Say hello, wave goodbye

Blimey – last league weekend already?! It feels like only five minutes ago that we were all looking forward to The Ashes (the ice hockey ones, not the cricket ones), but here we are sorting our wild west outfits ready for the play-offs. Okay so it hasn’t been a season to remember with relish like last season, but there’s definitely been some memorable events: stuffing the Bison 5-0 then twice beating them on penalties......beating Phoenix 6-3 and running them incredibly close last weekend......signing Blaz Emersic as soon as he became available......beating Flames 5-0 on their own ice...... putting 9 past Swindon......a seven game unbeaten run in the new year......Andre Payette telling us to “give it up” after we baited him all game in Sheffield.....watching Monir go the colour of beetroot when we sang his song at Bracknell as he sat behind us.....!!

Close season is going to be very strange – I’ve gone from weekends where ice hockey didn’t figure at all, to wondering what it’s going to be like without it. F1 started this weekend, so that’ll see me through – but ice hockey has the longest close-season of any of the sports I follow (football 3 months, F1 4 months, ice hockey 5 months).

This season’s been a very steep learning curve and there’s still a way to go, for me. I still think what I really need is someone much more knowledgeable than me, with patience, to point out things I should watch for in a game. But there are a lot of things that I *have* learned so far as a relative newbie...

1. It’s a phenomenally fast game. Keeping your eye on the puck to make sure you don’t get hit by one is the very least of it – just keeping track with which team’s in possession is hard work sometimes. Particularly when I go to games without my contact lenses.

2. Don’t even try to compare it with football as ‘another team sport’. Full contact vs non- contact took bloody ages to get used to, even now I’ll see one skater push another one and wait for the ref to blow for it, then remember in ice hockey it’s sometimes allowed.

3. The Thunderdome isn’t a particularly cold rink. Basingstoke is colder, Peatboghorror is freezing, Whitley Bay is too cold even for polar bears. At the other end of the scale, Slough is cosy and Sheffield is totally tropical.

4. Ice hockey rules, whilst seemingly random and unfathomable, are more flexible than football rules. In football, two yellows (or one red) and your team’s short-handed for the rest of the game – in hockey you have to pretty much murder someone to get a match or game penalty, so your team’s rarely short-handed for long (unless Nigel Boniface is reffing, then you can spend most of the game short-handed).

5. The referees in hockey get just as much grief as they do in football. Particularly if your surname is Szucks, Tottman or Boniface.

6. Same goes for some pundits and players. For Alan Green, read ‘Dave Simms’, and players like Nicky Chinn, Andre Payette, Shaun Yardley and Nicky Watt always get a warm welcome at the Thunderdome.....

7. Why would you WANT to be a nettie? Surely you have to be certifiable to want to get in the way of Lukas Zatopek firing a rock-hard frozen lump of rubber at you, at speeds that even Prof Brian Cox would struggle to grasp?

8. I’ll also never understand why you’d want to be a ref or linesman - less padding than anyone else on the ice, twice the abuse from the crowd, you have to break up fights between players the size of Marcus Kristofferson and Leigh Jamieson, AND watch for penalty instructions from Tony Hand.

9. Muzzy is always last off the line after the national anthem, and first on the scene at a good fight.

10. I hate watching the game from behind netting. At Sheffield you don’t have a choice in the matter so you just get on with it, but at least the netting’s actually white; at MK it could do with a good wash on a hot programme with a scoop of Glo-White.

11. Unlike in football, you can be playing a league AND a cup game at the same time – which I quite like, because you don’t then get boring empty weekends mid-season as you’re “concentrating on the league” again. (Yes, Sunderland, that’s you.)

12. Trying to think up even vaguely witty puns about your or your oppo’s team name for press releases gets harder the longer the season goes on. There’s only so many times I can use “Lightning strike twice” or say we kept the Steeldogs “on a tight leash”.

13. I learnt this season that annoying the coach before a match is not good. Next season in a change of tactics, I’ll annoy him afterwards instead (when he’s put that stick down and had a drink).

14. I also learned that two of our roster live literally around the corner from me, so I’m going round after the EOS doo to lock them in until they sign for next season.

15. There are some wierd and wonderful names in ice hockey. In no particular order: Pavel Gomeniuk, Darius Pliskauskas, Andrejs Maslovskis, Kurtis Dulle, Paul Sample, Dale Mahovsky (actually anyone called 'Dale' or 'Brad' is alright by me), Patrick 'Chewie' Forsbacka (used to play for Newcastle and sounds best pronounced with a broad north-eastern accent!), David Beauregard and Jeremy Van Hoof. And an honourable mention to the combination of Messrs Plant and Potts of Guildford.

16. Road games really are worth giving up a quarter of the weekend for. You get to cheer on Lightning AND spend time with some splendiferous people who are as sold on MKL as you are, sing daft songs at the oppo’s expense, natter about hockey until your heart’s content and generally have a bloody good time - there’s easily as much team spirit in the away end as in the away dressing room, and I can honestly say I’ve thorougly enjoyed every single awayday I’ve been on this season.

It’s been an absolute blast writing this column and if the fanzine will have me, I’m sure I’ll be back at least occasionally next season. For now, I’ll say it once more................LET’S GO, LIGHTNING!!!