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Why My Mom Was The Ultimate Hockey Mom... How about yours?

May 14, 2017, 11:40 AM ET [19 Comments]
Eklund
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Happy Mothers Day to all Hockey Moms out there... Here is a little about mine.

From the time I was 6 and I saw Bernie Parent lead the Flyers to a Stanley Cup I was hooked on this sport and I was going to be a goalie...And my mom has been there the entire way...

One of my earliest memories was my mom throwing tennis balls to me in the living room after I made my own goalie equipment out of cardboard. She was always there and never minded me re-arranging the living room furniture into my rink...

We had a killer street hockey team in our neighborhood. Never lost a game and we played outside our house from dawn to dusk on weekends.. And when we challenged other neighborhoods my mom would always find a way to strap the hockey nets to a late 70's Ford Pinto.

My friends and I invented this game in my basement called "ping pong hockey" and it became a local obsession. The game was played with two nets...on one side was a refrigerator box cut in half and on the other side...a shoebox. The game was 2 v 2. Two players would shoot at the refrigerator box which had one player in goals gear, but on his knees and one defender...who would defend against the two players, while trying to score into the shoe box. We uses a practice golfball...the kind that had holes and looked like a mini wife ball. Games would last 4 minutes. 2, 2 minute half. Each team of two would get a chance on offense and defense..

To say this game became an obsession with my friends is a huge understatement. Every Friday night 10 or more of us would gather in the house in while 4 played downstairs the others would watch Slapshot or hockey games all sweaty in the family room.

And Mom NEVER complained...The house must have stank to high heaven.

We would look forward to Fridays all week...Once in a while, if there was a lot of rain the basement would flood. It was a mess. There would be no tournament UNLESS my mom went down there with mops and buckets and fans to dry the rink by the time we got home...She would work all day sometimes just so we could play this game.

When we finally got Flyers tickets my mom and I were the most common to go to the Spectrum...Section 35, Row 15, seats 10,11. These were our seats from 1982 until the team moved over to the Wells Fargo Center. My mom liked hockey, loves it now, but I know back then she was making this all happen for me.

Then came Strat-O-Matic Hockey Marathons...Dan Wallace, our Wild writer, and I would play Stat-O-Matic hockey all night long sometimes..The TV set up in the living room, moved to allow for the Card Table...

My mom also played a huge roll in helping me convince my dad to get a satellite dish to watch hockey.....Not the kind that is 20 inches or smaller and fixed to your roof. The 1980s kind that was 9 feet across and moved to face specific satellites...so I could get the feeds of games from all across the country... These are in the days way before anyone had any concept of watching out-of-market games...We could watch the raw feeds of Hockey Night in Canada in Cherry Hill, NJ. Do you have any idea how cool that made me...

And all it took was an ungodly ugly giant satallite dish in the front yard...I am sure the neighbors hated that thing. But she never cared. As long as it meant all of us being together and all of my friends coming over to watch hockey...screw what the neighbors thought of it...

So mom...I love you! Thank you for everything...and not just all the hockey stuff...But you were the ultimate hockey mom...No question about it..
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