A.L. Heard

Part of why I write hockey romance is because I love hockey. Between my own playing, watching the Capitals, and my kiddos, I get a lot of hockey exposure that I draw off of in my books. When I describe scenes or plays, I’m usually envisioning a real scenario that I’ve seen (or would like to see), and I hope my understanding and love for the game comes through in my writing. Part of why I read sports romance is for the sport in question, and I have stopped reading books and fics that had Not Good hockey. 

But a trickier side of keeping hockey realistic is all the dang stats.

I find stats interesting, but I don’t have a mind for it. Like if you tell me a stat, I can give you my interpretation of it, but I don’t remember stats. I couldn’t tell you a team’s record the last ten games or who’s got the most TOI (time on ice) or PIM (penalties in minutes) or any of that. Hell, I couldn’t even tell you how much any of our players make or the salary cap (that specifically I would ask me son about lol he’s a little General Manager in training). I don’t actively look up this stuff either, but it gets brought up by the commentators in games or on fan blogs, so I have that lowkey exposure. But when I need to include those statistics in my own work…yikes lol.

But I obviously do include it. In the book proper but also in the fake social media posts I do for Instagram. So…where do those numbers come from?

The short answer is…the NHL. If I’m trying to come up with a team schedule, I usually just Google the Caps’ schedule during that month/year and tweak it a bit. It’s never exactly the same because I tend to have written myself into specific situations where I need an afternoon game when the Caps didn’t have one, or I want to give the players a longer break for the holidays than the NHL typically gives their players. I also use the NHL’s major benchmarks like start of the season, trade deadline, All Star game, and playoffs.

I can also grab league standings for any season and map whatever I need to onto that. How many points did a playoff bound team have back in December? How many points did the wildcard teams have this season and what was their wins-losses-overtime losses breakdown? I don’t have to make any of that up and risk it being completely bogus. I can just…check.

For individual players, I typically have a similar style player in mind. None of my characters are directly based on any specific player. I haven’t met most of the players and even on the rare circumstances when I have talked to an NHL player, I am super aware that it was in the context of “player meeting fan.” I watch interviews, I watch games, but have no idea what these men are like in real life and am not trying to emulate that.

BUT…I do tend to have a few players in mind for play style. Players with a similar build and who play a similar type of game. That way, I can look up stats for specific players at certain points in their career to grab numbers. That way the numbers are realistic — duh!! they’re from actual players! — and hopefully can contextualize the players.

For example, for Lars is similar to Ovechkin and Pastrnak (RIP them being wingers when Lars isn’t).

Ryan has a Crosby and Beagle-style for face-offs, but more of a Nic Dowd grinder mentality.

Evan has Protas’ size (and lack of fights/penalties) but I look at Tom Wilson’s entry into the league for Evan’s path from ‘guy-who-is-big’ to ‘solid player who gets PK time’ to ‘wow this guy is our next captain.’ Just…without the fighting lol. 

Riley is…many people mushed together. Healthy dose of Marchand-style shenanigans, Tkachuk for fighting and Wilson for hits, Marchand again for size. If I need goal totals, points, face-off win percentages, salary, etc, these are the players I look at. 

So basically…why re-invent the wheel? The numbers are already out there, the plays have already happened, why struggle to try and make stuff up? Art imitates life and all that 😉