Watching the Winter Classic on the first day of the new year, I was quickly reminded of my more youthful days back in Michigan. The sport of hockey has always been a fairly important facet of my life. It filled many evenings of fall, winter, and spring back then. I used to travel around just to watch junior hockey and experienced some of my more memoriable experiences during, before and after those games. It was actually during a trip on my 25 birthday weekend that I decided to move to the US. It was a 3 games in 4 night trip with stops in East Lansing, MI, Erie, PA and Brampton, ON. I know I needed a change and this movement across the American landscape provided me with the first insight into an idea of a different type of lifestyle. Hockey was critical to my movements then and it is something that I found myself longing for out here in Bozeman.
When I first moved out here we had the Icedogs. They were a lower level hockey franchise coached by the brother of American hockey great Pat LaFontaine. After just one year as a season ticket holder the owner sold the arena to a beer distribution company. The Valley Ice Gardens now serves as a warehouse to tasteless malted beverages from St. Louis. Since then, there has been a clear hole opened in my experience. Without a team here (and mind you now there is a Junior C franchise playing in an old horse barn) I feel there is little in the way of connection to the valley. I miss the real Icedogs in Bozeman and fundamentally believe that their absence has been a real detriment in my forging a bond with my temporary home.
We are heading East again in a few months. The change is exciting, clearly. And heading back towards the land of Oglethorpe and ole tyme hockey things will change, connections will be forged, and life will move on.
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