Snowman On Fire

Shaun White, the Flying Tomato, rocks. Even in LAX, late at night, when he has better things to do like listen to some tunes and relax. He’s working, like the rest of us, yet he was talking, high-fiving, low-fiving, signing autographs, and generally being a Tomato worthy of a Jersey appellation. Tough skin but great in all ways. And he was flying coach — he’s an easy guy to like, and I’m happy that my kids like him, because he’s what you’d hope for in an Olympic icon.

ESPN’s e-ticket follows Kathryn Bertine’s quest to represent the United States at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Doing just about anything, it seems. The series is Bertine’s quirky, self-effacing and sport-defacing travelogue of her attempts to qualify in the women’s pentathalon, checking out team handball to a tortuous, tortured, and not at all circuitous route to the 7-11 Velodrome for Team USA Cycling.

I love books. I buy many more than I read, and lately I’ve been buying out of print or gently used editions from amazon.com to add to my collection. Typically the used tomes fill in from days when spending $15 on a book would have put a serious dent in my spending money. Now that I can dabble in books and have somewhere to put them other than a cardboard mover’s box, I’m able to build up small libraries in obtuse topics such as Lake Placid, New York, hold’em poker, cryptography, and 70s art rock group Yes.

Without any further introduction, here’s my current top ten favorite hockey books:

What’s missing? A book about Jeff Halpern . Something focused on hockey diversity, featuring Scott Gomez and Jarome Iginla, perhaps. The hagiography of Saint Patrik (Elias), with a whole chapter on how he can consume dumplings and kolachi and still be pure muscle.

Got an email from Kathryn Bertine, former ice skater, ice show skater, and very funny writer, about her deal with ESPN to pen a column chronicaling her quest to compete in the Beijing Olympics. She’s published one more sports book than me, used to skate at the rink in Colorado that used to bear my company’s logo, and she answers her own email. Good buying signs for her work: the column is a great read.

Fifteen hours from now, I’ll be driving a car loaded with one smelly hockey bag, two well-worn sticks, two boxes of girl scout cookies, three suitcases, camera bag, case of trophies, box of NJ Devils Youth Hockey club pins, a cowbell, two parents (mine) and one son (also mine). 290 miles from here we’ll pass the Prague Motor Lodge as we enter the town of Lake Placid. Friday morning we start our annual end of season tournament.

I love Lake Placid, possibly because it reminds me of the timelessness one of my other favorite haunts, Princeton University. Standing there puts you in a river of tradition. It’s never the same, but it’s the same landmarks and waysigns and visual clues that you’re somewhere special.

It’s 1932 and 1980 and 2006 all rolled into one. It’s a Main Street so quiet that if you stand outside on a cold night, you swear you hear “U-S-A!” being chanted. It’s where our hockey season, like that of Mike Eruzione, comes to an end this year.

We face some tough teams in our division. We have four games in a 38-hour stretch over two days. I believe in the 17 young men who will be playing on that fabled rink, where, we are told by banners at every corner, “Miracles Happen Here.” I’ve waited 51 weeks to find out if it’s true — again.

Olympic hockey has been anything but predictable. The early favorites have early exits, the early disappointments have Turined up the heat, and more than a few people are left scratching their heads.

Chalk it up to global growth and interest. Chalk it up to blatant nationalism that the Canadians and Americans discount Scandanavia and TRFKAC (the republics formerly known as Czechoslovakia) as hockey hotbeds. But it’s great fun to watch, and I’m now waving my little Czech flag as a sideline fan. Should the Czechs medal, I hope someone picks up a medal to go for Patrik Elias. It was Elias who skated Petr Sykora’s jersey around with the Stanley Cup in 2000 after Sykora was injured in the finals. He deserves Olympic-sized props for that.

Here are my observations on today’s quadrophenia:

Elias is on his way out of Torino. The good news is he’ll have a solid 10 days to let the ribs heal up before the knock’em sock’em Eastern Conference schedule resumes; the bad news is that he went through a lot of travel and personal wear and tear to play in one Olympic game.

So much for filling up on home-style Italian cooking. Time to come back to that local Italian place where he’s frequently spotted. It’s widely rumored that Elias is a locker room prankster, but this isn’t the kind of ribbing he should get in return.

Patrik Elias took a hard hit to the ribs in the Czech Olympic team’s opener, and sat out last night’s game versus Switzerland. We should have surmised something was up when Patty didn’t get a shot off after the first period of the opener, and at first I attributed his omissions from the game stat sheet as a lack of data from my new work diversion.

The cover of the latest USA Hockey magazine (free subscription with any USA Hockey registration) has some of the USA team members seated at a table that is about as Italian as Billy Joel. Here’s an idea - take Gio, Patty, and Ralphie, seat’em at that table for real, and fill them up with some serious Mama Leone. They could all use a little meat on the ribs. At least that’s the Jewish mother’s cure for a few days of rough hockey.

Just how cool is Angela Ruggiero? Talk about picking a good time to score a goal in the Olympics. What she did today — picking up the puck at the goal line, skating coast to coast, finding a seam in the defense and snapping a shot to put the US ahead of Finland, 4-3, was the kind of leadership about which books are written. She kept her head up and just executed. If you didn’t know there were a handful of Finns in front, desperate to not play Canada in their next game, you’d have sworn you were watching a practice drill courtesy of the smoothness with which she ran the play.

Reminds me of….Scott Stevens. Number 4. Blueliner. Leader. Big goal when needed most. And a regular person — before the Olympics I emailed Angela, and got back a prompt (but short) reply.

If anyone on the Canadian women’s team was smiling as the US went down 3-1, they should be equally terrified at the way our team fought back. Maybe this is worthy of making the Hockey News list of power players. In the words of a famous rabbi, if not now, when?

The locomotive cheer is one of the oldest college cheers. dervied from a pre-Civil War Army cheer. It’s forever ingrained in my Princeton experience, not just from four years on campus but through countless reunions and sporting events, in which a locomotive signals a job well done, a sign of respect, and conveys a thank-you for the phrase coined by Woodrow Wilson, “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.”

Here’s a big locomotive for Michelle Kwan, who withdrew from the Olympics today. She proved that you don’t need a gold medal to be a champion. She demonstrated that you can participate in a sport you love and respect without it being the sole thing that defines you, and without the media’s insistence that you further define the sport. She was eloquent in her speech but more elegant in her deeds.

Having suffered through a torn groin I can vouch that it is excruciatingly painful. Walking hurts. Stairs are torture. I can’t imagine skating or jumping. Muscle tears are accidents, they’re emotionally painful, and they have ended more than a few hockey players’ careers. This likely ends Michelle Kwan’s Olympic career, and she’ll depart without a gold medal.

But go to your local rink early on a Sunday morning, and watch the young skaters, and ask them about their idols and heroines. You’ll hear Michelle Kwan’s name emerge as a cheer. The Olympics are about pagaentry, and human drama, and tradition. Today the human element rose above the others - but the tradition, once started, lives far longer than the memory of medals and podiums.