Blind hockey offers players fellowship and lots of thrills
The skate-safe rubbermatted hallway at Kettler Capitals Iceplex in Arlington, Virginia, fills quickly on a Sunday morning in January. People hurry in carrying hockey sticks; bulging bags of gear line the walls. At first glance, it looks like any other weekend at an ice rink.
But there are harnessed guide dogs calmly navigating through the crowd, some skaters are wearing sunglasses or making their way with white canes, and people are including their names in greetings: “Hi, it’s Matt.” “Hi, it’s Karen.” They’re all here to try, or help others try, a sport new to the Washington region, and to the country: blind hockey.
The Washington Wheelers Blind Hockey Club is hosting this event, which includes a group skate and a demonstration game, to increase awareness and recruit players. Once everyone has the right gear, Wheelers players and several volunteers join about 20 newcomers of all ages on the ice. Some tentative skaters take the right-angled arms or gloved hands proffered to them; others carry canes into the rink and tap the wall as they go.
Club co-founder Craig Fitzpatrick, 41, wearing a Wheelers jacket and a USA Hockey baseball cap, stops next to a boy in orange snow pants standing uncertainly near the door.
“Come on the ice with me,” Fitzpatrick says, swiveling backward and reaching out, so the boy can hold his hands. He pushes off, gently gaining speed until the boy’s strides grow longer and more confident. Player Emily Molchan, 24, skates with Remington, her 4-year-old Labrador retriever, who slides around the ice wearing protective bootees.
Tina Butera, a pediatric ophthalmologist and club co-founder, watches in a white Wheelers sweatshirt. “There’s a blind person skating with their seeing-eye dog,” she muses aloud to no one in particular. “What’s your excuse today?”
Canadians have played organized blind hockey for over 40 years; in French, it’s called “hockey sonore,” meaning hockey played by sound. But blind hockey — players range from legally blind (or 20/200 corrected vision) to entirely blind — has been officially organized in the United States only since 2014.
Blind hockey looks a lot like standard hockey: Players swoosh down the ice, passing a puck with the goal of slinging it into a net. But it sounds very different. The adapted puck — a hollow metal canister filled with ball bearings, which is nearly twice the
size of a regular rubber puck — rattles across the surface, clanging like a bunch of cowbells when a hard shot sends it into the boards. Skaters find the puck by listening for it. “It’s loud!” Butera says. “It’s so simple, it’s genius.”
It’s time for the demonstration game, and the new skaters and their families line the bleachers, listening attentively as an announcer reads the rules over the loudspeaker. Molchan’s dog waits with her at the door, tail wagging, apparently ready to head back onto the ice. She hands his harness to Diana McCown, and skates out, wearing a red Wheelers jersey.