Obviously the running theme here is that I’m like a utility pole that got skates strapped on it and pushed onto the ice.  I have it in my head that I’m gonna bend my knees but for some dumb reason it never seems to happen. Half the time I feel like I’m trying too hard and the other half I feel like I’m not trying hard enough.  Where’s the line?

I go out and skate and I feel my legs coming back.  I get around the rink fast enough to beat the lap time of a cat on skates only to turn around the next time to completely jinx myself.  No consistency.  I’m no Gretz.  

He had that move he was famous for.  Skate over the blue line.  The defender is completely focused on him.  Meanwhile Gretz’s teammate sneaks in and finds himself in space.  Gretz turns toward the board and back in to fire a seeing eye pass.  Yeah they didn’t call him The Great One for nothing.  He made it look so smooth..kinda like that stick to the face of Doug Gilmour back in the 93 Western Conference finals.  

No I’m still not over it!  If you see me you’ll see me in my Gilmour shirt, I can’t help it.  That was a bad ass team and I’m still convinced they could have given the Canadiens everything they wanted.  Hell Pat Burns would have had them going.  

It’s amazing that I can send you a decent pass across the ice but ask me to step side-to-side and I’m down on my back.  Agility.  Yeah I don’t have it.  I have a turning radius of a Greyhound…bus.  Somehow this is going to get better?  I don’t know.  

I feel like the whole skating backwards thing might just put an end to me.  Not that I won’t give everything I have to learn because I will.  However if you expect me to ever get to there before humans colonize Mars, then you should probably clear your calendar.  In fact maybe I need some of those backup sounds, warning everyone there’s a student driver or in this case a student skater coming through.  

Of course maybe it’s like Seann William Scott’s character Doug Glatt from the movie Goon.  I skate about as well as he does but I can’t fight.  But I’m sure you could bank a puck in off my butt.  Maybe you could get me to stand in front of the goalie, I’m wide enough.  I don’t know Xavier Laflamme but damn can he skate…he probably knows what a Gretzky buttonhook is.