The cold dawn came early; it was, after all, the first of March.  A glance at my phone indicated a temperature of zero.  Big, fat, goose egg.  I fumbled with the coffee pot and wondered if the parents were going to lynch me for sending everyone outdoors to watch and play hockey in this cold snap.  Still, the email had been sent, nothing to do now but make the best of it.  Maybe a few dedicated kids would show up.

By 7:15 I borrowed Coach Daykin’s truck next door and rumbled around the neighborhood collecting a pair of rusty old goals from the backyard rinks.  Nothing fancy but enough netting to stop a puck, unlike the skeletal goals at the town rink.  After the usual scramble to shoo my bundled-up young hockey players out the door, we skidded into the icy lot of “the Lish” right about 8:29 for the 8:30 game.

To my surprise, Lishness Rink, or “the Lish” as it is affectionately known by generations of Midcoast-area hockey players, was bustling with more than a dozen cars, many double parked and humming with activity as 25 nine and ten year old squirts from the Midcoast Youth Hockey Association Squirt Red and Squirt White teams scrambled around preparing for their final match of the season.  No one seemed to notice the cold.

Excitement seemed to outweigh the frost in the air while the black, white and red uniforms made a striking sight among the high snow banks and peeling plywood boards of the full size outdoor hockey rink.  An American flag was quickly nailed to the boards, an SUV located to play the National Anthem and the two teams took to their respective “blue lines”.  Players and parents alike paused in the still morning air to salute our flag and hear the anthem, just like in the big time games of hockey.

Soon the familiar crunching of skates on crusty ice, clacking of stick on stick, and smack of puck on boards filled the air.  A pair of goalies who had insisted on full gear despite the cold manned the nets and Squirt White struck first with a breakaway goal.  Squirt Red soon answered and the fun began.  The final may have been 8-6, but nobody is sure who was ahead.  Just for fun, the hour concluded with a pair of lines for an elimination shootout round of breakaways.  Visions of “Oshie” on many young minds no doubt, after the recent Olympic Games.

As the game ended and the kids made their way back to warm cars, the chatter and laughter faded in the still-frozen morning. The rest of the day still lay ahead, but the memories of the first “Late Winter Squirt Classic at the Lish” will remain with this hockey dad for quite a while.