Put on ice

Paul Kandarian

I’m hitting 70 soon. These are the times that try men’s souls. Not to mention their shoulders, knees, backs, and patience.

Here’s the thing: my body has had a good run – a great run and in fact – and is still in mid-stride of a very active life, just a wee bit slower, more stooped, less reliable. The biggest part of that? For 50 years, a solid half century, I played ice hockey as a goalie, one of the most demanding positions in all of sports.

You put on 40 or so pounds of gear, stumble out as gracefully as possible onto the ice and willingly stand in front of guys shooting the puck, not at NHL speed of 100mph or more, but at a still-painful 50, 60, or 70, I’d guess. Hard enough to make a goalie go down in a heap when it smashes into the wrong place (yes, like there).

Now I didn’t play for a solid 50 years, there were gaps in there when work and family got in the way, a few years here and there. But mostly, I was in the game. For the last 25 years, it was once a week steadily, sometimes more, up in Hingham. And at 6:30 in the morning, no less, meaning I was up before five in all kinds of weather every Friday to schlepp through snow and rain and ice and the sheer drudgery of sleepy driving.

But when I was in my 20s and 30s, I’d be on the ice three, four, five or more times a week. So doing the math, over 50 years that’s a metric ton of hockey.

The last few years have been especially challenging, when arthritis has reared its ugly inflammatory head in body parts mentioned above. Before 65, things really didn’t hurt. The second I hit that magic mark, I swear my body threw in the towel of any remaining youth and said, “We’re done, old man. You better damn well listen.”

Which, I proudly say, I stupidly did not. December 2021, I got my first cortisone shot in my right knee, which was locking up like a bank vault, and it went great –pain was gone until summer 2022 when for no reason except old(er) age, it would feel like someone was pounding a hot nail into it. So I got another in July. It took forever to kick in but when it did, it felt better. Not great, but better.

But both knees continued to hurt, sometimes enough to make me call out of hockey. Which, as a goalie, tends to piss people off because there are only two of us and our absence leaves nothing to shoot at but an empty net for guys paying good money to play (I should also say here goalies never pay for ice time, the conventional wisdom being if they’re dumb enough to play the position, don’t make ‘em pay. I endorse that heartily).

So one day in late January of this year, I texted the guy who runs the hockey hour in Hingham and said I couldn’t make it that week. And this happened, after some testy texts back and forth: Him: “Maybe you should think about retiring.”

Me: (after thinking about it for a split second) “F-it, I quit.”

And that was my retirement speech right there. Pretty pithy, eh? Yeah, I love economy of words.

Then guess what? Within two weeks of quitting, my knees quit hurting and haven’t bothered me one bit since, which I say rapping my knuckles on my giant wooden ex-goalie head.

Then guess what, part two? My shoulders went into full arthritic arrest, which should be a medical term if it isn’t already, unable to lift my arms above 45 degrees, cringing and cussing trying to reach for anything higher than that, finding it impossible to side sleep (my lifelong position) without waking up every hour to flip over, and when I did, the nighttime peace shattered by the firecracker popping of bone on bone in both shoulders.

If I were a horse, the saying goes, they’d shoot me.

Boston has the best docs on Earth, and the three I talked to were uniform in their assessment: you gotta get these things replaced. Which frankly I didn’t know was a thing until this happened. The last guy I went to is at the Brigham telling me, when I asked on the grand scale of bad shoulders he’s seen where mine ranked, smiled wryly and said “Gotta say, they are Hall of Fame bad.”

I’d like to thank voting members of the Hall for this honor!

So I’ve had, in the past couple months, a cortisone shot in each shoulder, which, if not providing miraculous results, have at least cut the constant pain in half, which feels like a complete victory. But it’s really a stay of execution; I’m gonna schedule replacement surgery of the left shoulder and six months or more later, do the other. I’ll do that starting this November or December, figuring why waste summer and fall in a sling when I can do it in the cold, bleak months of winter when it’s dark and gross and miserable and a perfect time to be in a bad mood!

People ask, “Don’t you miss hockey?” and honestly I do – but not lately. I miss it the way I was even five years ago, certainly the way I was 50 years ago.

If I could save time in a bottle, to quote the late great Jim Croce, the first thing that I’d like to do?

Maybe think twice about playing goal for so long. Then again, maybe not..

Paul Kandarian is a lifelong area resident and, since 1982, has been a profession writer, columnist, and contributor in national magazines, websites, and other publications.