I Love L.A... Hockey

I'm alone on the right wing, bearing in on the goalie. It's just me, the puck and my hockey stick.

I effortlessly glide to my left and, at the last second, flip a backhand shot over an outstretched glove into the net. Goal.

It's my second of the game. I've got an assist, too. We're up, 5-1.

And I can't even ice skate.

Of course, this game of hockey isn't being played on ice.

This is roller hockey, L.A. style. You put on rollerblades, you grab your hockey stick and you take to the rink.

It's the newest, hottest sport in Southern California, a place which has given America numerous cultural icons: among them the Hollywood sign, the motion picture, Magic Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.

But in the Los Angeles basin, where I grew up, it's also a little disconcerting. Watching hockey played in the streets, parking lots and park rinks of L.A. is, I imagine, more than a little bit like finding a polar bear on the surface of the sun.

These kinds of things aren't supposed to happen.

When the Los Angeles Kings advanced to the Stanley Cup finals last month, this touched off...well, riots isn't the word to use...but a lot of, shall we say, good-natured celebration in the Southland.

Roller hockey, as it's called, was already a growth industry. But the Kings' breathless playoff victories have made it a retail bonanza. In Pasadena, my hometown, sporting goods stores reported record sales of sticks, pads and blades. Many removed the baseball and basket-ball equipment from store windows and replaced it with hockey pucks and jerseys.

Being a fully equipped roller hockey player is expensive. Roller blades run at least $100, all the pads will cost you $50 easy, and even a cheap wood stick is 20 bucks.

But kids who save up, or beg their parents, love this stuff. I used to coach Little League baseball in Pasadena, and, as a result, I am well acquainted with more than 100 fairly athletic children ages nine to 14. So I decided to run a test.

I asked 30 young ballplayers, in casual conversations about curve balls and batting averages, if they owned or had access to roller blades and a hockey stick. The response was unanimously in the affirmative, though I got a few polite answers of "yes." Most were shocked at my question. "You've been at Harvard too long, coach," said a former second baseman. "Having all that stuff is a given around here."

Hockey even seems to have invaded the local vocabulary. My ballplayers have always yelled invectives at umpires, usually "jerk" or "you suck." Now a bad ump, like a bad hockey goalie, is "a sieve."

There may be perfectly reasonable explanations for the development of roller hockey. It may be that all of L.A.'s brilliant and previously unemployed defense workers have finally found jobs in related industries like, well, roller blade manufacturing. There is, however, little evidence to support this theory, so far.

Or it might be the 1960s migration to the Sun Belt, which brought hockey-playing people from glacier regions like Minnesota to the Southland. It also could be the corrupting influence of TV. Last year, Jason Priestly's character played hockey on "Beverly Hills 90210". This year, roller hockey booms. That might not be a coincidence.

I like the new sport, but I worry. Sometimes things like roller hockey, which is essentially a substitute for ice hockey, work out. For example, margarine, as a substitute for butter, has probably done humankind and its arteries a lot of good.

But when you start making grand changes in a place, you run the risk of creating a Jurassic Park. Many Angelenos already have sharp teeth. Now, we've given the dinosaurs hockey sticks.

Perhaps, there's something a little off-kilter about the whole city. The Kings playing in the Stanley Cup finals is possible to believe. Even Democrats can maybe understand L.A.'s election of its first Republican mayor since the Bronze Age. And L.A. kids rushing to the streets to play hockey is explicable.

But when all three happen in the same week, as they did this month, something a little bit supernatural is up. Up. Just like my backhander over the goalie's out-stretched glove.

What a sieve.

Joe Mathews '95 believes Wayne Gretzky is God.

Roller hockey is the newest, hottest sport in Southern California, the place that gave America cultural icons like the Hollywood sign, the motion picture, Magic Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.

When you start making grand changes in a place, you run the risk of creating a Jurassic Park. Many Angelenos already have sharp teeth. Now we've given the dinosaurs hockey sticks.