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Goal tender
One man’s passion for the puck
BY JOHN FREEMAN

Ice Time: A Tale of Fathers, Sons,and Hometown Heroes
By Jay Atkinson. Crown, 267 pages, $23.


At first glance, hockey seems the least sentimental of team sports. The players wear cages around their faces and skate on blades — and have you ever seen one of those guys smile? So it’s amazing how much tenderness and insight Jay Atkinson brings to Ice Time, his book about returning to the game at the age of 42.

For Atkinson, a former high-school goalie who’s now the father of a budding player, hockey is not just a pastime; it’s a way of life. He caught the fever in 1970 when Bobby Orr scored the winning goal against St. Louis in the Stanley Cup finals. Suddenly, hockey was everything. In Methuen, the small blue-collar town where he grew up, parents worked overtime to get their kids onto a rink. Hockey was Atkinson’s connection to friends and to his father, a bond he lyrically depicts:

I picture my dad in the bleachers, wearing the blue-plaid Nova Scotia tam he always brought to my games. It’s the very early hours of the morning — there’s nobody in the rink except the players and a few parents — and he’s sitting there blowing on the hot edge of his tea and watching us limber up. . . . It was always good to have him there: my witness.

Now, solidly middle-aged, the whiff of mortality at his shoulder, Atkinson finds it’s his turn to bear witness: to his son and to the Methuen High Rangers, the team he played for 25 years ago. Using his connections as an alumnus, he wiggles his way into an assistant-coach job, a position from which he can meditate on the passage of his own youth, reconnect with the sport, and dispense a little wisdom to the next generation.

Like all good sports journalists, Atkinson has a knack for rendering his cast as both familiar and unique; he makes the Rangers feel like a troop of lost friends. There’s Joe Robillard, the old-school coach who asks his players to " take a knee " on center ice before beginning practice. There’s Albert Soucy, a " quick little winger who skims over the ice like a waterbug. " There’s Ryan Fontaine, the hotheaded screw-up who needs this sport to keep him on the straight and narrow. And finally, there’s Chris Cagliuso, the ambitious forward with his eyes on the state finals and a scoring record.

Anyone who has played a high-school sport will appreciate Atkinson’s portrayal of the Rangers’ cabalistic world: the pre-game hair-dying rituals, the nicknames, the hastily sketched chalkboard plays and the byzantine social structure by which some players fraternize off court while others do not. Atkinson’s official role is assistant coach. Yet aside from a few athletic bromides ( " think like an athlete, eat like an athlete " ), he is more of a roving chronicler bent on recapturing the texture and flavor of high school.

To that end, each step forward in the Rangers’ season becomes a step backward for Atkinson. Taking the ice with the current team, he sees the ghosts of players he once traded shots with, some now dead. Looking forward, he sees a sport that is changing, perhaps not for the better. In scenes interspersed with the Rangers’ season, he describes taking his five-year-old son, Liam, to early-morning practice, youth-league matches, and that holiest of holies: a Bruins game. Although he clearly wants his son to play well, it’s also evident that, like all fathers, he’s desperately trying to pass on to his son a childhood as happy and memorable as his own.

Such a project might seem indulgent were he not such a good writer, so in tune with his emotional calculus. When the Rangers fall into a slump toward the end of the season, his apprehension and his hope are palpable. It’s hard not to root for these kids. Although he never foists it upon them, these players know that they too will be reliving these glory days. Ordinarily they would have to rely on memory, that imperfect recording device. Thanks to Atkinson, however, all they’ll need to do is open this sensitive and beautifully crafted book.

Issue Date: January 10-17, 2002
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