Post by Old Bucks Admin on Dec 19, 2022 20:01:59 GMT -5
Among the constellations of prep school hockey teams there’s the Southern Cross, comprised of Lawrenceville, Hill, PDS and Hun. Seen near the horizon in winter, it wheels about its Polaris, which, upon magnification, resolves into two stars, Taft and Belmont Hill, as close as they are luminous. Stars will rise and stars will fall, all relative to this common center, but none of these stars flag in their pursuit of that ultimate goal—the zenith. In Week 14 Lawrenceville reached the zenith, winning its tournament for the first time in its 74 year history—a 3-2 OT victory against Belmont Hill. We salute Lawrenceville delighted that its first-rate ice center can now boast a first-rate hockey team. May its legacy of hosting a great tournament right before the Christmas holiday continue for many years to come.
With this triumph still fresh in our mind, we got to the rink at 7:15 hoping Old Bucks could take some of these positive vibes and enhance its game thereby. Truthfully, if a rink can reflect a club, the faded grandeur of Loucks seemed a more fitting venue, looming in the darkness like an emblem of days gone by. We bustled into a crowded locker room buzzing with the talk of who was on what team, who couldn’t make it, and why. Among the “Nos” on the TeamReach app was Paul Egan who has lately taken to qualifying his “Nos” with little italicized messages like “In Vermont” “In Utah” “In Mont Tremblant”. Okay—you ski—we get it.
None of the Doughertys could make it because they were all in a brew pub celebrating Greg’s 30th birthday. Brian Urban was there for the noon start and it took all the self-denial he could muster to avoid celebrating to the extent that Old Bucks would not be possible—or even remembered. It must be heady stuff to sit at the bar of a brew pub and type Old Bucks players' names into a spreadsheet, dragging and dropping personnel like they’re pawns on a chessboard, matching up the Bruonos with the Blanksteins, splitting the two zanos—Proven on Red, Valen on Blue. We’d like to try it some time except we’d prefer the cafe at Barnes & Noble.
There’s an old expression: it looked good on paper. Now we say: it looked good in the email. And the teams for Week 14 looked good on paper, they looked good in the email, and we’re sure they looked good in the brew pub. So how did the game stack up against expectations? Blue got on the board first—a case of Rich Devlin on Red and Joe McNamara commandeering his office to set up Joe Tona for the goal. Consecutive Bob Freiling goals gave Blue the 3-0 lead. Red was nonplussed—more concerned with whether Rich Devlin would be able to load the app on his phone so he could follow the Giants-Commanders game. This took some doing because he had to first agree to new iCloud terms and conditions, but by the time the app was loaded a scrappy Red squad was down only a deuce—4-2.
The next goal needs some context and so we’ll digress. We watched a lot of prep school hockey over the weekend, and what stood out was the music played during stoppages. It was all classic rock—the Peppers, Zeppelin, Dire Straits to name a few—and every time a team scored they’d play “That Smell” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. So there was definitely a method to the madness. Once, while the Zamboni cut the ice between periods, we listened to the entirety of “Althea” by the Grateful Dead. And as Grateful Dead standards go, “Althea” barely makes the threshold of being standard. We thought it was too bad Mike Valenzano wasn’t around to hear it. We even buttonholed one of the rink workers and asked him, “Who’s responsible for all this great music?” “Don’t ask me,” he responded. “My job is to find all the clean outs in case the new plumbing can’t handle the crowds.”
We did track down who was responsible, and while Old Bucks was warming up, we ripped a twenty dollar bill in half, gave half to him, and pointing out Mike Valenzano said, “See that old guy in the blue jersey? If he gets a goal and you play “Althea” by the Grateful Dead, we’ll give you the other half of this twenty after the game.” Well, Mike scored to make it 5-2 Blue. Suffice it to say, there was complete silence and now we’re stuck with half a twenty.
Red struggled to stay in the game. Without Bob Freiling it had lost its identity. Its proven strategy for winning was supplanted by a hodgepodge of experimental mishmash, everything from three left-wingers to two centers and one right-winger; while Blue was much more systematic, making sure it staggered the Freilings so at least one of them was always on the ice. Blue was up 7-6 when Red folded like a lawn chair. The score didn’t change much after that except Blue put a 1 before the 7. Goal succeeded goal—a relentless display of scoring-at-will dominance. Frankie took a sober view of the situation, which either meant the chips were down or Wegman’s was out of Tito’s.
Even we couldn’t watch and so we watched Rich Devlin’s phone instead. It had this tiny trapezoid-shaped football field on it, as if we were sitting on the 50 yard line about twenty rows up, and we could see this tiny football move in even tinier increments, supposedly reflecting “real time” runs and passes. It looked so slow and undynamic, with the physical factor completely effaced by a listless lack of purpose. But then we’d look up at the ice and feel the exact same way. And the final straw that broke the holiday camel’s back was that there would be no after party because TJ’s is too much like Chik-fil-A, to wit, “Closed on Sundays (after 9 p.m.)
With this triumph still fresh in our mind, we got to the rink at 7:15 hoping Old Bucks could take some of these positive vibes and enhance its game thereby. Truthfully, if a rink can reflect a club, the faded grandeur of Loucks seemed a more fitting venue, looming in the darkness like an emblem of days gone by. We bustled into a crowded locker room buzzing with the talk of who was on what team, who couldn’t make it, and why. Among the “Nos” on the TeamReach app was Paul Egan who has lately taken to qualifying his “Nos” with little italicized messages like “In Vermont” “In Utah” “In Mont Tremblant”. Okay—you ski—we get it.
None of the Doughertys could make it because they were all in a brew pub celebrating Greg’s 30th birthday. Brian Urban was there for the noon start and it took all the self-denial he could muster to avoid celebrating to the extent that Old Bucks would not be possible—or even remembered. It must be heady stuff to sit at the bar of a brew pub and type Old Bucks players' names into a spreadsheet, dragging and dropping personnel like they’re pawns on a chessboard, matching up the Bruonos with the Blanksteins, splitting the two zanos—Proven on Red, Valen on Blue. We’d like to try it some time except we’d prefer the cafe at Barnes & Noble.
There’s an old expression: it looked good on paper. Now we say: it looked good in the email. And the teams for Week 14 looked good on paper, they looked good in the email, and we’re sure they looked good in the brew pub. So how did the game stack up against expectations? Blue got on the board first—a case of Rich Devlin on Red and Joe McNamara commandeering his office to set up Joe Tona for the goal. Consecutive Bob Freiling goals gave Blue the 3-0 lead. Red was nonplussed—more concerned with whether Rich Devlin would be able to load the app on his phone so he could follow the Giants-Commanders game. This took some doing because he had to first agree to new iCloud terms and conditions, but by the time the app was loaded a scrappy Red squad was down only a deuce—4-2.
The next goal needs some context and so we’ll digress. We watched a lot of prep school hockey over the weekend, and what stood out was the music played during stoppages. It was all classic rock—the Peppers, Zeppelin, Dire Straits to name a few—and every time a team scored they’d play “That Smell” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. So there was definitely a method to the madness. Once, while the Zamboni cut the ice between periods, we listened to the entirety of “Althea” by the Grateful Dead. And as Grateful Dead standards go, “Althea” barely makes the threshold of being standard. We thought it was too bad Mike Valenzano wasn’t around to hear it. We even buttonholed one of the rink workers and asked him, “Who’s responsible for all this great music?” “Don’t ask me,” he responded. “My job is to find all the clean outs in case the new plumbing can’t handle the crowds.”
We did track down who was responsible, and while Old Bucks was warming up, we ripped a twenty dollar bill in half, gave half to him, and pointing out Mike Valenzano said, “See that old guy in the blue jersey? If he gets a goal and you play “Althea” by the Grateful Dead, we’ll give you the other half of this twenty after the game.” Well, Mike scored to make it 5-2 Blue. Suffice it to say, there was complete silence and now we’re stuck with half a twenty.
Red struggled to stay in the game. Without Bob Freiling it had lost its identity. Its proven strategy for winning was supplanted by a hodgepodge of experimental mishmash, everything from three left-wingers to two centers and one right-winger; while Blue was much more systematic, making sure it staggered the Freilings so at least one of them was always on the ice. Blue was up 7-6 when Red folded like a lawn chair. The score didn’t change much after that except Blue put a 1 before the 7. Goal succeeded goal—a relentless display of scoring-at-will dominance. Frankie took a sober view of the situation, which either meant the chips were down or Wegman’s was out of Tito’s.
Even we couldn’t watch and so we watched Rich Devlin’s phone instead. It had this tiny trapezoid-shaped football field on it, as if we were sitting on the 50 yard line about twenty rows up, and we could see this tiny football move in even tinier increments, supposedly reflecting “real time” runs and passes. It looked so slow and undynamic, with the physical factor completely effaced by a listless lack of purpose. But then we’d look up at the ice and feel the exact same way. And the final straw that broke the holiday camel’s back was that there would be no after party because TJ’s is too much like Chik-fil-A, to wit, “Closed on Sundays (after 9 p.m.)