A.L. Heard

A Look at My Hockey Journey

I like a lot of genres and a lot of tropes, so what brought me to writing hockey romance? Here’s some background on my hockey journey and how I ended up being a hockey romance author.

The NHL & Watching Hockey

I’m Canadian, but that actually has little to do with my hockey journey lol. We moved from Canada when I was five. Despite my mom being a lifelong Leafs fan and my dad being a diehard Rangers fan, hockey wasn’t much of A Thing. My dad watched, but he never really tried to bring us kids into it. As a kid, I knew random things about hockey. I could name some teams, my dad had a little Stanley Cup pencil sharpener (haha what? I wish I had that), and we did have a Fisher Price hockey set that we would play with as kids, complete with plastic sticks with straight blades. 

When I started teaching, I started watching the Ravens and the Caps as a way to connect with students. That was a pretty slippery rabbit hole once I got started. I obviously became a huge Caps fan, and in some ways the timing of when I started watching made it easy. It was the lockout shortened season, so there were fewer games and teams stuck within their conference, so I got to learn half the league without worrying about the Western Conference really at all. The excitement of going to games at Verizon Center really sealed it for me. They had a Caps Fan Convention that we attended where you got to meet players and listen to panels. The Caps Power Play and Ovechkin were on fire. I was hooked.

Playing Hockey

This was also around the time that my boyfriend and I started playing ball hockey (aka dek hockey in Pittsburgh, sometimes called street hockey). There was a small outdoor dek near our place that had a weekly pickup that was really open to beginners, so we started there. I happened to connect with someone in the same education program I’d gone to in college who was starting a league also near us. We ran into a player from THAT league who was joining another league, so we joined that one too. It obviously spiraled from there haha – we were playing in twice a week while doing pickup until they shut down that outdoor dek.

It’s not for me — I’ve played dek too long, I get too frustrated that I can’t do what I know I should be doing because my feet won’t cooperate — but I had a great team and enjoyed getting to play with them and experience the beer hockey league as a player instead of just the girlfriend of a player.

Reffing and Coaching

I haven’t done much of either, but I’ve done both. I think it definitely gives you a different perspective on the game to do either. Being a ref isn’t just about knowing the rules, it’s about being able to watch and direct my attention to the right places at the right time. I would 100% do it again, but can’t until my kiddos are older and a little more… self-contained when we go to rinks. Coaching is about recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of your players and doing something about it. You help them grow, you support them, and you advocate on their behalf. I’ve only ever been an assistant defensive coach, but I learned a lot working with some amazing head coaches. Every time a league asks me to coach my kids, I have to begrudgingly turn down the offer – with two kids who are usually on a combined 4-5 teams at any time, I can’t guarantee my availability at any given time. Alas, I don’t see any coaching in my future.

Youth Sports

Saved for last, because yikes haha. This is where most of my time goes. My boys have been playing dek and ice hockey for years. My oldest started when he was 5 (he’s 10 now, so 5 years of this madness with more and more time commitments as we go) with dek hockey because he was too scared to go on the ice. While his dad and I don’t coach behind the bench, we’ve worked behind the scenes coaching both boys with stick handling, positioning, shooting, and skating (that would be their dad, not me haha). We’re experiencing both sports from the youngest ages up, and I learn more and more about youth hockey as we go. There are different rules and funky little names for each age bracket (for example, my youngest is a Chipmunk on dek and a Mite on ice; my oldest is Penguin for dek and Squirt for ice). 

My Hockey Schedule

I’ll use this week just as a sample of how much dang hockey we do.

Monday: Ice Hockey Picture Day, both boys have ice practice, I miss a dek game and youngest misses a dek game (conflict with his ice practice)

Tuesday: Both boys have a dek game back-to-back

Wednesday: Both my oldest and I have a game at the same time, so we alternate weeks. This week it’s my turn to play 🙂

Thursday: The youngest has a dek game

Friday: The oldest has a dek game, the youngest has a dek practice

Saturday: Three dek games and an ice game

Sunday: One ice game

Writing this all out, it’s actually a pretty easy week haha but there are no days off from hockey. In the rare weeks between in house seasons when we do have days off, the boys are often confused why we’re spending a whole evening at home. It’s also the NHL season, so if we ARE at the house and the Caps are playing, my oldest laments that he loses the Xbox (or has to limit his play time to intermissions).