The Iceman Bummeth
Of all the positions in the wide world of sports, one stands alone with the dubious distinction of being the loneliest: the ice hockey goalie.
All goalies share the existential dread inherent in the isolation of their position. Whether in soccer, lacrosse, water polo, field hockey, or even hurling, net-minders bear the apocalyptic responsibility of being their team’s last line of defense. It’s a prude position, with the underlying objective of denying penetration into the sacred area they defend.
While other players are free to roam, goalies are bound to designated boxes—a fraction of the total playing area. They receive special privileges in these cordoned-off zones (i.e., using their hands or freezing the puck), but once they leave, all privileges are revoked.
A bigger hurdle is that for much of the game, goaltenders are reduced to mere spectators. When offensive play dominates, simply maintaining concentration can be as difficult as the position’s physical demands. All too often, the mind will wander:
Did I leave the toaster oven on?
Do they really put animal lips in hotdogs?
Can the blonde in the fourth row possibly be dating the dipshit next to her?
Keepers also bear the brunt of goals that aren’t their fault. A lazy defenseman may be to blame, but the de facto scapegoat will always be the lad between the posts.
Worse still is their exclusion from celebrating goals at the other end. Instead of hugs and high-fives—or, in the case of Italian soccer, pulling off their clothes and piling onto one another—the lonely goalie must celebrate from a detached distance.
Indeed, being a goaltender in any sport is taxing. But nothing compares to playing the position on ice. Hockey is the most precarious of net sports.
Never in the history of water polo has a ball left the playing area and led to dental surgery for an unlucky fan. In a hockey arena, stray pucks have literally taken lives. Even with the most up-to-date equipment, a frozen projectile to a goalie’s head has resulted in concussions and unconsciousness.
Hockey is also strategically more dangerous.
In soccer, it can take eons for an offense to move the ball 130 yards from one end of the pitch to the other. On a 200-foot rink, a cross-ice pass takes nanoseconds. Goaltenders can never afford to check out. Many a soccer goalie has felt sequestered, but his 18-yard box allows considerable square footage in which to mosey. He might even start play from midfield on a free kick.
A hockey goalie at center ice, however, is trouble in any scenario.
Though a hockey goalie can stray from his minuscule crease, he does so at his own risk. You will never see a field hockey goalie smeared face-first into the glass—mainly because there is no glass in field hockey, and body checking is illegal. Regardless, a hockey goalie in open ice is akin to a sea lion pup amidst a thrash of killer whales.
Second only to medieval jousting horses, hockey goalies wear more equipment than any other athlete, including football players. Save for his ear protectors, the water polo keeper is essentially naked. Soccer goalies don long sleeves and oversized gloves. In hurling, the only differentiation is a wider bas.
The hockey goalie, however, is armored beyond recognizability—over 200 pounds of cumbersome padding, protectors, gloves, blocker, and mask.
The primary reason one discourages their child from playing goalie isn’t the three times longer prep time—but rather to avoid hemorrhaging thousands of dollars in equipment costs as their little one grows from mite to peewee to pro.
A parent must also account for the psychological toll of the position. Every center has a wingman, and every defenseman has a partner. But the goalie always skates alone. After being scored on, a defenseman can skulk to the bench and hide behind the boards. A goalie, however, must shake it off and prepare for the immediate restart of action.
He is left to look longingly toward his bench, unable to participate in the warm camaraderie or the value stream of professional gossip:
Who’s up for Player of the Week?
Who’s about to be sent down to the minors?
Which player is tagging which other’s girlfriend?
It all occurs between shifts, behind the boards, where butts are patted and breaths are caught. By the time the goalie lumbers off the ice and waddles into the locker room, all the juicy tidbits are old news.
Nay, the goalie must stay between the frozen iron pipes he has dedicated himself to protecting. He has only one opportunity for the kind of glory his teammates can easily access—and that is in the long tradition of fighting.
Rare as it is, one of the greatest treats in all of sports is the sight of two goalies beating each other senseless. Leg pads become battering rams. Arm blockers become pulverizers. Like Transformers on skates, they slam and crash into one another, draining game-long stores of adrenaline—happier than hell to be in open ice.
But back to the crease they must go, for duty calls.
Once again, the goalie is left to ponder his cloistered condition, as perspiration falls from his underappreciated brow, past his sweat-blackened pads, and onto the ice—where it melds, inevitably and anonymously, into the icy white beneath him.