It wasn’t a surprise to anybody that Daniel would end up playing hockey. When he was a toddler, he never watched TV. And then at some point when hockey was on, he started noticing it. Soon after, his first word was “hockey”. It came out “hock”, but we knew what he was trying to say.
As he got a little older, he really wanted to play, but he always seemed to be afraid of going on the ice. I had to always be on the ice with him holding his hand.
At one point in kindergarten, he wanted to go skating with the school, but I decided he should be able to go on the ice without me. I told him I couldn’t go. One of his school friend’s mother came to pick him up, but he was adamant that he wasn’t going. I had to physically carry him to the door. He held onto every wall and piece of furniture on the way. By the time I dragged him to the door, I noticed the look of shock on the mother’s face. But she understood. She didn’t say a word. She calmly held the door open and then opened the van door, that look never leaving her face. Daniel’s friend was sitting there with the same look of shock as her mother had. She didn’t say anything either. He didn’t stop struggling till I got his seatbelt on.
It’s a good thing I didn’t realize that it would be so hard or I wouldn’t have done it. The mom told me later that he did fine and skated with his friend.
A little later, we got him to take hockey lessons with another friend of his. He did that for about a year or so, until my cousin Frank said that he won’t progress much with lessons. He needs to join a hockey team to get any good.
My wife signed him up before he could object. Daniel tried to get me to be a coach, but they already had three of them. I came on the ice with him as much as I could, holding his hand the whole time, but after a few practices, the coaches told me that I had to leave the coaching to them and just watch from the stands with the other parents. Daniel’s hand crushing mine, and his face begging me to stay on the ice with him was heartbreaking. But I had to leave him out there.
Eventually, over a few more ice times, he was no longer afraid to be out there without me.
Then he asked me if he could be a goalie. I checked with the coach, but they already had two goalies. The head coach put him on centre. He called Daniel, Todd Bertuzzi because he was the biggest kid out there. He was also one of the worst skaters because most of the other kids had been playing for at least a couple of years. “Just stay in front of the net Bertuzzi and you’ll get a goal,” his coach used to tell him. He finally did get a goal. His only one. But he was happy.
His second year of hockey, Daniel asked again if he could be goalie. Since the team didn’t have one yet, they were happy to have him as their goalie. But now I had to break the news to my father.
You see, when I was Daniel’s age, I played hockey for one year. I wanted to be a goalie too, but my dad said that there’s no way he was allowing me to have all those pucks shot at him. When I told my dad that Daniel wanted to be a goalie, he said, “Good.” I said, “How can you say that after what you told me when I was a kid?” His response was that with all those concussions in hockey lately, being a goalie was the safest position to play.
It wasn’t until years later that Daniel told me why he was so afraid to go on the ice when he was young. It was because he was terrified that he might fall through. He thought there was water under the ice, like a pond or a lake. He was always afraid that he might fall through the ice, into the water. That fear was so strong that it almost kept him from playing the game that he loves.
He’s still playing hockey today and he’s still a goalie, but it sure doesn’t feel like the safest position to me. I still love watching him play even though it does stress me out to this day.
