By Jack Blatherwick
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist

It was Groundhog Day, and the sun was so bright, there was no doubt about the shadow. In fact, to keep the sun from ruining the outside ice, we had to skip part of first hour math class to shovel snow onto the rink. That’s not a misprint. I meant, “onto the rink,” not off.

You had to be there to understand the logic. As usual, we had shoveled and flooded after practice the night before, but the game next day was special, so we flooded five really thin coats to make the ice like glass. There was a special art to making perfect ice with a big fire hose, one of those hockey skills that was replaced when Frank Zamboni put his first resurfacers on top of a jeep.

By Jack Blatherwick
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist

An e-mail from a 16-year-old defenseman who is playing in Austria for Team USA said virtually the same thing after the Russian game that I’ve heard for 40 years. The international game is really different … and a lot of fun. The Russian skills (individual and team skills) are so good it feels like they have eight players on the ice.

Why is international hockey so different?  Because the officials call the game as it is written in the rulebook. Hockey Canada prepares their national junior and Olympic teams for international play by showing a video of ‘strange calls’ made by referees. These are penalties as clearly defined in the rules, but infractions that are not called in North American hockey.