Or how I began my love for chasing things on ice.
Back in May 2022, I decided to go to a hockey game.
At worst, I’d have wasted about £15 and one random Saturday in April when I had nothing else to do anyway. At best…an all-consuming obsession?
And it changed my life. It may have saved my life a little. Or a lot.
Somehow, this theatre kid has become a hockey fan.
It’s truly a shock to me, someone who has never had any interest in any sport whatsoever. I grew up in the land of rugby, and I am not kidding when I say I only learned a few months ago that you can only pass the ball backwards. I have never watched a football match in my life, and it’s only thanks to Rob McEllhenny and Ryan Reynolds that I now understand what the Premier League is (sort of). And I’m pretty sure I’m not posh enough even to turn on the cricket. But, give me a bunch of large, occasionally toothless men in knife shoes fighting over a puck on the ice, and apparently, I’m there. And it’s been an enormous force in changing my life for the better. Or as that witch said in that musical once, changed for good.
I’m always curious how people who aren’t taken to hockey by an existing fan get there. Are they like a pigeon on the ice (IYKYK) who wandered in?
In my case, it’s actually surprising that I managed to avoid hockey for this long. I’ve spent my life in three hockey cities- I grew up in Cardiff, then lived in Nottingham. There aren’t many ‘hockey cities’ in the UK, but I think it’s fair to say Nottingham and Cardiff are a couple of the leading ones. I’m also almost the same age as the Cardiff Devils, so they’ve always been there. Oh, and also, in between all that, I have lived in Montreal; that’s right, I lived in the ‘birthplace of hockey’ and actually….never saw any. I did, however, go inside the Bell Centre…for a Sarah McLachlan concert, arguably the second most Canadian thing you can do in the Bell Centre. Overall, managing to avoid hockey for this long was impressive.
How did I finally end up there? In a way, I like that pigeon that wandered in, unsure of what was happening around me, probably with no business being there but very excited. Hockey had been on my mind since including it as a backdrop to something I was writing, so it was research. But most importantly, I think I was just looking for…something. Post-pandemic, maybe like a lot of people, my life had kind of fallen apart from what it was. For a decade, I’d had theatre at the centre of my life, and post-pandemic, for various reasons, that was no longer the case. With that, losing my job to the pandemic, losing a choir and performing in the mix, too…somehow, in my mixed-up brain, that led to…20 big guys on skates? And sport? Maybe at that point, it was just something, anything to feel like part of something again, and that’s precisely what happened.
So I went. It was against the Glasgow Clan. I booked a seat in Block 13, not knowing what Block 13 was…which was, if nothing else, a baptism of fire. But also, if Block 13 doesn’t convince you to like hockey, you’re probably a lost cause. I spent three periods with no idea what I was watching. I picked a favourite player anyway, mainly based on his great hair (Dixon, I miss you and that hair). We lost to the Clan (who got Dixon and his hair the following season).
It was like being hit on the head with a puck. I was hooked. I had zero idea what had happened. But I knew I wanted to go back and find out. In spectacularly lousy planning, I’d picked the last home game of the season to go to. In the interim, I went to Matthew Myer’s testimonial game that summer. Did I know who Myers was? No. Did I know what a testimonial was? Also no. Did I go and have a lovely, confusing time? Yes.
That confusion- and it not mattering- was part of the charm. Devils’ General Manager Todd Kellman is fond of saying,
‘Everyone starts at hockey the same way…totally confused.’
From totally confused to total nerd, I’ve become a hockey evangelist, telling everyone I know how they should join this brilliant, chaotic, confusing sport.
I’d think that if I sat in a football or rugby game. Even when I knew nothing (I still often know nothing), I didn’t fear getting ‘caught out’. I didn’t fear ‘getting it wrong’ ever. Because hockey is chaotic and confusing. I still hear regulars- season ticket holders I know- asking others around them what a play means or why someone is doing what. And I’ve never listened to those questions answered in judgment. Often equal confusion, yes.
There’s something democratising about that. In Wales, you’re supposed to understand Rugby, which puts me off going. Football fans still feel intimidating to many of us who grew up in the 90s and the age of hooliganism and ‘girls only like football for David Beckham’. But sports, in general, have always seemed incredibly intimidating to an outsider, to the ‘musical theatre girl’ who feels like she has no business in a sports place, and the fact that I walked into that arena the first time was surprising to me. That I went back in a second is a testament to how hockey welcomes new fans, at least here in Cardiff.
It could have been terrible. I could have spent the whole time feeling out of place. Looking back, if I’d known I was in the ‘hardcore fan block,’ I may not have gone in. After all, sports are known for testing and pushing away outsiders. For women, in particular, there’s a sense of ‘what is icing’ perhaps to replace ‘what is the offside rule’ or that ‘all women are just Puck Bunnies’ (therefore, ahem aesthetic appeal of the players). Sport has not, for me, a nerdy, Queer, neurodiverse woman, shall we say, felt like the most welcoming of places. But I’ve never felt out of place or stupid at a hockey game, and neither has my motivation as a woman for being there been questioned. And perhaps that general confusion thing helps. After all, I sit there with experienced fans asking, ‘Why did he do that?’ ‘what’s that call? Perhaps again, because hockey is relatively niche here, the crowd, the fans, and the team even accept and embrace that collective confusion. Also, I’m still not sure the Referees understand the rules or some of the calls they make….
Hey, look at that. I made a sports joke…I would never have believed that about myself. But somewhere in the last two years, the confused theatre kid has somehow become a sports fan instead.
Oh, and by the way, icing is when a player hits the puck over the centre line and the opposing team’s goal line. I could go on to explain the exceptions, for example, the linesman thinking the opposing team could have intervened, the offending team being shorthanded, or the goaltender touching the puck. Or whacks it most of the way down the ice.
Yes, somewhere, the one with encyclopedic musical theatre knowledge learned sporting rules; who would have thought it?
And I never said any of us were also there for some shallow reasons; after all, we’re all only human. But that also feels like a fairly even gender split…even the straight male fans have their man crushes…(tell me those guys aren’t all in love with Joey Martin)
But that this newfound knowledge was allowed to be cultivated by watching, listening and, yes, by personal nerdy predilection is a testament to how the hockey world is in the UK, and in particular, the Cardiff Devils community is. I didn’t have to learn all this stuff to get in the door…I learned it because once I cam in the door I enjoyed it so much and felt so welcome I wanted to know it all (and usually tell everyone else about it).
This atmosphere of welcoming too is partly because hockey is an outsider sport in the UK. It’s not taking over our TVs currently, and many people barely know it exists. As a result, it attracts perhaps the outsider crowd. Because we’re all aware we’re not the ‘cool kids’ of British sport, we’re probably a little more welcoming to new outsiders. Also, you must be a bit weird to voluntarily lock yourselves in an ice cupboard 80–-80-something days a year. Look around a hockey rink, and you’ll see families, sure, sports dudes, sure, but also a crowd who wouldn’t look out of place at a Comicon (a compliment of the highest order, in my world, I promise). They are, it’s a personal theory of mine, the outcasts of other sports, the people who think sport isn’t for them and who find their way somehow to hockey, and once they’re there, they’ve found their place, and they never leave. And for someone who has felt on the outside all their life, that’s not nothing.
For me, it turned out to be everything.
Hockey came along when I needed not to feel like there was nowhere for me. That ‘theatre kid’?
I’d spent a decade failing to ‘belong’ in theatre. Not just in terms of a career but also in the sense that I never feel like I fit with others. Not cool enough, increasingly not young enough. But having made it my life and my main ‘hobby’ for so long…what was I without it? But when the pandemic made my career and life fall apart as it did for many of us… having built my entire life around a career in the arts and academia, I was lost when I knew I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) return to those things. Having built my life around them was scary. So when I booked hockey on a whim, I hoped for a distraction. Instead, I accidentally found a place where I finally felt at home.
This might be because, as the kids say, hockey is a profoundly unserious sport in some ways. It is, after all, a sport where grown men fight each other for a rubber puck. It is full of ridiculous and wonderful rules and traditions. And while players and clubs are serious about the sport and the game, they also don’t take themselves that seriously as a whole. Hockey culture is deeply weird and deeply brilliant. It’s impossible to explain or even understand fully. Much like the game, it’s a ‘go with it’.
As for something to be part of, I’m not part of any cool kids’ hockey gang, if one even exists. However, I feel like I’m part of that community when I enter the arena. Even though I go to most games alone, I don’t feel alone. I rarely go to a game without speaking to someone, whether they’re a friend or a random stranger. The day I truly felt like I was part of something was when a man stopped me at the gym because he saw my Devils’ hoodie and wanted a chat. Now he stops me whenever he’s in the gym to chat about off-season news and what games we’re going to. Even if we never spoke to each other again, it was about recognising someone like you and sharing something, even for a moment. Equally, when I march with the Devils’ fans at Pride again this year, I might not see them again all season, but I’m reminded that I’m welcome to be accepted as a fan and for who I am. On that note too, I can also bring people to hockey knowing the fans will welcome them for one game or to be fully converted (that always sounds a little wrong when your team is called ‘the Devils’ but anyway…). My six Queer friends who came on Pride Night don’t always feel welcome in sports spaces but they knew they’d be safe, and welcome at hockey. And they might even come back…
My hockey evangelism has already gone a long way (apologies, friends). Be it that group of six I brought to Pride night, the friend’s son coming to his first game, or a friend buying a Pride Jersey despite never seeing a hockey game. Or my favourite of all, my 78-year-old mother, who has never had any interest in sports, who was now very invested in Riley Brandt’s return and the reason that, regrettably, I am a Maple Leafs fan (what can I say, I enjoy suffering).
And in all that, hockey also brought me ‘home’ to Canada and now gives me new reason to go back and visit when I’d let that relationship slide a bit (a lot). Because of Hockey, I finally went home again, and yes, I finally went to a game at the Bell Centre. Ironically, my Mum became a Leafs fan that day, which feels wrong on multiple levels but who are we to argue…Going back to Canada, a place that was a hugely formative but also hugely tricky time of my life. Going back there again, mainly on hockey terms, has given me a new relationship with my other ‘home’ and another reason to keep returning. Much like any ice rink, it feels like home now, too. I’ve never had a place that felt like that before.
Hockey is so much more than those three hours a week (ok, six, ok, 12 when it’s Conti or Olympic qualifiers…). It’s everything that goes with it. It has something to think about, to care about. Of course, I am inclined to nerdery (shocking news to anyone who knows me I know). And I never thought, as someone who grew up a sci-fi, film, and theatre nerd, that sport would ever fall into the category of what I’m nerdy about…but here we are.
Because being a nerd is what I do, wherever I am and whatever interests me. And hockey has given me that utter passion for being nerdy about something back. Hence, for a start, I need to previously beg the editors I work for to let me write about LGBTQ+ inclusion, previous Pride blogs, and even (one of my proudest moments) being included in the game programme with apiece on Pride. But breaking out tentatively to actually writing about sport and starting with why it matters…is this blog, which I was tactfully advised by a friend, needed to be split into three parts. I just had so damn much to say. Because, yes, I am a colossal nerd. But also I have something to say, and who is to say all the sports content should come from ‘experts’ self appointed or otherwise…maybe there’s space to take people on this ride as I learn. So that’s what I’m doing.
And I love something to take a deep dive into. I do have a historian’s neurodivergent brain for useless information. And I have devoured about a dozen hockey history books in the last two years, doing what I do best and mapping out nerdy connections between things nobody else cares about. But that’s the thing, it’s having something to care about. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s the stats, player info, history or Will Nylander’s dogs (I care deeply about Will Nylander’s dogs, in fact, all the hockey dogs). And there’s nothing I love more than sharing what I love; to me, there’s nothing more interesting than someone interested in something sharing what they love. Over the last two years, I’ve managed to not only make my non-sport-loving fellow nerds and long-suffering friends develop an interest, even a liking of hockey…mostly without seeing a game. I firmly believe that when someone cares about something, it rubs off. Either that, or I just showed some of them enough handsome hockey players to pique interest, but get them in however you can…The point is, being a nerd makes me happy and sharing what I’m nerdy about more so…so stand by for more hockey here.
Hockey has got me through some dark times in the last two years. I could (and did) go from crying on the floor at home to feeling ‘safe’ and welcome at the rink. On a fundamental level, when your life feels like it’s spiralling apart from the inside out, literally having somewhere to go every week is sometimes enough. Forget sometimes cups and results; that’s the power of the game, the community; you never know what it means to someone.
Yes, it’s ‘just a sport’. Yes, I’m still a new fan in the scheme of things, but genuinely, hockey has changed my life. It’s the place I’ve been able to be most myself and the place that picks me up when I feel like everything else is a disaster. I’m genuinely grateful to have accidentally stumbled into a place that could make me feel that way.
This was the start of our hockey blog adventures, having realised I need to not just bore friends but have somewhere to put this. And why should sports writing be limited to self appointed ‘experts’ instead maybe I can share some of what I’ve learned with you all, and we can all continue to learn together…
Coming up soon Hockey For the Theatre Nerds and Hockey for the Neurodiverse Nerds.
For anyone who wants to join me in this…pre-season games for the Cardiff Devils are on sale now, and just £10 per ticket!
Emily Garside 