Sledge Hockey Night in Canada

They were playing hockey all right. But they did not skate with their legs. They did not have skates. Some did not have legs. They skated by using their arms. And they held a hockey stick in each hand when they did.

For years, I had walked by them on the way to my own hockey game. I saw them by looking through two large windows while crossing the parking lot in front of the Cataraqui Arena. From outside at that distance they looked like small children on the ice. But they were grown men and women.

The Cataraqui Arena has two ice pads. They play on the Kinsmen pad and I play on Cataraqui pad. Once inside the rink I never saw them because I always went directly to my dressing room. But one night I walked over to watch them up close.

The first thing that caught my eye was the wheelchairs beside the players’ bench. But these wheelchairs were all empty. The people who usually sit in them were on the ice playing sledge hockey.

Sledge hockey is a team game with the same rules as regular ice hockey. Players sit strapped into specially designed sleds or “sledges” with skate blades beneath the seats. Each player has two short sticks and holds one in each hand. Each stick has a regular blade at one end for passing, stick handling and shooting. The other end has metal spikes, which are used to help propel and maneuver the sleds around the ice.

I stood along the boards watching them play from the bench. It was obvious that they were disabled. But as I watched I began to see their spirit. Five minutes later someone skated over on his hockey sled and stopped in front of me. As he reached up for the water bottle sitting on top of the boards I introduced myself. I asked him to talk to his teammates about giving me permission to write about their sledge hockey game.

Two days later one of the players, Robert Jones, phoned me to say it would be OK. That’s when I asked if I could play in their next game on Monday night.

I arrived at the rink a half-hour before the game like I have thousands of times during the past forty years before playing hockey. I asked a man standing outside one of the change rooms where the sledge hockey players were changing.

“Right in there.” he said.

We walked into the dressing room together. From the second I entered room number 10 at 7 o’clock I knew this would be unlike any hockey game I had played and different than any other experience I have ever known. 

It was also the first time I watched one of my teammates take off his pants and his legs. He was sitting directly across the room. He was the man who walked into the dressing with me.

A goalie was getting dressed in his wheelchair and talking about his recent ski trip. His wife, Tamara, who is not disabled, was sitting beside him putting on her hockey equipment.

I had never changed from my clothes into my hockey equipment in a dressing room with both men and women. I wondered what happened after the game when it was time for a shower.

Later I experienced a moment of panic. It happened while everyone was talking about the fact that this was the only sledge hockey team between Ottawa and Oshawa. At the far end of the room someone said, “Belleville has enough gimps to make a team but they don’t have one.”

I yelled out, “Excuse me. But did you just say ‘gimps’?”

The room went silent.

I suddenly thought that maybe he didn’t say “gimps” and that I just thought he did.

Then I realized that I had said “gimps.” Out loud. And everyone heard me.

I was immediately relieved when he answered, “Yes.

”Then he said, “It’s OK for gimps to say it.”

I suppose some people would disagree but I wasn’t about to.

Out on the ice, players climbed down from their wheelchairs and on to their sleds. I got on my sled too. From what I remember, I was the only one who needed help. The father of one of the players strapped me in. Every sled had three straps, one at the ankle, another at the knees and a third around the waist.

As we finished getting ready out on the ice, the Kingston KIMCO Voyageurs had finished their practice on the other pad and were now jogging around our rink. Seeing them made me think about the group who had been on the ice just before us. It was a speed skating club.

I had watched them racing and circling the rink. They moved so easily, gracefully and even beautifully while going around at high speed.

Then I thought about how the world is full of speed skaters and strong young athletes with dreams and hopes and great potential. But the world is also a place that has sledge hockey. Life is not as easy for some as it is for others. Not all our dreams come true. People carry on with what they have. That’s life.

A hockey rink is a place that has no soft things around it. The ice is frozen solid. The boards are stiff. The puck is as hard as a rock. The goal posts are pillars of steel. And the players are encased in high-tech helmets and body armor. Sledge hockey has one additional hazard.

As I was being strapped in my sled I watched a young boy in the sled beside me using a large steel file on one of his hockey sticks. But it wasn’t the blade of the stick that he was working on. He was sharpening the metal spikes at the other end of the stick. Sometimes those spikes find flesh. By accident you can even stab yourself with your own hockey stick.     

I only play old-timers hockey now. When I pass through the gate onto the ice, I feel myself gradually shedding the burden of time. Slowly and quietly at first, I wind my way around the rink, stretching, bending and arching. I begin to regain that sense of movement I once experienced as a boy. And then I’m back.

Tonight was much different. The players around me who needed wheelchairs to reach the ice suddenly turned into sleek young sharks when they got on their sleds. I felt confined by the sled and the straps and became awkward when I tried to move. When I turned, I stumbled and flopped over in my sled and thrashed about like a fish out of water as my arms tried to do the work of my legs.

The game was to be two hours long and I knew from the moment it began that I was going to pay for having legs. As I should. As everyone should.

I rammed my sled into the boards and into other players. I collided with the goal post and even with the goalie. At one point while trying to retrieve the puck after the other team had scored I became entangled inside the net. Someone had to go around behind the net and pull it away from me so I could get my sled out.

It got worse. Many times I managed to tip my sled backwards so my head and back were along the ice while my legs and sled stood straight up in the air. I couldn’t right myself. I felt helpless like a turtle flipped over on its shell. Someone finally told me that the trick was to roll over on your side first before trying to sit back up. I was told that the other important thing to remember to be successful at sledge hockey is to keep moving.

The other players were all great. Everyone was friendly and helpful and encouraging. They treated me like an equal. Now that I’ve played with them I know that they are truly impressive athletes.

People who can use their legs were also playing sledge hockey that night. They’re called “walkies” as opposed to “wheelies.” Some are volunteers but mostly they’re friends and family.     

Coaches in the Kingston Minor Hockey Association should consider bringing their teams to watch or even play a sledge hockey game. In some cases Minor Hockey caters to pampered players on elite teams with names like Ice Cats and Ice Wolves and Predators and Cougars. Children as young as 10 wear dress shirts and ties and leather team jackets while regularly travelling on chartered buses and playing in front of scouts on Showcase Nights. Almost every young hockey player uses a $250 Synergy stick. If you want to see a wooden hockey stick being used you better go and see an old-timers game.

Watching a sledge hockey game may teach young people to appreciate the meaning of hard work and humility. They’ll see players who don’t think they’re better than their teammates or bigger than the game. They’ll see players enjoying the game and having fun playing hockey in front of empty seats. For that one kid in tens of thousands who does make a career out of hockey, watching the game played this way, even once, may make him or her a better professional. And for all the other hockey players who go and watch, they’ll have to settle for just being better people because of it.

Eventually my arms got so tired I asked our goalie if he wanted to trade places.

“I’d love to,” he said. “But I can’t grip a stick with my right hand. My goalie glove is fastened with tape to my hand.”  I realized immediately that there was something permanently wrong with his hand.

I skated away reminding myself that no matter how bad things seem, someone is always worse off than you are. But then again, things aren’t always as bad as they seem. He told me later how he goes hunting all year round. He shoots a deer every year even though he has to pull the trigger with his thumb. 

The game was nearing its end and it was time to ask that hard question. I tried to ask every player out on the ice when we were alone.

I asked each of them, “What happened to your legs?”

 Everyone answered without awkwardness.

Some lost the use of their legs due to a birth defect but in most cases it was because of an accident. Some accidents occurred while riding snowmobiles and others happened on  four-wheelers. One man lost his legs when he was nine years old after being run over by a train in the sixties up near Timmins.  

When the game ended and I was ready to leave the dressing I asked everyone as a group if there was anything they wanted to say. I told them that now is the time.

No one complained or even spoke about the loss of their legs. Like most happy people they all just seemed grateful and glad to be alive.  

Instead they asked for some help. They need a corporate sponsor. The sleds are expensive and they also pay for their own ice-time.

There was something else I wanted them to know but I didn’t say it at the rink.

I want them to know that I use my legs.

I walk and bicycle to and from work every day no matter the weather conditions even though the walk is an hour each way.

I hike in the wilderness almost every Saturday morning of the year. I walk through the snow and over the frozen swamps and across beaver dams. I climb up and down rock ridges. I walk on game trails and runways worn bare by the feet of the wild animals that made them. I swim in lakes few people even know are there because they can only be reached on foot.

I don’t take the elevator up to the second floor.

I don’t drive down to the corner store.

And like each one of the sledge hockey players, I don’t spend half my life sitting on the couch watching reality TV.