Today's lesson: if you keep playing hard, something good will (eventually) happen

To say the least, it has been a long, hard winter for the men's hockey team at Hamline, my school. We knew in advance it would be a young team. We knew the combination of three head coaches in three years and graduating two top scorers plus the top goalie from the year before could make this season a potentially rough one. Our new head coach, Doc DelCastillo, is a good, smart man who knows what he is doing. He picked assistants with a variety of experiences and told them all they would need to be, like he would have to be, patient. But he got a late start on recruiting. By the time he talked to some players, they hd already made up their minds where they were going to school. The season started with a close loss and a tie but there were encouraging signs things might be okay. Then, a couple of injuries flared up. Other issues -- stuff that happens during the course of the season -- happened. Hamline kept playing hard. Most nights, the scores were close. But it seemed something bad would happen late in the second or early in the third period. All of a sudden, the season was 15 games old and the team still didn't have a win -- just two ties to show for a year of solid effort. There is a tendency among the young to fixate only on results -- wins, losses and goals. Coaches, however, know better. They know that losing streaks ... and winning streaks ... are contagious. A team on a losing skein simply doesn't get breaks. Pucks hit posts and stay out. The other team gets the benefit of the doubt on calls. Their shots hit a leg and go in. Coaches understand this is part of sport. And they know it can turn and head the other way, too. The above is a lengthy preamble to something that happened last night that might stun the layman. But coaches and folks who know the sport just nod their head and say, "Uh huh. It was due to happen." Hamline was hosting first place St. Thomas. Tough game for me because the UST coach, Jeff Boeser, is a friend of 40 years standing. His team was tied for first but they had been having trouble lately scoring goals. As part of my usual pre-game work, we chatted for a while. I could tell this game concerned him. A low scoring team playing another lowscoring outfit. One or two goals might do it. And if Hamline got a wind up, Jeff knew it could be a rough night. Had he known what I saw, he might have been even more concerned. The players not suited for the game didn't seem too worried. Several of them were playing cards upstairs. I walked by another one on a cellphone and overheard him say, "This one should be easy. I'll be back early." Such overconfidence is not unusual among players, young or old. But it often can lead to difficulty. So it was the game began and Hamline came out as it had done so many times before. They checked hard. They had a few scoring chances that didn't result in goals. But they kept St. Thomas from doing much offensively. There were only a couple of penalties either way and the game moved on quickly with no goals. The first period took less than a half hour to play. My guess is Jeff had what an old coach once referred to as "a one way chat" with his charges between periods. His team came out flying in the second and it was all Hamline could do to keep them off the board. Matt Hemingway, our goalie, was tested often but kept his head at all times and also kept the puck out of the net. Despite Hamline getting outshot 12-4 and being outplayed by a similiar fashion, the game was still knotted at 0-0. The third period began and the home team picked up the pace. Sensing an opening, they attacked the Tommie net harder but still couldn't score. The game was now 50 minutes old and still no goals. St. Thomas had a couple of good shifts in a row but we held firm. Doc had recently switched up some lines and moved Grant Fahnhorst, a huge defenseman, up front. Turns out he is very good at faceoffs. He won several down the stretch, many in our end. Regulation time ended with still no score. Things were getting serious now. The two benches had a marked contast to them. Doc's bench looked like colts ready to roam the prairie. They couldn't wait for the next faceoff. The St. Thomas bench reminded one of the look Paul Newman had in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" when he stared at his constant pursuers and said, "Who are those guys?" A scoreless tie is a rare hockey event. I have been working hockey games for 40+ years and can only remember one, a high school game at Adie Knox Arena in Windsor. (For the record, it was Assumption 0, Massey 0.) But this game appeared to be headed that way until ... In college, you only play one five minute OT. The first three minutes of the extra session passed uneventfully. Then there was a collision in the corner by the St. Thomas net and I spotted a referee's arm go up. A penalty in OT is unusual. It is really unusual in a game were only seven had been noted all night. As it developed, it was St. Thomas that would be shorthanded for the remaining 1:32 of playing time. At first, the HU power play struggled, losing conrol of the puck twice. The clock ticked into the last minute. Just as I was thinking a scoreless tie against the league leader would be something to proud of, there was a dramatic event. Joe Rubbelke, a talented defenseman, fired a low shot from the point. There was a big screen in front of the Tommie goalie. Zach Johnson, situated perfectly in the slot, tipped the puck slightly. It changed directions just enough that it landed perfectly in the back of the net. BINGO! Winless streak over. The Piper bench erupted and swarmed the power play unit. Hemingway looked like Eric Heiden, the old speedskater, as he sped from his net and eagerly joined the party. Stunned looks on disbelief on the Tommie side. An OT loss is always hard to swallow. But an OT loss like this is doubly hard to take. The nature of my job is I rarely get downstairs after games. So I didn't get the chance to congratulate Doc or console Jeff. But, as luck would have it, I will be at the rematch tonight and will get to do so again. But I was left with several emotions. I was very happy for Doc and his players, who had endured a lot of heartache and finally got a victory. At the same time, I felt bad for an old friend who, although he has been a coach for a long time and understands the game, still anguishes over defeats. And I found myself wondering about the lad who, before the game, had predicted to somebody this would be an easy win. I wondered if he learned his lesson about never taking anything for granted in athletics. The teams play again tonight. St. Thomas might come out mad as a hornet and dust us, 7-1. Or they might still be in a funk and, if the HU goalie is on his game again, be in for another tough fight. Who the hell knows? But what this Friday night game showed is one of the beauties of sport is in the danger of presuming something will happen. It doesn't often happen that an 0-13-2 team beats the first place team in a league game. But it did happen on this night. And that is why they play games.