Pond Hockey

After my morning tennis session at Wooddale, which incidentally was pretty good tennis for a quartet of geezers, and close, too, I came home to survey the remains of the day. Since it had warmed to three degrees on the positive side of zero, I thought maybe a little walk and perhaps some spectator sport to check in on would be an interesting course of action. Luckily, this weekend in Minneapolis there is a pond hockey tournament, hockey played the way it's supposed to be played - outside on a big lake in really cold weather. The U.S. Pond Hockey Tournament is about six years old and is played this year on Lake Nokomis, Friday through Sunday.

It was four degrees on the Matrix when I arrived at Lake Nokomis.  I parked and walked out onto the ice and joined a good sized crowd who were enjoying the cold and the action.  This is a game between two teams in the 50+ age group - "Pond Scum" and "Spirit of 78."  The guys in green - the scum - are so old that their jersey numbers are in Roman numerals.  There was spirited action and a lot of people watching dressed for wind chill.

More action from the same game, won by the Spirit of '78 by a score of 6-4. There is no checking and no raising the puck. It's a four on four game with no goalies. To score you put the puck in a narrow slot in the wooden goal at either end of the ice.

These guys are warming up before their game. They shoveled the rink before getting started.  There is another of the 25 rinks in the background and the temporary warming "shack" and food tent which is also sitting out on Lake Nokomis.  It's a pretty good view of the goal and how it is shaped.  I had a walk around inside the warming shack because it was cold and I had a need for a little warming.  It was packed with spectators, players and vendors of warm, high calorie and over priced food, and beer, too.   It's a pretty well run tournament.

I took a picture of the map of the rinks on the lake. Most of the 25 were in action while I was there. There are a lot of players from out of state and some pretty good hockey players on the teams in the Open division. In years past, and probably this year, too, there have been former NHL players on the better teams.

It was only four degrees, so I only lasted through the first period of the day's last session games. There will be playoff games tomorrow to see who wins the Golden Shovel. These guys are hard core. Me, not so much.