Intramural hockey is all about a bunch of kids in their 20s playing like they’re in the show. Beneath the surface is every romantic idea about the sport, free from contractual agreements, large sponsorship deals, and the politics of a professional league, which has burst its cap on reality.
In this world, when the puck drops, we are transported to the driveway of our childhood homes, whacking an orange plastic ball towards a rusty, garage sale net.
Forty seconds left on the clock. Cam Garbutt remains the last hope for the Toronto Maple Leafs to win the Stanley Cup. He brings the puck out of his end, gets past the neutral zone. Boy! He is fast. Dekes out the defence, he’s on a breakaway. Ten seconds left. He’s all alone. He shoots, he scores! Holy Mackinaw!
After all, we are the generation raised on the voice of announcer Joe Bowen.
We are students studying every sort of discipline. English literature, civil engineering, anthropology, psychology — the list goes on. Among us, we haven’t forgot one thing: The love of the game.
For forty minutes a week (time is running and there is no flood in between periods) life freezes and we are allowed to be kids again for the most important game of our lives. A goal scored is not just a tally on the scoreboard or a statistic, but each goal is a trophy, and its bearer is a hero of the night.
This league is filled with those boys, and girls, who as kids thought they would one day play in the NHL — would-be Gilmours, Gretzkys, Sakics, and Modanos, but later, due to our physical limits and other shortcomings, decided that this was a downright unreasonable bar to clear. We discovered that we were not equipped with what really mattered: exceptional talent.
Any practical person would look at us and say, “Maybe you’re taking this a little too seriously.” Maybe I began to think that too, after our intramural team showed up in jackets and ties before our championship game last year. Maybe that was also my idea.
What this league creates is pure, boyish love, not tainted by the pressures of high-level hockey. Not that this league is free from guys who have been there, in the WHL, MJHL, Junior A. Every team usually has a stand-out or two, who makes the others look good.
This love is the same you see on an outdoor ice pad or a weekly get-together of men aged 40 and up, carrying beer guts, who can still skate like the wind. Don’t look now, but there go our future selves. Men in suits, far-removed from our bachelor’s degrees — with the exception of the engineers — all desiring a taste of what it’s like to be a kid again and to be super.
To me, the presence of intramural hockey in universities, this country over, means that hockey can exist healthily without the oversaturated National Hockey League. Though it’s back and we’re all giddy as schoolgirls once again, we don’t really need it, as we prove to ourselves every week. We just need to believe that we are playing the most important game of our lives.
— Cam Garbutt,
third-year journalism
