Movie Review: Pond Hockey

Sometimes we like to take a look back at sports movies that may or may not still be (or ever were) in the public consciousness. Today, University of Maryland senior Hailey Smith reviews the 2008 film, “Pond Hockey.”

“It’s hockey the way it was made to be played, outdoors, on a pond,” says a news anchor during the weeks leading up to the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships on Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Minnesota is the home of hockey in the states, “what basketball is to Indiana and football is to Texas, hockey is to Minnesota, a passion so intense that it borders on civic religion,” says journalist Charles McGrath.

What’s fascinating is that this was ultimately the main point of the documentary film Pond Hockey. In Tommy Haines’ documentary, produced by Northland Films and released in 2008, we follow ex-college player Jeff Sorem, who grew up in Minnesota and played for Yale and is now a part of the “Federal League All-Stars” team as well as some hockey greats and “Sofa King Lazy,” another dominant team at the Pond Hockey Championships.

This film goes through the history and culture of pond hockey and its move from Nova Scotia to North America; where for the first 100 years of hockey on this continent was played outdoors because there were no indoor rinks.

Following the history of the sport the movie interviews different players from both “Sofa King Lazy” and “Federal League All-Stars,” who discuss growing up playing pond hockey from the age of two or three. From stories of flooding their backyards to build rinks, or walking a couple blocks to the neighborhood park, “it’s the people stayed there till dark and got there as early as they could, there’s a whole different culture to that.”

Right before the interviews with current and past NHL players, and some of the NHL greats begin, the film shows a quote from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that says “Now I see the secret of making the best persons, it has to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”

We then see interviews from people like Wayne Gretzky, Neal Broten, Tom Kurvers and Marian Gaborick who discuss mostly playing on ponds until their high school careers. “There haven’t been top guys like that for a number of years,” says one of the competitors in the Pond Hockey Championships.

In my opinion, that ultimately argues Walt Whitman’s quote, that “growing in the open air” or on a pond creates the great skilled players. According to the documentary these great players that were really skilled grew up in some type of environment that wasn’t structured.

For example, in the documentary we are introduced to a player named “Bug” who played for two years in high school and that was the highest level of hockey he was able to play. A friend of Bug’s is interviewed who played college hockey and got drafted to play in the NHL who says that Bug is a better skater than him.

Well, to this day, Bug plays puck about five or six times a week on the neighborhood pond. Bug is just another example of the fundamental skills one attains from playing in an unstructured environment just for the love of the game.

Pond hockey is different from structured hockey in that there’s no ref, no checking, goals were made up of two shoes marking the area, or a wooden box, and finally “one of the most important aspects of pond hockey is that everyone will throw their sticks in the middle and another kid will pull his hat down over his eyes so he cant see and just start shuffling sticks back and forth and of course sometimes its just stacked pads on one side and ‘oh my god’ on the other.”

This unstructured environment is where a lot of the greats picked up the fundamentals of hockey. Playing on natural ice is very different than on a man made indoor rink, so the fundamentals of shooting and passing are all going to become easier and more inherent for those players learning to play through backyard or pond hockey.

Herb Brooks, the head coach of the “Miracle” USA National Team said “I think we have too many AAA, showcase and elite camps for the kids today and as a result we are creating a bunch of robots. We need to make it fun for the kids and let them learn to love this game the way we did.”

Pond hockey is the ultimate example of how sport brings people together. John Bucoigross, a hockey journalist for ESPN says, “The casual fan doesn’t understand how it grabs you… We are all certifiably insane. All of us who let this game of hockey wash over us for most of the cold winter months. But for some of us that’s not enough. We have to take this insanity one step further. We build a backyard rink.”

These athletes are braving freezing temperatures not because they have to, but because they love the sport. From former NHL All-Stars, to kids who barely played high school hockey, these players who go out and play four or five times a week display a passion for the game like most have never seen before.

This documentary truly keys in on the cultural importance of pond hockey and offers a new perspective on hockey and the appreciation for the game for those of us who have yet to experience an outdoor game.

As someone from California, I have been a die hard hockey lover since the age of 7, however now at 21, I just had the experience of skating on a frozen river for the first time about a week ago.

I will say that having personally had the experience of just simply skating on a frozen river, I now have a slightly greater understanding of how these men and women feel the first time they get out on a pond every winter.

There truly is nothing like it. Overall, for anyone who has ever played hockey or even considers themselves a fan, I say this is a must watch and will give you an entirely different perspective on the game and the influences it has on the players of the game.