Divine rod

THE FLOOD OF MEMORIES from my table-hockey (or rod-hockey, as some folks call it) post yesterday was too much for one sitting, so as promised, another glide down the slots of plastic pucks past continues.

The Coleco "New York Rangers" hockey game we played incessantly wasn't actually my first table-hockey game. I did have another, smaller version when I was small, which featured the default Canadiens-Leafs matchup, the metal players actually brandishing yellow plastic sticks (as pictured in my blogpost from yesterday). The other feature was a battery-powered actual red light that ignited when a goal was scored. Very cool.

I mentioned that I owned every team at the time; I just read somewhere that the Oakland Seals and Los Angeles Kings players are highly sought-after. Like my old baseball cards, I wish I still had the metal table-hockey players that gave me so much joy as a child. Oh well ...

The preferred offensive strategy -- and one of my favorite moves -- was the centering pass from the wing to the center. If you controlled the puck with your right wing, say, the opposing player's defenseman had to commit to either blocking the path for a centering pass or defending a sharp-angle shot from the wing -- not both. So either way, there would be a scoring opportunity. I found the best way to attack would be to get the puck past the defenseman in the general direction of the slot, while giving the center rod a good shove. Ideally, the flying center would smash the puck toward the net, an almost impossible play for the goalie to defend.

And how about the times the puck would sit tantalizingly on the lip of the goal line? The only way to get it out would be to gingerly try to move the puck toward the post, using the metal post that supported the goalie, and then attempt to clear the puck away by applying just enough pressure to slide it out of danger without accidentally pushing it backward and into the net. All of that while the opposing center would harass the goalie by twisting back and forth at high speed, smashing metal on metal, causing a great deal of noise.

Which is probably why my mom relegated us to the basement.

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Random thoughts: The last word on destiny pertaining to the Canadian men's hockey team (and the women's, for that matter) -- I never made the connection for some reason, but a couple of days ago I realized the first four notes of the Olympic Theme and "O, Canada" are exactly the same ... So LeBron James has already put in the paperwork to change his uniform number next season from 23 to 6, telling the Cleveland Plain Dealer he wanted to do so as a tribute to Michael Jordan. The more cynical among us might think it a way for the Cavs -- or whomever LeBron plays for next season -- to sell more jerseys, much the way the Lakers happened to sell more Kobe Bryant jerseys when he switched from No. 8 to 24. By the way, LeBron, the Knicks have No. 6 available.

Putting it all on the table

As if the on-ice hockey competition at the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver wasn't exciting and inspiring enough, what I saw during the closing ceremonies made me feel warm and fuzzy, transporting me to another time and place.

And it had nothing to do with the kinda-creepy Up-With-People-esque kids with snowboards, the opera diva flying through the air wearing a maple leaf or William Shatner -- who's always funny (but I have to admit here I didn't know he was Canadian -- sorry. Speaking of apologies, I didn't realize they were inherently Canadian, either). But I'm going off on major tangents here. Sorry, eh?

What I'm talking about were the giant table hockey players that floated around the floor at BC Place, and the simulated game that took place, featuring that little kid dressed up as a puck. For those of us "of a certain age," that unleashed a flood of memories and nostalgia. For me in particular, it took me back to my basement as a kid in Rockaway, N.J., when my friends Mark and Steve would come over and we'd play for hours on my Coleco New York Rangers table hockey game.

The game itself was huge; the end boards hung over the edge of my mom's card table, and a huge scoreboard hung over center ice. You would drop the puck through a slot in the top of the scoreboard for each face-off, and the scoreboard included a standings board for each conference. There were slots and cardboard nameplates for each city, which could be moved around depending on the "real-life" standings.

These weren't the molded plastic players you'd see at arcades, but rather the flat, metal variety, proudly smiling and wearing the uniforms of every NHL team. The Rangers' fiercest rivals at the time were the Bruins, so my game came with those two teams (I came to realize later that the default pairing was the Canadiens and Maple Leafs, which Coleco would modify depending on what part of North America the game was sold). But I took it a step further, buying players from every NHL team. We would spend as much time changing the teams between games as we did actually playing. When I wasn't using the Rangers, I would gravitate toward the Flyers -- though I hated the "Broad Street Bullies" as a kid, I thought the Flyers' orange uniforms with the flying "P" epitomized coolness.

We'd have tournaments, keeping all three of us involved. We'd play five-minute periods, timed with my mom's egg timer, and rotate through the two player seats and the third at center ice, which belonged to the PA Announcer/Referee -- an extremely important role. We would "broadcast" the games on my white plastic Panasonic tape recorder, after playing the national anthems of the U.S. and Canada, and religiously tallied the results of the games on a dog-eared yellow legal pad.

One of the best features of the game was the plastic "red light" that would signify a goal; when a puck entered the net, it would fall into a hole behind the always-grinning goalie and hit a plastic lever that would push up the "red light" through a cylinder behind the net. The player who gave up the goal would then react by slapping the red light back down, thus ejecting the puck from the net.

As referee, the third wheel would watch for those rare occasions when the puck would go "in and out" of the net without igniting the plastic lamp and rule a goal, often the tie-breaking vote in such situations. Funny how the vote was almost always 2-1, going against the one scored upon.

The more I write, the more I remember. But the time is short, so I'll continue my glide down the slots of memory lane tomorrow. Stay tuned.