Battle of the Blades

What a most excellent adventure… There were no pucks involved, but there were hockey players, and they were wearing skates.

My friend Julie and I have spent the last couple of weeks being groupies for “Battle of the Blades,”* CBC’s hit reality competition show that pairs retired hockey players with Olympic figure skatures and forces the pairs to perform a different, increasingly-difficult figure skating routine every week. It films in Toronto. I can see Canada from my house. It was only a matter of time.

Last year I actually tried to get tickets to go by myself, but it’s a quick sell-out. This year, I got re-acquainted with Julie over the summer, and a Sabre fan favourite joined the cast of the show. Brad May. May Day. Julie was game for a Toronto adventure, and off we went to the Week 4 results show.

Now, May and his partner, Canadian champion Anabelle Langois, had been tied for last in the judging the night before, and the judges were roundly booed for it. Don’t kid yourself, this is as much a popularity contest as anything, and public gets to vote until 2 a.m. the day after the performance show. At the results show, we would find out if the bottom two scores got enough of the popular vote to offset the judges’ opinions. Through a painful game of cat and mouse MCed by Ron McLean of HNiC, the bottom two are revealed. This week it would be Russian skater Violetta Afanasieva and her partner, Calgary Flame Cale Hulse, the top-scoring pair. And Langois and May.

May is one of the good guys. Outward appearances would suggest that he snagged himself a trophy wife at the height of his career, like so many professional athletes do. She just happens to BE that hot, but she is actually his high school sweetheart. His family is tight. He is a living definition of the word “affable.” And positive? Wow. When it was revealed that they would have to reskate their program on Monday, Kurt Browning asked May if he was nervous facing a 50/50 chance of elimination after months of hard work. May said, “That’s if you’re a negative thinker.” Browning said he thought he was at a seminar for positive thought, and Langois said, “You don’t understand. He’s like a fortune cookie – he’s positive every single day.” (Later, his wife Bridgette revealed that she at least had been more nervous that night than at any point in his NHL career.)

Always look for a silver lining — our adventurous day that resulted in us ultimately taking three hours to get to the rink (90 minutes away) was at least going to end with our seeing May skate live. Their routine was still spot on, but they were again criticised for shying away from everything but lifts. Given the choice of whom to eliminate, the judges unanimously chose May and Langois. Again, boos resounded. The crowd began to chant, “Save, save, save,” imploring the judges to use the one “save” per season they are allowed. After discussion with the other judges, Sandra Bezic explained to the crowd, “You just never got to the part between the lifts. So… we really feel that you deserve the time to work on your choreography between the lifts.” And the crowd goes wild.

Because of cottage location, my family has run across the May family more than once in Muskoka. My brother golfed with him once at Port Carling Country Club. After golf, he and May had lunch and talked for a couple hours more. I think you just need one conversation with the guy to become a fan for life. I ran into him at the Port Sandfield general store. At the time, he didn’t remember me as a reporter that covered the team when he was playing. The single only female in the locker room, and not a flicker of recognition… To be fair, I actually get that a lot — at least he was honest about it, and absolutely enthusiastic about meeting me then. But then it was weird when he came over to us after signing a massive number of autographs post-show, and gave me a big hug and said he was glad to see me. He knows Julie from his playing days in Buffalo, but I thought we had ascertained that he didn’t know me, and I was pretty sure the hug wasn’t intended for “that woman I ran into in the general store once.” So nice, so positive, so gracious – I didn’t care that he must have thought I was someone else, which is good, since I don’t have the social skills to deal with those situations anyway.

I think that’s the Autism speaking. My friends call it my Facebook-Diagnosed Autism, but it turns out that what I took was the real Autism Spectrum Test created at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge. The Autism Spectrum Test results in an average quotient of 16. Only 2% of the general population will get a 32 or above, while 80% of autistic people will get a 32 or above. The authors cited a score of 32 or more as indicating "clinically significant levels of autistic traits." I got a 43. Forty. Three. When I told my best friend that, I came up with that silver lining: “At least it’s my second-favourite prime number.” She pointed out that that statement alone was diagnostic. She got a 7.

I told one of the myriad of medical professionals caring for my mental health about the test. I was hoping for, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous.” I got, “That explains a lot… that explains a LOT.” How does it help me to know this now, when I’m already a walking depository of coping mechanisms? Well, my extreme discomfort with strangers is still something I want to work on, and it seems like less of a personal weakness now that I know I come by it naturally. My need for things to be accurately repetitive makes a lot more sense, so stop taking my parking spot at Wegmans. The whole math brain thing falls right in there, too. And I get extremely disturbed, angry even, when other people don’t follow the rules (man, did I love Germany…). And to say I had no social skills at all would be to greatly exaggerate my social skills. And it’s nice to finally be high-functioning at something.

So that’s why I didn’t have the social skills to find out who Brad thought I was, and just played along. Which is good, because I wasn’t being Autistic, I was being a complete airhead. Later I realised that I kept tweeting about #BOTB (Battle of the Blades) and referencing @maydayhockey. And that people who actually KNOW how twitter works would actually read comments in which they’re referenced. So, he knew I was coming to the show, he knew I was coming with Julie, and he knew that I would be the one with the (kind of crappy, rushed, homemade) Brad May sign. And I suspect, like many before him to whom I have tried not to appear crazy, that he knew that I am a least a little crazy. And he hugged me anyway. What a guy!

During the next week, Julie worked her magic again, and mid-week I got an enthusiastic, all-caps e-mail saying we were going to both the performance and results shows for Week 5. The plan was set. I made a much better sign, double-sided so that the other skaters could autograph the back for me on their post-show tour around the rink.

To our semi-amusement, our fabulous front-row, practically on-ice seats would not be available for the whole show, as a camera would be in that spot for the first number. So the only number we couldn’t quite see was May and Langois. From where we sat, and upon further review on DVR later, they were miles ahead of where they had been in Week 4. Criticised for too many lifts the week before, there was more footwork and a throw and some even-fancier lifts. May seemed more at ease than in previous weeks, really feeling the music, despite my brother’s text that May looked stiff. My brother hasn’t been watching, and does not know how stiff hockey players are when they start learning to figure skate – the learning curve is steep. He also doesn’t know that May is doing this all with a bad back.

I think once he saw the rest of the competitors, he knew that all the hockey players were still working out some stiffness. It was only a slip of the edge of the skate at the end that put May and Langois in the bottom two again this week, tied with Afanaseiva and Hulse. I have a theory that the judges score any slips-ups substantially lower to give those pairs the chance to skate their routine perfectly on Monday: Afanaseiva had lost her balance on a lift late in their program as well.

I stayed up until 2 a.m., and must have voted online seventy times. As much as I wanted to see them skate again, I didn’t want to see them skate again. In an unusual twist, the 4^th and 5^th place pairs (out of 6) were so statistically close in scoring, they had the bottom three skate to avoid elimination. Suddenly May and Langois’ chances went from 50% to 66%, which I liked.

Then came the skate. May and Langois went second, and they were ready, maybe too ready. Langois landed a throw awkwardly, and they had trouble finding the choreography again to keep going. They needed another pair to make a bigger mistake, and it didn’t happen. By a unanimous vote, May and Langois were eliminated.

It was clear from the last skate that May had made huge strides in figure skating — I need to keep that in mind when I’m facing new challenges. Their program had — to my eyes — a much higher degree of difficulty than the other two did, and they didn’t seem to get credit for pushing the envelope. They must have worked so intently that last week, and now find themselves with nothing to practice, nowhere to skate. If I had a chance to tell him, I’d say start some projects at home or go volunteer somewhere, something to fill those hours that were spent working on the ice and in physical therapy off of it.

That was the end of our “Battle of the Blades” adventure, as I’m off on a different adventure in Haiti. In the car on the way back to Buffalo, though, we began to plan our next hockey experience. And I’m still DVRing Battle of the Blades. Damn, but that’s a good show.

* Participants in "Battle of the Blades" are skating for a cause. Each pair's charity receives $25,000, and the pair that wins the competition scores $100,000 for their charity. Brad May and Anabelle Langois are skating for Autism Speaks Canada.

Sabres in Germany

The last three hoisters of Lord Stanley’s Cup began those seasons in Europe. The moment I heard the announcement that the Sabres would start the 2011-12 season in Finland and Germany, I planned to go to Berlin. After I already had purchased tickets online and started hunting apartments in Berlin, the Sabres announced a tour package with AAA. They hinted at potential events with the team, and I was sold. AND I had extra tickets, which wound up in the hands of Sabres fans come to Berlin from Buffalo.

The Germany trip was magic. We were whisked from the airport (and a 9-hour flight) to an open practice and photo ops with the team. We were very pretty. My cohort Cindy and I decided to see how early beer was served, and became the first members of the trip to draw a draught, having beer for breakfast at 10.30 Monday morning. Tamara Griffin, a Buffalo transplant whose cousin I know gave us her Monday night: taking us to a shnitzel place so local the locals don’t even know about it; giving us insight into German politesse’s and the venting of German windows and doors; showing us downtown Mannheim to balance our Heidelberg tour the next day. We couldn’t have asked for a better introduction. The next day, sitting outside a café after a lengthy walking tour, we just smiled and waved at the people we knew walking by… Ryan Miller, Jochen Hecht, Teppo Numminen. If that happened in Buffalo, we would have stopped them for photos and tweeted about it, but we were sharing Germany with them, and we were totally cas.

Go see Adler Mannheim (the Mannheim Eagles) play. They’re a good team, and the opening video showing the journey of the team from their old Aud to the current digs included a lot of championships. I wonder what that feels like… The highlight is the fans. The end zone doesn’t have seats – the fans stand the entire game, chanting and singing and clapping in rhythms. Very enthusiastic, and putting our “Let’s Go, Buffalo” and “Ooh, ah, Sabres on the Warpath” to shame. Fabulous energy, and a good game to boot. Souvenir stands had to institute population controls, the end zone started their own “Let’s Go, Buffalo” chant, and Tamara saw her first NHL game ever. (Honestly, one of the stresses of preparing for the trip was trying to surprise Tamara’s 13-year-old daughter with Sabres gear – how do I know what a 13-year-old would wear? I did OK with a burn-out T-shirt with a bedazzled Sabres logo – she wore it to school on Game Day. Phew.)

A couple of inspirations made our game night in Mannheim. On the way to our hotel after Monday’s practice, I had the epiphany that we needed to make a sign. With Jochen as the local hero, we chose to rip off the sign of a girl who sits in front of me in Buffalo, who periodically shows up with a sign that says, “What the Hecht? You must be Jochen!” It’s one of my favourites. We included a footnote on the sign crediting her. Cindy had the brilliant idea of putting “Thank you, Mannheim” on the other side. Shortened to “Danke Mannkeim” to save the markers we had just purchased at Woolworth’s (thank you, Knox family…), we then drew a big German flag at the bottom, too. We were each on the big screen at the arena, and apparently on the German feed of the game, but the magic of the sign came after the game when we just held up the “Danke Mannheim” side as we waited outside our bus, and wave after wave of fans stopped to talk to us. They were as excited to have us as we were to be there. You could sense a little bit of that inferiority complex that makes Canada and Buffalo so endearing – the “WE think we’re fabulous, but we don’t really believe it until we’re validated by outsiders” complex. It was fabulous. Danke, Mannheim.

Munich was less hockey and more beer drinking with Scottish football fans. And by football, of course, I mean soccer. Except… one of the Scots was actually a Marv Levy fan – what are the odds? We told him we were from Buffalo, and he said, “Where would you rather be than right here, right now?” We had brought items from home to give away, should we encounter Europe-based Buffalo fans who can’t skip off to the Sabres store like we do. Mark the Scot became the proud owner of Buffalo Bills bunting, from Ace Flag on Transit.

On to Berlin, on a train that was so smooth it was like one of those rides where you sit still and are shown a video to simulate motion. We choked the hotel’s wifi trying to bring the Helsinki game in on twenty or so different appliances. Cindy — as always — thought outside the box, and we headed to the internet café right outside the hotel door and pulled up my NHL Centre Ice account on a hard-wired computer at which we were allowed to drink beer and eat dinner. An inexplicable King Kong statue in one corner, Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider statue in another, added to the surreality of the waitress telling us the pizza would take longer than expected: “We have a little fire in the kitchen…”

We expected Berlin to be a letdown after the immense energy of a smaller town that wasn’t as used to international attention. Imagine a European team coming to Buffalo, then going to Toronto. We explored the city a bit by train – oh, YEAH we did — with the excitement of “Game Day!” bursting out periodically. Pregame nap, Game Day outfit (Cindy went all German on us and wore her lucky socks with open-toe shoes), Arts & Crafts Hour to convert The Sign to say “Danke Berlin.” At the pregame happy hour at the hotel, I led some fans in the singing of “The Hockey Song,” but since they never play the “third period, last game of the playoffs, too” at Sabres games, I was alone on the last verse. Then Cindy saw some of our tour get into a cab, and asked if we, too, could just get our tickets and go to the World O₂ Arena on our own. Outside the box and into a cab.

We had skipped the political sights of Berlin in favour of daily-life exploration, and were rewarded when we got to the Arena. Literally across the street from where the cab dropped us was the last remaining original section of the Berlin Wall, covered in colourful murals. Photo op. We milled through the crowd with The Sign held high, half-heartedly trying to sell my tickets, but more talking to fans and getting our photos taken with strangers. My Hockey Night in Canada jersey helped in that regard (It was Saturday, and that’s what I wear to Sabres game on Saturdays. Don’t judge me.). We even ran into friends from Buffalo, making the ticket disposal an easy decision. We felt a drop, then that second one that you actually comment on, and we just caught the beginning of a torrential downpour as we squeezed our way into the Arena entryway. Apparently if you use O₂ phone service, you have a separate, much faster entrance, called the “Blue Lane.” I was sure that my outstanding record as a Labatt drinker would get me through. Um, no. They’re rule-followers in Germany.

Inside, what we had started to observe outside was magnified: fans of the LA Kings, allegedly the home team and owned by the owner of the arena in which we stood, were outnumbered by Sabres fans by 20-1. Easily. My endearing Buffalo inferiority complex kicked in: we were, in fact, validated. The Sign continued to work its magic — Cindy and I were interviewed by German television, had our photos taken with more strangers, and found our new Mannheim friends at the game who explained that 2,000 fans from Austria and another 1,000 fans from Switzerland were there to see Vanek, not to mention the fans of Erhoff and Sekera, and the fact that LA fans didn’t get all excited and take a week off and spend thousands of dollars to go see their team play in Europe.

Berlin, too, had an end zone crew leading the crowd, but not as intensely as the one in Mannheim. The visiting team had their own cheering section: it was called “the entire seating area.” The Kings were actually booed when they took to the ice, and the Sabres’ opening video inspired the crowd. The souvernir stands sold items from both teams, but only hooks remained on the Sabres sides of the stands by midgame, while LA merchandise was still available post-game. The Sabres responded with a 4-2 win, making them the only NHL team to be undefeated in Europe this season.

Not that there haven’t been enough positive changes at the FN Center in Buffalo under the watch of the Pegulas (they are FINALLY selling Coke Zero, the official drink of the Buffalo Sabres), but I should point out that the Sabres are undefeated when I drink German beer at the game. Just sayin’.

Return of Puckvoice

At our hotel in Berlin, I joined my roommate Cindy outside as she took a cigarette break. Another Sabres fan out there said, “Did you really used to write the hockey column for Artvoice?” I acknowledged Puckvoice was mine. He shook his head sadly and said, “I disagreed with you every week. I couldn’t believe some of the things you came up with.” I told him I was pretty sure a lot of people didn’t agree with me, but I never really cared what people thought. As long as I wasn’t lying to people, then agreeing with people week after week wasn’t really very interesting anyway. And, what I really heard from him was, “I read your column faithfully every week,” so whether he agreed with me or not, he was hooked.

In a move that my new Sabre friend will probably shudder at being the inspiration for, I return to the interwebs to talk about hockey from a fan point of view. As I just heard on an old episode of NCIS, “It’s a matter of opinion, how could it be wrong?” “Exactly, it’s a matter of you having the wrong opinion.” Whatev.

The first five years of the franchise aside, and with the arguable exception of a few weeks in 1999, there has never been a more exciting time to be a Sabres fan. Seriously, did my flight the morning of February 22^nd crash? A billionaire fan has bought the Sabres and is taking suggestions from the rabble as to how to improve the arena, the game experience, and the franchise? They really de-slugged the whole building and we don’t have to call it the “old logo” anymore? There really is warm water in the ladies room? They managed to slough Tim Connolly off on Toronto, in the personnel version of a 4-point swing? Clearly, I must be dead.