Hockey Pictures (1996-1999)

It’s hard to believe, but in one week I will be in the middle of my 24-hour skate.

While looking through all my pictures for some BC Hockey shots, I also came across these.

I graduated from BC 15 (yikes) years ago and ever since my friends Scott, Carl, and I have had an ongoing video game hockey tournament. These pictures show Scott (holding an original Playstation controller) questioning what he thought was a goal, penalty, or something and later doing a celebratory dance in front of Carl after he scored. It’s been 15 years and as you can see from my YouTube video, we’re not going to stop anytime soon.

For two summers, I taught roller hockey at Camp Mah-Kee-Nac in Lenox, MA. The camp had a really nice outdoor roller hockey rink, and campers from 6-16 played their daily. This are pictures of my and Jeff (who was the head of the hockey program) and all the rollerblades in the hockey shed. You gotta love the Punisher shirt I’m wearing! Whenever a camper didn’t show up for roller hockey, we would have them paged to the rink. Because most of the office staff was British, I sometimes had fun with who got paged in addition to late campers. Cam Neely, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and Bobby Orr were all asked to report to the rink more than one time.

After I got my first pair of rollerblades, I knew that I wanted to try them out during my next visit to Prince Edward Island. Right down the street from my parents’ cottage, there is a school that had an outdoor rink. During the school year, they would flood it so the kids could play hockey at recess (why couldn’t I have been born in Canada?). So, this is a picture of me the day I played hockey in Canada for the first time. It was just me shooting alone, but I was playing hockey. When PEI had to give names to all the streets for 911 calls, I guess naming the street near the rink was an easy decision.

A few years after I graduated, my friends and I went to the ESPN Zone in New York. While my friend Drew was taking pictures of me playing the hockey shootout game, a girl came up to him and asked what team I played for. Without missing a beat Drew replied, “Oh, the Boston Bruins.” Her reply was, “Oh yeah, I thought he looked familiar.” I did pretty well shooting, but no one asked me for an autograph.

In 1999, I went up to visit my brother Tom at the University of Vermont on Easter weekend. Here are some action shots of our street hockey game. Tom is in net, and his friend Shane is in the purple t-shirt. Not sure who the other guys are, but fun was had by all.

I can’t wait for next Saturday to be here, and I’m hoping to add many, many more pictures to my hockey collection…

The University of Dave

It was the summer of 1994, and I was a counselor at Med-O-Lark in Washington, ME. This is a drawing a camper named Deb made for me. Judging from its contents, I guess the things I liked weren’t much of a secret…

Front and center is alcohol. There is a liquor bottle (vodka?) with a Boston Bruins symbol along with the “Brewum Partium” motto of the University. The “Babum Tunum” part of the motto goes along with the “Chester Chick” female depicted – she represents a major college crush of mine who was from a town called Chester (Chester Chick is how the campers referred to her when they asked me about her). Surrounding the alcohol and woman are three of my favorite fictional characters. There is the Punisher skull, Tasmanian Devil, and Homer from The Simpsons (a show I’ve watched a few times). The “If it’s inappropriate, it’s Dave” is a perfect summation of how I was living when I was 20. I drank a lot, got into trouble, and didn’t really care who I upset.

I’m glad to report that it has been almost 16 years since I last drank, and I am still a big fan of the Bruins, Taz, and Punisher. I also think I’m acting at least a little more appropriate than I was at 20…