jack Jablonski in a high school hockey game, the Minneapolis Hockey Association created Jack's Pledge. The Minneapolis Hockey Association is where Jack played youth hockey and developed his strong passion for our wonderful sport. Jack's Pledge is a grassroots program aimed at enhancing safety in the game of hockey. Through membership in Jack's Pledge, hockey associations, hockey teams, hockey coaches and hockey players pledge to play the right way -- Jack's way -- by the rules, safe, smart and skillfully.

We strongly encourage you to learn more about Jack's Pledge here.

Thank you,
Minnesota Hockey

Now, while I appreciate the sentiment, and agree that something should be done, I can't help but wonder why the Minnesota Hockey Association doesn't just insist on enforcing USA Hockey's declarations. To wit:

“The purpose of a body check is to (get position to) separate the opponent from the puck. Any time a player delivers a check for the purpose of intimidating or punishing the opponent, and therefore causes the opponent to be driven excessively into the boards, a boarding penalty must be called.”

I took the above quote from an excellent article by Jack Blatherwick, former strength and training coach with the University of Minnesota hockey team, an expert in training for hockey, and somewhat of a curmudgeon when it comes to the purity (or lack thereof) of the game.

Here are his most recent articles from the publication Let's Play Hockey, both of which were inspired by the recent injuries suffered by high school players Jack Jablonski and Jenna Privette.

Boarding penalty must be enforced with zero tolerance

Adults must make it happen: Replace violence with skill

To put it simply, spot on, Mr. Blatherwick.

"Just hop on my back...no wait, don't!"

It's been a roller coaster past few days for me. I was unable to fix our water softener, so I planned on taking it apart to give it one more try. "After the golf tournament, Dear, I promise!"

The golf tournament was Saturday. On Friday, I achieved a 24-yr-or-so goal of bench pressing 315 pounds - "three wheels" as my old lifting buddies and I would call it, because it represents three 45-lb. plates on each side of the lifting bar. A nice aside, I thought to myself, was that my joints and tendons felt terrific compared to the last time I got close to doing 315.

It was fairly short-lived, however. Oh, Saturday went great. My playing partner and I won the two-man best-ball tournament at Troy Burne Golf Club. I shot a plus-three 39 on the front nine, which included a triple bogey on hole 2.

By the ninth hole, my already iffy lower back started to hurt. I barely made through the round and didn't say a thing to my partner, not wanting to make excuses. I shot a plus-eleven 46 on the back. Thankfully, he shot 37, good enough to carry us to victory, like Kirby Puckett in Game 6 of the '91 Series. The old joke in such situations is to tell the guy who carried the team, "I sure hope your back doesn't hurt." Oh, but I wish I could say that mine did only figuratively.

While my back was hurting bad when we putted out, and I was looking forward to relaxing at home. But by the time I was done relaxing, my back hurt so bad, Felix Unger would've said, "Man, I'm sure glad I'm not you!"

Thankfully, it's getting better, although I did have to postpone my start to the 2011-12 bowling season. For a while Saturday, I was seriously wondering if I'd ever play any sports even semi-competitively again, including bowling. Ironic because I started lifting years ago to improve my softball power.

I'm still a bit down about it all, so to cheer myself up a bit, I'll post last year's league bowling results. I kept more complete stats, even frame-by-frame, but for now, I'll keep it simple below. I never got around to it this past spring, and then summer league went horribly (after a decent start), so I've been pretty down on bowling as well.

It was a good season last year, here's hoping my back, wrist, and fingers all get to nearly 100% by the time I get to start this season.