First off, I'm not a tough guy. Oh sure, I talk like I'm all tough and I shoot my mouth off like a champ when I'm on the ice, safely hidden behind my much-tougher-than-me defensemen, but, when it comes down to it, I'm a total pussy.

The only hockey "fight" I've ever been in was in '97, my first year in Denver. I was filling in for a guy I knew in an "A" league game at a new rink. He'd mentioned that his team wasn't very well liked because they were so good. What he failed to mention was that they were playing against some ex-pro guys that night, and that they were only ever considered "pro" hockey players because they got paid to beat people up, not for any semblance of hockey ability.

The game got out of hand, tempers started to flare, and I joined in with my incredibly brilliant witticisms like, "Ha, you just got fuckin' CLOWNED on!" when one of their goons was skating to the penalty box. He was not pleased and turned to express his displeasure to me in a most personal manner.

As he was coming at me, I literally saw his face turn several shades darker red and smoke come from his ears. I would've sworn lasers shot from his eyes, immobilizing me, but witnesses confirmed later that nothing was emitted from his eyes so much as from my bladder.

In one deft move, he managed to knock my goalie mask off and hit me, open-handed, on the side of the head, knocking me almost unconscious. I can feel foolish and humble now, but at the time, my only thought was one of self-preservation. I did the only thing that I thought would keep me alive, I "turtled."

I'm sure that there is a myriad of ways that I can defend my actions and describe them while still managing to sound tough or cool.

Unfortunately, I'm not only unable to muster that kind of writing ability, it just ain't true.

Truth is: I curled up in a fetal position, gloves over my head and face and screamed like a little girl engulfed in flames, "Not in the face! REFFFFFFFFF! Get 'im offa meeeeee!" while he drug me around the ice by my jersey and rained punches onto my back and shoulders. I was eventually saved by the referees and some teammates.

My dignity was not.

Needless to say, I was never asked to play in that league again.

---

I'd like to think that I've mellowed in my more recent years, and no longer feel the compunction to shoot my fool mouth off (as much). I'd also like to believe that I'm a more mature, pragmatic goalie and would be able to defend myself much better than I had previously.

Please, for the love of all that's sugar-coated, let me believe this and stop calling me a pussy.

I mentioned in previous entries that my back has been hurting, but Super-Fly-Hulk-Rock-WWF-Chiro guy has been climbing the turnbuckle of his office and delivering me from pain with his flying-elbow-drops-of-doom all week, and he'd given me clearance to play.

Tuesday night's Roller Hockey game was fun for my team as we were missing some players and those that were there got to play out of position (offensemen now play defense and vice versa). This was fine with me as I got to see more shots than usual against a sub-par opponent. This also meant that I wasn't necessarily receiving the protection that I normally would with my two hulking meathead defensemen, Dozer and Moose (their actual nicknames).

As the other team was being held scoreless and their frustrations were rising, they took to coming at the net with a little more intensity than normal. There was no real deterrent in doing so (see "hulking meatheads") so they kept it up with a rising intensity until one of them actually shot the puck at me, waited until I'd made the save, and then proceeded into my head while leading with his elbows.

This wasn't pleasant.

I tried to tell this gentleman that I didn't appreciate what he had done, but I couldn't see him through all the little blinky objects in my vision, nor could I talk as my jaw wasn't able to move.

Super.

He got a penalty, I shook my head a few times and things cleared up. I didn't see the whole encounter, so I wasn't that upset by it, it could've been an accident, no problem. I'll keep making excuses for him in hopes that he won't do it again and I won't be asked to defend myself again.

Then another one of them does it.

I know my defenseman "helped" the guy into me, but he made absolutely no effort to slow down, or avoid smashing headlong into me.

For those of you that aren't familiar with the finer points of hockey, this is a big no-no. If you're going to go around smashing into the other team's goalie, expect swift and brutal retribution.

Unless said goalie's hulking meatheads are on the bench.

Fuck.

I'm on my ass head propped up against the left post, and this asshole is straddling me still digging for the puck. My "defenseman" (see out-of-position-pussyass-goal-scorer) is tugging on the guys stick, but offering no real help. I tell Asshole firmly, but politely to get the fuck off of me. He holds his hands out in a no-harm-done kind of way. Then, as he's getting up, hits me in the face. Not hard, but not gently. I begin reaching and swinging at him like your 4 year-old little sister as he fends me off, climbs off and skates away, smirking.

I'm still cool though, we're winning 2-0, so I'll let it slide. I felt better after hearing that my hulking meatheads were slathering like rabid rottweillers on the bench. They wanted to fucking kill that guy. It is so nice to feel loved. They don't seem to care that I'm a pussy.

We won the game and no one got hurt. We were a little pissed, but no harm was done, and I knew that if they had to, my meatheads would've rent that jackass limb from limb if he'd have done me any harm.

I went home with a sore-back, comfortable with my pussi-ness.

---

Let me go completely off on a tangent here and tell you a few things about Tiger Balm. It's like Icy Hot or Ben Gay in that it smells funny and is good for loosening up sore muscles. Tiger Balm packs a little more whallop though, as it's got Super-Asian-Ninja Herbs in it or something. It also has a more delayed effect because it's all-natural. I'd been smearing it on my back about an hour before the game started and, since I couldn't quite feel it right away, I put a lot on. A LOT.

I then put my hockey equipment on and I spent some extra time "situating myself" while putting my jock on.

Oh, I should mention here that I forgot to wash my hands after applying copious amounts of the "burning grease" to my back.

Surely, you see this coming.

Yep, I unknowingly, got the burningest, Asian-Ninja-Herbiest, muscle-stabbing-fieriest-ointment-that-crazy-Chinamen-ever-exported, all over my balls.

The delayed effect of the herb prevented me from knowing this right away though.

---

Fast forward to the second period of the game and something isn't quite right. My back hasn't even given me a hint of trouble, so I'm quite thankful for the Tiger Balm, but something is going on in my jock that has me wondering quite seriously if a nest of Black Widows has picked my jock for their honeymoon, child-rearing, husband-eating days.

At the intermission, I made the unfortunate mistake of checking to see what was wrong, any guy would have, and exposed my balls to the open air.

Anyone who's ever messed around with "Hot Love Oils" or anything similar knows the following effect. You apply the "Love Oil" and then blow on it, and it heats up rather drastically. Multiply this effect about 17 times, throw in some piercing-white-hot sewing needles, a few Black Widow spiders, and apply all that directly to your balls.

This is what was happening in my jock in the middle of my hockey game.

I'm hopping around like there literally ARE spiders on my nuts and my team is wondering what the their goalie had possibly consumed to cause such wonderful hallucenations.

Between getting run over twice the previous night (drawing undue attention to my pussi-ness), and having to play with a 60-minute game with a ball-sac-o-fire, I was definitely feeling a little feisty to say the least.

As much protection as I have with my Tuesday team, my Wednesday ice hockey team is inversely proportional. They are mostly Colorado natives who are new to hockey and they haven't quite grasped such concepts as "kill anyone who looks at your goalie funny."

A weak shot from 30 feet out hits the side of the net and rests between my skate and the net. It's not really "covered" but the ref is sure to blow his whistle soon, so I just hold my skate there and cover the puck with my stick a little. Then I hear it�

*shick* *shick* *shick* BAM!

This Fuckstick takes 3 strides and slams into me. My head is down, staring at the puck, the play is milliseconds from being blown dead, and he fucking RAMS me.

Since I can only see the legs of those around me, I start counting white socks (my team) and black socks (Fuckstick) in an effort to see which of my defensemen MUST have shoved this guy into me as I couldn't fathom why he would possibly slam into me without even pretending that he was going after the puck. That would just be plain wrong and I couldn't see it happening that way.

Interesting, it DOES appear to have happened that way as none of my defensemen are near him. I don't quite have my shit together enough to figure it all out, but I'm hoping I can count on my other set of hulking meatheads to stick up for their goalie and kick this guy's ass.

Oops.

The two of them gather around Fuckstick and ask him, terribly politely, what he thinks he's doing, running their goalie like that.

His chubby, pug-nosed, 21 year-old face smirks through his face-cage and he says quietly but cockily, "what are you gonna do about it?"

I. Fucking. Snapped.

I am sputtering, "Wha.. What am I gonna� wha.." and spitting as I scream, "I'm gonna stomp a fucking MUDHOLE in you is what I'm gonna�" I start towards him as I throw off my blocking glove and starting pulling off my catching glove while I'm making the decision in my head that I'll need both hands to get his head to come free from his neck.

See, I told you I'm more pragmatic now.

The referees have ahold of me at this point, and it literally takes both of them plus 3 of my teammates to keep me from advancing towards the no-longer-smirking Fuckstick.

After I settle down, a ref explains that the kid is just an asshole and has been giving him a hard time all night. I explain that I'm fine with that, but Fuckstick asked me what was going to be done, and I was going to show him by tearing his fucking head from his body. I was told that this would be unacceptable under the league rules and he would do all that he could to prevent me from doing so including throwing me out of the game.

We agreed to disagree.

The game progresses to our 4-2 lead with about 3 minutes left. Fuckstick has been wisely sitting on the bench since our altercation, but now he finds the cajones to come back on the ice.

The puck comes down by my net once again, but now I'm watching for him and, when he skates by my net, I get my stick on both his skates and send him flying ass-over-teakettle. Once he hits, I slide on the ice, on my knees, up next to him and remind him that the next time he wants to take a run at me, I'd appreciate it if he'd would do it when my head wasn't down. Then I wacked him in the head.

He gets up and we stand nose to nose. I'm a pretty big guy (6'2") and he's even bigger than me. He smirks and, once again says, "What're you gonna do about it?"

Yeah.

Fucking.

Snapped.

Again, 2 refs and 3 teammates subdued me as I made the decision that decapitation was too good for this absolute-walking-nightmare FUCK of a human being. I was going to rip his facial features off one by one. I'd even planned at starting with his nose as I got a hold of his jersey and was jerking him towards me. The 5 other people involved eventually got us separated again and the refs threw our captain in the box to serve his frothing, spitting, rather upset goalie's penalties.

2 minutes left, the other team pulls their goalie, so they have two more guys on the ice than we do and they're still down by two goals. They're coming at us hard.

Guess who comes back into my crease.

I gotta hand it to this kid, he's ballsy as hell. Or stupid as hell. Hmm, debatable.

I'm still holding on to my idea of ripping his nose off but I'm a little hindered by the fact that they are getting shot after shot at the net and I have to keep making save after save in order for us to keep our lead.

He's parked in front of the crease like it's his second apartment and I'm punching him in the back of the head whenever I can reach him, but he's just getting back up, straightening his helmet and staying there.

I strongly considered giving him a nasty cup-check:

But I still can't do that to another guy unless he's threatening me with imminent harm. I just can't.

I know, I know.

Pussy.

We get the puck out of our zone and I hook Fuckstick around the arm to spin him towards me. He turns and I say, "you take that fucking cage off your head, I'll take off my mask, and let's fucking GO, right now! You asked what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna give you a fucking EDUCATION, you little cunt!"

He smirks for a second, not moving at all, until he sees me drop one glove, then drop the other. When he sees the seriousness of my demeanor as well as the white-hot rage in my eyes, the smirking abruptly stops and he starts to back away. I don't want to Bertuzzi him (see below), but I am so ready to throw down with this prick that I'm literally spitting words like, "FUCK" and "ASSHOLE," without knowing it.

I get ahold of his jersey, pull him to face me again and smack him in the face.

This turns out not to be a good idea as he's wearing a full-coverage face mask and I'm now bare-handed.

Imagine your bare fist making full force contact with this:

Yeah, it hurt.

Being the newly pragmatic goalie that I am, I figure there's got to be another way to do this. So I grab him by his facemask and start to work on the snaps that are holding it on. Again with the pragmatism (loving that word) I take my own helmet off as I figure it should only be fair that he gets a shot at me while I'm tearing his ears off with the vise-like grip of my thumb and forefinger.

Apparently though, my grip is not vise-like enough as I couldn't get his snaps undone before the refs, 2 teammates, and 2 opposing players all joined in, one by one, to pull me off of him.

Honestly, pragmatic or not, I must have tuned out some of the finer details of our altercation though as I was told later that while I was spitting, sputtering, screaming, raining punches on his helmet, and being restrained by 5 people, Fuckstick could be faintly heard screaming a certain phrase�

"Not my face! REFFFFFFFFF! Get 'im offa meeeeee!"