AMHL Thursday: Convergence Conjecture

On the morning of Daisuke Matsuzaka’s debut for the Boston Red Sox, I was playing hockey. Or something like it. My Capitals and I were well on our way to another embarrassing loss (this time to the Bruins), and I was tired of waving my stick—like the Kansas City Royals who would whiff at Dice-K’s changeup—at the puck carried by the Bruins skating past me.

Bruins’ forward Mike “Mmm Bop” Hansen controlled the puck along the boards in our zone. I skated from my right defense position to greet him. I slid my stick forward, along the ice between his skates. And I kept driving forward, knocking the surprised puck carrier to the ice. He looked up at me as if to say, “What do you think you’re doing? This is a no-check league!”

In the donut room after the game, Hansen’s teammate, Dave “Mr. Hockey” Losier commended me on the check. So did referee Peter “Bags” Bagley, who half an hour earlier had laughed but hadn't bothered issuing a penalty.

“Nice open-field tackle,” Bags said, as I left the room for work, where my baseball-crazy colleagues would track Dice-K’s performance on the Internet.

The World Wide Web: Where you’ll laugh at this video (thanks to AMHL goalie Claude Corbeil for the link) demonstrating the convergence of hockey and baseball and where, next week, I might tell you about the gyroball hockey shot I’m working on.