As a new skater, old ice rattled me. Every chink, every gouge, every line traced before me went through my legs like car tires over rumble strips. The sparser attendance at mid-day ice—another reason I sought it out when possible—meant I had more time before the wear and tear got to me. Once I felt the wobble, the teeth rattle in my head, I had to leave the ice, knowing I would come back when I could start over fresh.
I don’t know if other new skaters have had this same weird sensitivity. But it created an awareness in me of the changing nature of my new playing field. Of course, basketball courts get mopped after a sweaty fall and outdoor fields of all sorts are tended at regular intervals. But ice lived and breathed and changed throughout play in subtle and drastic ways.
After the Zamboni, the new ice is a clean slate, ready for whatever you can bring to it. You choose how you mark it, what history you carry to it, how you see it evolve before you. As the time moves forward, as the cuts add up, at a certain point they will be erased yet again: A chance to start cleanly each new period with only the score lingering, another fluctuation until it isn’t.
To my mind, no other game has this capacity for starting over entirely. The cuts, the marks, the blood all melt away. You do this because you love it, the beauty of it the first time leaving you breathless; now the exertion of it stealing through you, leaving behind the twins exhilaration and exhaustion. You do this because you can. Sometimes you do it for the process, sometimes for the win.
And if you forget why you do it, you need to remember those moments on the ice when it all felt right. You go back to that space and you decide that, yes, you do want this. The ice may be frozen in place, but you are not. You want it more than anything that could work against you. You decide. You believe. You make your mark in the now.
You got this, Caps.