The Poke Check Diaries

Clint Malarchuk, the former NHL goaltender best known for suffering a gruesome skate-slash-to-the-neck injury in his playing days, recently attended the Rendezvous With Madness Film Festival to promote his new book The Crazy Game a showing of his ESPN 30 For 30 doc, Cutthroat. Throughout his playing days and into retirement Malarchuk dealt with obsessive-compulsive … Continue reading →

Since the beginning of time man has asked himself, “How good am I?” It’s why people compete in marathons, why they wrestle each other, and why they get into drinking contests with the Bytown Billionaires. It’s partially a test against one’s competition, but it’s just as much a test against oneself. Where do I rank? … Continue reading →

Back in May I got the opportunity to help out for the ScotiaBank Pro-Am media day at St. Mike’s Arena. My job was pretty simple: according to organizer and charity hockey ninja Rob Weir I was to sit in the net and let random dudes take shots on me for an hour or two while … Continue reading →

The big sporting viral video of the week is something called “14 Minutes Of Pissed Off Goalies.” The medley, which is exactly what the title sounds like, had an uncomfortable sting to it. That’s because when I was watching it I saw myself in those videos. Not literally. I wasn’t in any of them. But … Continue reading →

A few months back on Super Bowl Sunday I got a call from my friend and international hockey ambassador/author of The Travelling Goalie blog Adrian Mizzi. He needed an extra goalie to play an exhibition game between his team the Ghetto Blasters and… Team Argentina. Sort of. “Team Argentina” was a group of about 30 … Continue reading →

Much has been made about whether new hockey movie Goon is as good as all-time classic Slap Shot. But what those people desperate to face the two off against each other don’t understand is that there’s lots of room on the bench for both of them. When you’re riding the buses and need something to … Continue reading →

One of the best players I’ve ever played with what a fellow named Scott Graham. He was in his 40s at the time and worked in advertising, but in his hockey past he had played pro in Europe. He organized a weekly high-end shinny game that I’d play in, until, one game he had a … Continue reading →

I hate going to rinks and seeing little kids with thousands of dollars of pristine high level goal gear on their bodies. All that tells me is that they’ve got rich sucker parents who’re more than likely compensating for their child’s athletic deficiencies by flashing them up in top gear. This fine photo, however, is … Continue reading →

Last Saturday I played one of my easiest/toughest games in a very long time. A day earlier I started experiencing paralyzing back pain. It was awful. I couldn’t bend down, couldn’t walk, couldn’t lift anything… heck, I couldn’t even put my socks on. So it was abundantly clear I was still playing hockey the next … Continue reading →

And so it was spoken, in the book of Goaltending, by the apostle Jacques Plante, on page 104, about quitting: “Playing goal when a team is leading is easy, but when it falls behind, the pressure mounts to the point where some goalies can’t stand it and stop trying. Without realizing why, they get mad … Continue reading →

My 9980s I wear a set of Sher-Wood 9980 goal pads in red, black and white very similar to what Patrick Lalime wore as an Ottawa Senator in the early 2000s. The pads themselves are solidly crafted made-in-Canada products, but what I really love about them is the crazy v-lines in the design. It’s a … Continue reading →

Last night the power went out at Pickering’s Art Thompson Arena right as I was about to step on the ice to play my regular Monday summer hockey game in the Generals Men’s Hockey League. There were crazy thunderstorms in the area and apparently a nearby transformer got hit to cause the power outage. This … Continue reading →

The first international ice hockey championship the United States won after the Miracle On Ice came in 1987 when a U-17 team featuring future pros like Jeremy Roenick, Mike Modano and Tony Amonte served notice that America was about to become a hockey power. The goalie that anchored that team was Buffalo native Ken Baker. … Continue reading →

Never buy these. They’re to protecting your knees while playing hockey what the Maginot Line was to protecting France — theoretically perfect protection, but practically useless in the real world. I bought Bauer Supreme goaltending kneepads about three years ago when I switched my goal pants. With my previous pants I just tied the now-illegal … Continue reading →

I’ve had many great goaltending adventures, but few of them were like when I entered the anything-goes “Goalie Derby” at the 2005 Hockey Summit Of The Arts. Luckily, my friend Joseph McGinty was also there with a video camera and put together this excellent piece about it:

Why do people become goalies? It’s an age old question that philosophical followers of hockey love to ponder. In my case the reason why I became a goalie was because my eight-year-old self was a pretty horrible skater. And if I was in net I wouldn’t have to skate, right? Young me’s arrival between the … Continue reading →