Here in Canada, most of us start to run out of youth hockey leagues in our mid-teens. Unless you’re playing high level hockey, the available house leagues start to dry up around the age of 16.

I played some rep level hockey growing up but I stopped playing cold turkey around the age of 16. A lot of it is lack of interest and better things to do with your time. Even if you want to keep playing, the leap between youth hockey and playing men’s league is a large one. By the time I was in my mid twenties I honestly didn’t think I’d ever play hockey again and wasn’t concerned about it.

In my early thirties, a friend I was commuting to work with kept inviting me to play with their hockey team named The Klowns….

“I haven’t played hockey in over 15 years.”

“Do you have equipment?”

“Ahh I think my kid equipment is in my parent’s basement.”

“Can you skate backwards?”

“I mostly played D as a kid.”

“Just come out, you’ll probably be our best player.”

I went into my parent’s basement and dug out my childhood hockey equipment. After not having even laced up skates in about 15 years, I headed to the rink. I played that night and didn’t make a complete fool of myself. I went back again the next week and after a few months I was starting to purchase pieces of gear to replace my kid stuff.

Fast forward to today, I play 3 to 5 times each week and have been for a decade or more. If you’ve had a taste for the sport of hockey and have even the slightest interest in returning, what are you waiting for? You don’t have to find a team or play competitive hockey, just find yourself a great local game of pickup hockey.

PS. If your skates are more than 15 years old, replace them once you know you’re going to play regularly! I really wish someone had told me that.

Yes we’re all about pickup hockey, however, so far in our history every men’s team we’ve ever sponsored has won their league!

Sure we’ve only ever sponsored one team but stats are stats. The 20Skaters team in Guelph’s NCWHL league won the B division and even took home a cup. Our friend Matt at DesigningSport worked his usual magic on the team photo!

When it comes to pickup hockey, no one wants to be skater #21. The perfect number, as we all know, is 20 Skaters. Ten per bench, two full lines. Currently all our games are soldout once we reach 20. Done, closed for business, no others allowed in.

All of our organizers have full timers. Their full timers pay for the entire season, can attend any games and we always invite them in first. Currently, if a full timer tries to attend a soldout game, they aren’t able to. That’s bad for our organizers. All of our organizers would prefer that full timers can choose to join a game at anytime.

Our goal, however, is to sellout each week’s game. It’s difficult to do that if we have to allow for full timers to respond last minute or change their mind. This summer we’re making changes to allow a full timer to attend a game at any point. The only time this should result in 21 skaters is two scenarios:

1. A full timer, who previously declined this game, changed their mind and decided to attend last minute.
2. A full timer didn’t respond at all until last minute.

There’s always a chance life gets in the way and you end up being skater 21. We’re not looking to be heavy handed here but we also don’t want to open up a hole here that results us consistently overselling games. We want to find the optimum level of shame and peer pressure to gently encourage all full timers to reply in a timely manner.

An idea?

We get some lovely pink funfur skate covers made with the #21 on them. We provide a pair or two for all our organizers. In the case that week’s game has a skater #21, we email the organizer to let them know. They offer the pretty covers to skater #21 to wear for that night’s pickup game. Maybe we also decorate their avatar on the game page with some funfur?

Too much? Just enough? Not enough?

In case you didn’t know, we work out of the ThreeFortyNine coworking space. That means we work around other awesome folks all day long. One of those folks is Matt Sharpe of DaringBoy and DesigningSport fame. We briefly discussed the idea of doing something for pickup hockey folks. The only photo I could find to test was the one used in the Metro article.

Look what Matt did to me….enough said!

All I’ll add is…more coming soon!

I posted a somewhat pissy update on twitter yesterday before our pickup hockey game last night….

RT @Brydon: there should be some set form of humiliation for you if you bring gray, red, yellow etc to #pickup #hockey…dark or white!!!…

— 20Skaters (@20skaters) March 17, 2014

Maybe it’s just a personal pet peeve but if you know you’re playing pickup hockey, leave the yellow, reds, and grey’s at home. Make sure you have a dark, as in black, and a white with you. Put one on and bring the other to the bench in case you need to flip teams to balance things out.

who’s on what team?

It’s a subtle difference but it actually makes for a better game of pickup when you can clearly delineate teams. There’s nothing worse that having to contemplate “red’s dark or white?” everytime you lift your head to make a pass.

While I seriously doubt anyone read my update, I will report that we somehow ended up with only dark and whites last night and it was a lovely skate!

We have a new logo! You can see it on our main website. We’re also working on getting some sweaters made up.

We’re planning on offering them in a pair of home and away. Then you’ll be set to play for either side when you show up for pickup.

We’re working on a LOST ad to put up on rinks and hockey shops. The goal is to emphasize that we help you organize pickup hockey while losing less of your personal time and money. What’ya think?

If you live near Kitchener Ontario, Eric is running a game tomorrow night so join us! $10 including an after skate beer on us. Based on people already signed up, it’ll be an intermediate skill level.