Canadian Hockey: You should have seen my spinnerama goal

I think I may never repeat such a brilliant goal in all my life - except in my dreams.

Almost guaranteed, whenever the conversation turns to recreational league hockey, the price of a new stick - or even the price of eggs - I’ll try to squeeze in the story about how I deked a young defenceman out of his jock strap and silenced both benches for several seconds before Dougie yelled:

“What the heck was that!?”

And I’ll dream about it too, when my mind drifts back to pond hockey, wind in my face, leather helmets and frozen toes.


[My bloodied leather helmet - circa 1962; autographed by Ken Dryden: photo GAH]

The nifty goal wasn’t too bad for the oldest guy on the ice in my league.

You’d better sit down for this.

First, a diagram - so you can see where I’m going with this and how I got there.


Second, I went north over the blue line with the puck.

One team-mate was on my right but a defenseman blocked my pass.

So I deked left around the first guy and encountered another man in a pink sweater, and apparently, no hockey pants. (Sorry, Ron.)

Ron blocked my path and a pass, the goalie guarded the post, so I conceived a brilliant plan in 0.5 seconds, forever after to be known as the Spinnerama move.

On my backhand I flipped the puck 3 - 4 ft. into the air between Ron and Morgan, the goalie, fully intending to catch up to it momentarily.

To reach the puck I had to either skate directly through Ron as if by magic or... spin around backwards without breaking stride or losing speed and around Ron... which I did - in the blink of an eye.

It happened so fast Ron’s shorts got twisted into a knot, his jock flew into the awe-struck crowd (not illustrated) and I ended up in front of the goalie shortly after the puck bounced onto the ice and... according to plan, onto my stick.

I saw a hole and struck the puck much like Tiger Woods would a golf ball in deep rough, Morgan groaned, stretched to his left and I rejoiced to hear the puck hit the back of the net where it quite obviously belonged.

At least according to the expected end-result (insert laugh-track here) of my hastily conceived plan.

When Dougie, from the opposing bench, hollered ‘what the heck was that’ I calmly replied, “A little spinnerama.”

It’ll never happen again except in my dreams.

But the retelling will.

You’ve been warned.

***

Gotta favourite goal? A home run hit?

Now’s the time to tell me...while I’m enjoying my oatmeal. [See third post below for recipe]

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