{"id":638195,"date":"2026-04-30T08:29:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T08:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/638195\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T08:29:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T08:29:13","slug":"the-best-hockey-i-knew-was-the-first-winnipeg-free-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/638195\/","title":{"rendered":"The best hockey I knew was the first \u2013 Winnipeg Free Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNothing is as good as it used to be and it never was. The \u2018golden age of sports,\u2019 the golden age of anything, is the is the age of everyone\u2019s childhood.\u201d \u2014 Ken Dryden<\/p>\n

I grew up in Winnipeg, in a small suburban enclave called Morse Place. Not exactly the centre of the hockey universe, but it was home. A little working-class pocket in the north part of the city. Terry Sawchuk, the great Detroit goaltender was probably our best known hockey export.<\/p>\n

Dad worked in an iron foundry, and mom ran the house like a general. My older sister excelled at school and her choir singing. We weren\u2019t poor, but let\u2019s just say there was very little money left over after dad brought home the paycheque.<\/p>\n

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File<\/p>\n

Saturdays were for street hockey during Robert Milan\u2019s childhood.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t have much, but we, or rather I, had the rink. The community club had one glorious sheet of outdoor ice with real boards, an old streetcar converted into a clubhouse, and a pot-bellied stove that tried to keep your toes from freezing. And yet \u2026 it was magic.<\/p>\n

I still remember waddling three blocks to that rink with my skates already on because I couldn\u2019t tie the laces tight enough myself. That job was dad\u2019s.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d skate until my feet were numb, then hobble home like some victorious frostbitten warrior. We were tough, or at least too dumb to know we weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Pretty soon I had a stick and started playing every chance I got. There was no organized hockey in Morse Place back then. We had a house league, but it was more \u201chouse\u201d than \u201cleague.\u201d<\/p>\n

Equipment? Goalies had pads, sure. The rest of us? Magazines in our socks, held on with canning jar sealer rings. Eaton\u2019s catalogues worked well.<\/p>\n

And Sundays \u2014 oh man, Sundays \u2014 were the best. Pickup games with 15, sometimes 20 kids. Ten-on-ten chaos. The only rule was no raising the puck, and even that got ignored once in a while. You couldn\u2019t pass anyway \u2014 the ice was too crowded \u2014 so it was every kid for himself, trying to dangle through a forest of legs. I got pretty good at stickhandling, mostly out of necessity and fear.<\/p>\n

Christmas morning? Always a hockey stick under the tree. Usually a Hespeler. I dreamed of a Northland Pro, but Santa clearly had budget cuts. Still, that new stick was sacred. A sword from the stone. Instant swagger.<\/p>\n

Saturdays were for \u201cspongee.\u201d Ever heard of spongee?<\/p>\n

Street hockey, winter edition. We played in front of Barry\u2019s house with big snow lumps for goals. The puck was a sponge ball \u2014 red, white, and blue \u2014 cut down to puck shape. Light, fast, didn\u2019t bruise your shins. Barry was a victim of polio, so he played goalie. It didn\u2019t matter, that guy was a wall.<\/p>\n

Orville introduced the slap shot, a brand-new type of shot in the NHL. Sticks broke a lot. But every now and then, one would snap just right, creating a thin blade we called a \u201ctoothpick.\u201d Dangerous. Deadly. Glorious. It propelled the spongee at warp speed.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m convinced spongee was born on our block, though an old friend swears it started in River Heights, another part of Winnipeg. He\u2019s wrong, of course. Completely delusional.<\/p>\n

We all had our NHL idols. Ours was a Montreal Canadiens house \u2014 Maurice Richard, Doug Harvey, Jean B\u00e9liveau. Toronto was the enemy. My dad, in his own poetic way, said: \u201cMontreal\u2019s the working-man\u2019s team. Toronto\u2019s for the big shots.\u201d The Leafs were toxic in our household.<\/p>\n

At 13, I made the Morse Place Bantam B team \u2014 our first real organized team. We almost made it to the city championship. We played a semifinal at the long-gone Olympic Rink. First time I ever played indoors. Felt like I\u2019d made it.<\/p>\n

It was one of the few indoor rinks in the city. It smelled like victory \u2026 and sweat. The next year? No Bantam A team in Morse Place. Nearest one was too far. No car. No swank SUV to take me from Tim Hortons to the rink. No hockey. End of season, just like that.<\/p>\n

The next year I made the Bronx Park Midget team. Long commute. Cold commute. I was small, quick, and completely allergic to corners. I hated getting hit. The coach didn\u2019t teach much \u2014 just sent us out like cannon fodder.<\/p>\n

The other teams figured me out fast. \u201cThat one? He flinches.\u201d I rode the fourth line, took too many elbows and cross checks and realized\u2026 maybe the NHL would survive without me.<\/p>\n

So I hung up the dream and hit the books. But I wasn\u2019t quite done.<\/p>\n

Last chapter \u2026 Interfaculty hockey at the University of Manitoba. It was more beer league than league-league. But it was fun. Way more fun now that I knew that I wasn\u2019t going to crack the Montreal Canadiens roster.<\/p>\n

And you know what?<\/p>\n

I loved it. Still do. My \u201chockey career\u201d if you can call it that, never went anywhere, but it taught me everything I needed to know: that hockey is hard. The kind of hard that separates dreamers from the truly gifted. The kind of hard that makes you admire the game for the beauty of its skill \u2014 not just the speed or the hits.<\/p>\n

\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Sign<\/p>\n

And today? The game\u2019s better. Less violence, more finesse, more speed. Women\u2019s hockey is taking off. Kids have better equipment, indoor ice, and someone to tie their skates without them freezing on the walk to the rink.<\/p>\n

But me? I\u2019ll always remember Morse Place.<\/p>\n

That busted streetcar. The numb toes. The spongee pucks.<\/p>\n

And the feeling \u2014 every time I stepped on the ice \u2014 that I belonged to something bigger than myself.<\/p>\n

Robert Milan is retired and lives in Victoria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cNothing is as good as it used to be and it never was. The \u2018golden age of sports,\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-638195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}