The following views do not necessarily represent those of the editors or of BTSH. They do, however, represent those of Dr. Byron Clavicle.

Pleasant Memories of Street Hockey Moments That Never Were

As a board-certified neurosurgical cosmetologist, I’m often asked by BTSH players to modify their cerebral cortices to create memories of events that never actually transpired. For example, a certain What The Puck player whiffed on what would have been a game-winning goal in the championship. Haunted by this recollection, he would naturally prefer to remember scoring the goal. A certain Mathematics player requested I replace all memories of his team’s last season with memories of playing viola for the Kirov Ballet orchestra in last year’s world tour. A certain Happy Little Elves assistant captain wished to have his brain wiped clean and replaced with the late Wilt Chamberlain’s. Two of these players even shaved their heads in preparation!

Sadly, none of these requests are covered by any insurance policies that I am aware of, and the multi-trillion dollar cost of the procedure can be daunting for some. But I have come up with a far cheaper alternative that may alleviate this psychic discomfort, allowing second-rate players to imagine themselves as street hockey superstars, instead of as infantile mush-heads growing increasingly torpid and lazy-lidded while shovelling one Cheeto after another into their drooling gullets and reading some half-baked off-season filler on a sub-par sports blog.

So, feel free to augment your mediocre memories with these fictive fantasies.

1. The Dekeing Wayne Gretzky Fantasy
Your team (let’s call them the Contented Tiny Pixies) has been transported back in time to 1974 to challenge the Edmonton High School All-Stars, led by their well-mannered captain Wayne Gretzky. Wayne’s a pretty good hockey player, you’ve noticed. He comes off as an all-around nice guy too, but you know it’s a sham. He’s a dick. He put caltrops on the highway to make your team bus crash, then called your hotel room with an autodialer all night long. At the high school dance, he stole your date and made out with him/her in front of you while the band played the Guess Who’s “Share the Land”, which is your favorite song. Later, he tied your shoelaces together, pulled your pants down, and pushed you face-first into a vat of maple syrup. You hate Wayne Gretzky.

So it’s the day of the big game. Your goalie makes a lucky save, and you take the ball from behind the goal line. You’re a defender, and you just want to get the puck up to the one guy on your team who can score, but the All-Stars are sticking to your players like weevils on oat bread. So, you take it up yourself, batting the bright orange ball ahead of you and leaping left and right to dodge defenders as they move to pick you. Being kind of a selfish player yourself, you don’t even think of passing at this point. You cross the red line and the blue line and Gretzky rushes back for the backcheck, and he gets himself right in your path. He’s all that stands between you and the nervous Edmonton goalie. Gretzky goes for a poke check, but you push the ball around his left sneaker and back to yourself through his legs as you dance around him to his right. You recover the ball, and Gretzky’s behind you, stunned. Breakaway! You deked him! You have the ball in the slot and you shoot it at the goal!

Stick save. Shit! The final score winds up being Edmonton 45, Contented Tiny Pixies 0. But at least you have this one made-up moment to keep you going. I mean, you deked Gretzky!

2. The Flying Finnegan Fandango Fantasy
All year long, your team (let’s call them the Exultant Diminutive Faeries), has been losing games. With two goals, you’re the leading scorer. The team captain (who holds a PhD in Comparative 17th-Century Theocracy) has invented a play that he claims can’t fail to score three or four goals every time it is used in BTSH. The captain calls his trick play the “Flying Finnegan Fandango” or FFF.

The problem is, it’s way too complicated for you to understand, and because you’re the goal-scoring leader, you’re expected to take part. Every time you look at the captain’s diagram, it just seems like a confusing mess of Xs, Os, Zs, sinusoids and arc-tangents. You can’t even figure out which team is X, which team is O, and where the hell the goal is on the chart, or if it’s even the same sport. It might be drunk tic-tac-toe, or a blueprint for a nuclear-powered lawnmower. You really have no clue!

With game day approaching, and with the unveiling of the FFF, you become increasingly panicked. You develop a nervous condition, and your doctor tells you not to play street hockey anymore for the sake of your heart. You think about it for a split second and decide your doctor is right, and you never pick up a hockey stick again. With you gone, the FFF is a complete success, and everyone thanks you for retiring. The Exultant Diminutive Faeries wind up with a nearly winning record, and it’s all thanks to you and your fragile neurosystem!

3. The Fantasy Fantasy Street Hockey Fantasy
Your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/mother won’t let you play Fantasy Street Hockey, but you have a secret longing to play anyway. You invent a league for people in the same position, where you pretend to manage an imaginary hockey team.

ESPN buys your invention, Fantasy Fantasy Street Hockey, and you become extremely rich. You give away all your money to Tanzanian orphanages. The orphans build a statue of you made entirely out of used water purifiers. They use the rest of your money to fly to Rio de Janeiro, where they start their own street hockey league and hire you to manage it. You finally have the excuse you needed to dump your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/mother.

4. The Checking League Fantasy
In the off-season, BTSH votes to allow body checks. You eat nothing but powdered weight gain formula for two months and gain seventeen hundred pounds, then start your own single-player team, the Apoplectic Oversized Mûmakil. You make yourself a uniform by sewing together two car covers and velcro your hockey stick to the front. As you slog thunderously to Tompkins Square Park on opening day, it occurs to you that you’ve sacrificed everything: your love life, your job (although they were going to fire you anyway), your apartment (you no longer fit), and worst of all, your old team. But it’s all totally worth it when Eli blows the whistle and you can finally steamroll that one asshole guy/girl on that one team, whom you’ve always hated. (You know the one I mean– he/she is on the Denim Demons / Rehabs / LBS, Inc. / Mexican Standoff / Happy Little Elves / Mighty Squirrels / Corlears Hookers / Gouging Anklebiters / Cobra Kai.) You send him/her to the hospital, and just stand there laughing maniacally like E. Honda in Street Fighter 2. After the assault, everyone agrees that you are the world’s most dangerous person. You get elected mayor of Bayonne, NJ (although it’s for other reasons).

5. The Hot Mexican Mariachi Sex Fantasy
Your team (let’s call them the Keebler Rancheros) travels to a street hockey tournament in sunny Tijuana. The night before the game, your goalie is kidnapped by the local police, and nobody has the pesos to spring him/her from jail. So, your team decides to rob the local bank. You concoct a daring daylight bank heist where everyone on the Rancheros disguises him/herself as a mariachi. However, the local sheriff figures out your plan about ten minutes before the go-ahead. A gruff man with perpetual stubble, a steely gaze, and a cigar always at the ready, he growls that he likes your style and he’ll let your goalie go if one of your players can beat him in a tequila drinking contest. As the biggest drunk in BTSH, and, indeed, the New York City tri-state area, you are selected.

You match the sheriff shot for shot–one round, three rounds, eight rounds, fifteen, nineteen, eighteen. At this point, your head is swimming, and you don’t know if you’ll survive, let alone win. The tequila’s burning through your stomach and spilling out your sides. You feel the floor sliding around you like in that Jamiroquai video. The sheriff wavers before you across the table, like a hologram. You reach out to him and feel the floor approaching your face. But then you recover, clasping your stool with your knees, right yourself and take another shot.  The sheriff matches yours.  You can see mist in his narrowed eyes and his sombrero starts to melt.  He spits his cigar on the ground–and then he tumbles down after it and lays sprawled on his belly.

Forgetting about the goalie and the street hockey game entirely, you go upstairs and have sex with his hot daughter/son/maid/deputy, who you’ve been eyeing all day. Then you walk back to America and win the Mega Millions lottery and become an astronaut and negotiate a peace treaty in our intergalactic war against the Reptizoids from Beta Centauri. You also invent no-stick scotch tape and unite all the nations of the world in peace and harmony under the tenets of your new religion, which worships a 64-ounce jar of ranch dressing.

Conclusion
Isn’t living in your new fantasy world better than living in this miserable reality? Everyone else certainly thinks so.

Sincerely,
Dr. Byron X. Clavicle, PhD, OBE, CSA, FML, PSAT/NMSQT