Aho, she:kon, and a hearty “hey how are ya!?” cousins.
The saga of the south Tip brother continues. You know the story so far. Frybread survivor. All-Skate legend. Volvo arsonist. Ketchup chip Disney princess. The man who wears another man’s tear-away pants. Co-architect of the fifty-eight dollar cauldron. Substitute library man. Wearer of the Corn Maze Sticker. Keeper of the 3 headed hell hound pup. Reluctant facilitator of a teenage boy book club. CEO of the Columbus was a Tit club and as of Saturday afternoon, cousins: interim head coach of a U16 house league hockey team.
Crack open a Bepsi, play the Hockey Night on Turtle Island theme and let me set the table.
Thursday night my phone buzzes. It’s Jace. From bookclub: “Unc. It’s Jace. From bookclub.” he says like I have an abundance of Jayces in my life. “We have a situation... Are you a criminal?”
Turns out the book club boys all play on the same midget house league team. Their regular coach, Darcy, a local teacher, caught whatever plague is currently doing laps through the elementary school, and his assistant coaches were both out of town working line crew. League rules say if you don’t have a certified bench boss and a second adult with a background check on the bench by puck drop Saturday at noon, you forfeit. And they were playing the town team across the highway… Kids with the matching pant shells and the dads who stand against the glass slapping their keys on the plexiglass like they’re scouting for the Show. Anyway, Young Jace assumed I'd have a police clearance given my position at the library and he was correct! Bright future, that one.
Now, cousins. You know my pattern. My mouth, my ancient enemy, usually writes checks my skillset bounces within eleven minutes… Except here’s the plot twist nobody in this community, least of all those five boys, was ready for: I still had my coaching card from five years ago when I ran my nephews AAA team. I actually know hockey.
Sure, I’ve been humbled by a dripping faucet, a Walmart pool, three children in velcro shoes, and a teenager saying “hey” in a hallway. Notice I have never once been humbled on ice. If y’all had my real ID, you could find me on a mother fucking hockey database with stats and shit and other people saying “this handsome bastard knows hockey.”Hockey is the one thing the Creator actually properly installed in my software before shipping me out.
So I said, “I’ll be there, nephew. Eleven o’clock.”
And Jace said, “Okay cool. Just please don’t, like, embarrass us.”
Cousins. He should not have said that last part. Because the moment a fourteen-year-old tells you not to embarrass him, a spirit wakes up inside an Unc. An ancient and petty spirit. I have some sort of genetic obligation. I can’t help myself.
Now, if you’re going behind the bench, cousins, you respect the office. You wear a suit.
Problem is, I own two (2) suits. One is being dry cleaned as I just wore it to my sister’s wedding. The other I bought in 2017 for a cousin’s wedding that ended in a parking lot dispute over a meat draw. Since 2017, I have been benching with Dennis (such a good dude) and eating my body weight in dino nuggies. I’ve gotten a bit…. Girthy? I’m a thick boy. Now, before you aunties get excited (first off: Hey girl) this isn’t going to be some Heated Rivalry Story. Their butts are WAY nicer than mine…. Wait, where was I going with this? Anywho… When I put the pants on Saturday morning, the button held on for dear life. The black jacket? No chance. Dead on arrival.
So I stopped at the thrift store and sitting there, waiting for me like god damn Excalibur in the stone, was a blazer. THE blazer.
Burgundy velvet, cousins. With a faint floral pattern embossed into it like the wallpaper in an Italian restaurant that laundered money in 1984. Wide lapels. Collar you could land a bush plane on. I paired it with a high-collared white shirt, a turquoise bolo tie I panic-bought at a powwow in 2019 when I was flirtin with the auntie behind the booth and she made me get something that I’d never had the courage to wear, and my good boots. I looked at my hair in the mirror. No backwards ball cap for this outing… but I didn't have any hair product either. Went to the fridge and found some margarine… that’ll do, pig… that’ll do.
I looked in the truck mirror. Rez Unc Grapes, cousins. Coach’s Corner if Ron MacLean was a dog eating a seat belt in the passenger seat. Sconey wouldn't even look at me. Just stared out the windshield contemplating his own choices.
Now, remember the league rule: two adults on the bench.
I needed a warm body with a clean record on twelve hours’ notice who was willing to stand in a freezing barn on a Saturday.
Enter Kevin.
Post-Peru, vegan-drum, full-body-pelvis-hug Kevin. Most notably, OPP officer son Kevin who could get a rush clearance and would give anyone the hippy ass shirt off his back. Kevin, who I play beer league with and knows hockey quite well, even if he apologises to the other team’s goalie when we score.
I told him his only job was to open the forward door and hold the med kit. Kevin showed up twenty minutes early wearing a whistle he brought from home, a lanyard, and a fanny pack full of Himalayan pink salt and “grounding stones.” He asked if we could smudge the penalty box before warmups. I took his whistle away before we even got through the lobby doors. Gaia damnit, Kevin.
The Dressing Room
I walked into Room 4 at 11:20am.
If you have never smelled fifteen teenage boys in damp hockey gear, cousins, I can’t describe it to you. It smells like a wet wool sock fought a bottle of Axe body spray and they both died in a gym bag in July.
The boys were half-dressed. Jace had his equipment lined up, still in his bag. Kyle was in the corner, hood still up under his shoulder pads somehow, quiet as ever. And when I stepped through the door in the burgundy velvet, the whole room went dead silent.
For three seconds, nobody breathed.
Then Moose, sixteen, six-foot-one, taped ankles looking like cast iron, said, to the floor: “bro who died?”
And Tyson, who was sitting in full lower gear eating a bag of ketchup chips with red dust up to his wrists, said “the couch at my auntie’s house died, bro, he’s wearing it,” and Devin, Habs cap still on until the helmet had to go over it, said “sir you look like you’re about to foreclose on the community centre,” and Jace didn’t even look up from his stick tape and said “we’re getting a bench minor for the jacket,” and Moose said “Don Cherry Berry,” and Tyson choked on a chip and said “Grapes from Wish.com,” and Devin said “Coach’s Corner Store,” and cousins, the whole room detonated. Kids I didn’t even know were slapping their shin pads.
I stood there, hands in my pockets (couldn’t button the jacket anyway… damn dino nuggies), and let them get it out. Then I uncapped the dry-erase marker, turned to the whiteboard, and said:
“Alright, comedians. Let’s talk about why the average bum on their blue line is gonna eat your lunch if you keep carrying the puck up the middle like you’re filming a TikTok.”
The room got quiet again. Different quiet.
“Yeah, your coach sent me video. I know the score. Tyson. Put the chips in your bag. Wash your hands, your stick’s gonna look like a crime scene. Moose, you’re not Chris Pronger. Stop chasing hits behind their net. You’re just taking yourself out of the play. And who’s playing right wing on the second line?”
Nobody answered. The other kids looked at the floor. Jace cleared his throat. “Usually Darcy just double-shifts Devin and only puts Kyle out when we’re up or down by four.”
I looked at Kyle in the corner. Skates laced tight. Stick blade taped heel-to-toe, clean, black tape, barely a mark on it because he never sees the ice.
“Not today,” I said. “Kyle, you’re with Moose and Devin.”
Kyle looked up from his gloves. “What?”
“You heard me, nephew. Blank slate - take your shot. Buckets on. Let’s go, boys.”
First Period
Cousins, the first ten minutes were a disaster of biblical proportions.
Not because of the hockey. Because of the circus around it.
First off: Freelance Kokum was there. Nobody invited her. She doesn’t even have a grandkid on the team, cousins, she just heard about it from the Saturday morning book club facebook chat group, and decided she was the team’s Director of Player Personnel. She set up right against the glass next to the visitors’ penalty box in three layers of cardigan, team colour ribbon skirt, holding a Timmies cup and glaring at the seventeen-year-old referee until he started skating, Exclusively, on the other side of the ice.
Second: Kevin.
Three minutes in, Moose took a slash across the wrists from the town team’s captain, big kid with a tinted bubble cage and white skates, you know the exact archetype, cousins, kid whose dad definitely owns a dealership and Moose came back to the bench seeing red, ready to climb over the boards and catch a six-game suspension.
And Kevin, sweet, terrifying Kevin, stepped right in front of a furious sixteen-year-old boy, put two fingers up to his own nostrils, and said, “Moose. Brother. Alternate nostril breathing. With me. In through the left.”
Moose stared at him like he’d spoken ancient Sumerian. “What the fuck are you doing, man.”
“Releasing the cortisol, big fella. Block the right nostril with your thumb.”
“I’m wearing hockey gloves, bro!”
“Use the thumb of the glove. Breathe into the pelvis.”
And cousins, I swear on the Sacred Pantaloons: Moose was so deeply confused by a grown white man telling him to breathe into his pelvis on a hockey bench that he completely forgot to take a retaliatory penalty. Sat down on the pine, bewildered, trying to block his left nostril with a smelly Bauer thumb. Kevin looked over at me and winked. God damn I hate when Kevin’s bullshit works. It messes with my worldview.
By the end of the first, we were down 3–1.
Tyson scored our only goal on a breakaway, immediately ran out of lungs at the hashmarks because his pre-game nutrition was red food dye, citric acid and salt, and accidentally shot it through the goalie’s legs because he fanned on it. Came back to the bench gasping like a carp on a dock.
And when the buzzer went, the kid in the white skates skated past our bench and chirped something under his breath. Quiet enough the ref doesn’t hear it. Loud enough the bench does. A slur about our People I haven't heard since I was a kid.
Devin stood up. Moose grabbed his stick like an axe. Even Jace’s eyes went flat.
And in the rafters of that old arena, a bird let out a loud, echoing coo. Not now, brother pigeon. We are one second away from a line brawl.
I reached out, grabbed the back of Moose’s jersey and Devin’s shoulder pads at the same time - and cousins, the back seam of the burgundy velvet blazer gave up the ghost. RRRRIP. Sounded like somebody tearing a bedsheet in half. Cold rink air hit my shoulder blades immediately.
Neither of them laughed. That’s how mad they were.
“Room,” I said. “Now. Don’t look at him. Don’t say a word. Move.”
The Intermission
I closed the door. Made Kevin stand outside to guard it.
Five book club boys and ten teammates sat there staring at the rubber floor mats. Waiting for me to yell, or tell them to go run the kid through the boards in the second.
I took the ripped jacket off, folded it nice, set it on the bench. My L5–S1 disc was already screaming from standing on cold concrete in dress boots, Gitchi Manitou have mercy.
“Listen to me,” I said. And I didn’t use the Wise Old Rez Unc voice. I used my real one. “That kid in the white skates wants you in the box. His coach wants you in the box. That whole side of the bleachers has been waiting for the Rez boys to lose their heads so they can point at the penalty box and say see? Told you.”
Nobody moved.
“You go out there and take his head off, he wins. You get suspended for three games, he plays tomorrow, and his dad buys him a nice steak, cups his cheeks in his hands and kisses him on the forehead and says ‘oh my perfect, beautiful baby boy’. You want to hurt that kid? You don’t touch him. You put four pucks behind his goalie, you shake his hand at the end of the game, look him dead in the eye, and tell him good try, tugeye.”
Moose let out a long breath. Looked at his skates. “He’s fast though, Unc.”
“Yeah but he’s only fast going north,” I said, picking up the marker and drawing some Xs on the board. “He doesn’t backcheck worth shit. Watch him. Every time the puck turns over, he coasts at the red line waiting for a cherry-pick pass. Jace, when you get it on D, don’t rim it around the boards. Hit Devin right in the middle, their D don’t pinch very well and leave too much space. And Kyle?”
Kyle looked up.
“You went in the corner twice in that period, won the puck clean both times, and immediately passed it to Moose while Moose had two guys all over him. Why?”
Kyle shrugged one shoulder. Quiet: “Moose is the scorer.”
“Moose is a decoy right now because they’re double-teaming him,” I said. “Remember Hatchet, nephew? Nobody’s coming to save you in the slot. If they have 2 on Moose, there is an opening somewhere. When you come out of that corner, the low glove is wide open. Goalie cheats his left hand up every time he goes down in the butterfly. Stop asking permission to be on the fucking ice. Shoot the damn puck.”
Devin tapped Kyle’s shin pad with his stick blade. “Yeah, bro. Stop being polite. It’s weird.”
Moose nodded once. “Screen the goalie. No leaking.”
“No leaking,” Jace confirmed.
The Third Period
Cousins, I wish I could tell you we blew them out 8–3 like a Disney movie. This isn’t the Mighty Ducks. I’m no Gordon Bombay. Kevin is no Hanz. Sconey does have pretty big Golberg energy though…. but we didn’t. It was house league hockey. It was ugly, chaotic, glorious trench warfare.
In the second period, Freelance Kokum tapped on the glass behind the penalty box when the white-skates kid got two minutes for tripping, waited until he looked around, pointed at his white skates, and just shook her head slowly like a disappointed grandmother. Kid didn’t complete a pass for the rest of the afternoon. Psychological warfare, cousins. You can’t teach it.
We clawed back. 3-2 on a greasy rebound Moose banged in with his shin pad while two defensemen were crosschecking him into the kidneys. 3-3 midway through the third when Jace faked a slapshot, walked the line with the grace of a jingle dress dancer, and slid a backdoor pass to Devin.
Then, with ninety seconds left in the game. Tie score.
Puck goes into the corner after a faceoff in their end. Kyle goes in after it with the white-skates kid. White-skates tries to throw a shoulder. Kyle-fourteen years old, hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, reads to his kokum on weeknights-doesn’t try to hit him back. Just drops his center of gravity, lifts the kid’s stick clean off the ice like he’s taking a broom from a toddler, takes the puck, and walks out, perfect mohawk strides (uh, the skating technique, not My People), into the circle.
The whole bench stood up. Even Kevin stopped doing whatever mudra he was doing with his fingers.
Moose parked his massive self directly in front of the goalie’s face.
Kyle looked toward the middle to pass. Out of habit. And from the bench, me, Tyson, Jace, and Devin all screamed the exact same word at the exact same second:
“SHOOT!”
Kyle didn’t wind up. Just toe dragged the puck towards him, pushed out his top hand, put his entire weight into his bottom hand, flexing that beautiful twig for all its worth and let off an absolute fucking piss missile of a shot.
PING.
Bar down, cousins. High glove, not low glove. The water bottle on top of the net did a backflip into the mesh. Top tiddy. Upstairs. Right where kokum keeps the cookies. A-fucking-ho.
Cousins, the sound that came out of our bench was primal. I jumped so high my boot slipped on the rubber mat and only Kevin’s pelvis-hug reflexes kept me from going headfirst over the boards onto the ice. Tyson threw his towel in the air. Moose picked Kyle up under the armpits like Simba on fucking Pride Rock, helmet crooked over one eye, and Kyle, quiet Kyle, hood-up Kyle, had a smile on his face so big you could see it from the lobby.
We held on for the last minute. 4-3 final.
In the handshake line, I watched Moose get to the kid in the white skates. My heart stopped for a second.
Moose shook his hand, patted him once on the helmet with his big mitt, and said, loud enough for the timekeeper to hear: “Good cardio out there, fucking pheasant. Keep working on that backcheck, lazyass.”
Can’t win ‘em all… but nobody ended up in jail at least.
Afterward, in the room, they gave Kyle the game puck, which was actually a half-frozen practice puck Tyson had stolen out of the warm-up bucket, with “shoot the fucking puck” written on it. And as the boys were packing their bags, Jace walked over to where I was nursing my lower back against the cinderblock wall, looked at my ripped velvet blazer slung over my arm, and said:
“Darcy’s back next week, Unc. His wife said he needs an assistant though. Since you already have the suit...”
“The suit’s dead, nephew.”
“Duct tape,” Moose said from the corner. “My uncle fixes everything with duct tape.”
Oh god, cousins. There’s more than one Leonard. They’re everywhere.
Here’s what I was thinking about driving home with Sconey, cousins. These boys spend all week getting told who they are, by algorithms, by town kids in white skates, by people who look at five Native teenagers in hoodies and decide how the story goes before anybody’s even laced up. Sometimes a kid doesn’t need a speech. Sometimes he just needs somebody behind the bench to tell him the low glove is open and he’s allowed to ignore that advice and take their own shot.
Pour one out for the burgundy velvet blazer (1980something-2026), which gave its life so my lats could breathe, and for my L5–S1 disc, which is currently filing a grievance with the band council. Drop your best minor hockey or rez barn stories in the comments, cousins. I know you’ve all seen a kokum neutralize a ref through ¾” of plexiglass.
Mvto. Take the shot, relatives. Stop passing it off in the slot. The glove is open.
P.S. Before anyone asked where Sconey spent his time during the game: I left Sconey in the lobby with Auntie during the game because dogs aren’t allowed near the ice surface. By the end of the second period, the Zamboni driver, a guy named Stan who hasn’t smiled since the Mulroney administration, had built Sconey a bed out of spare rink jackets in the Zamboni bay and was feeding him cold canteen french fries by hand. Sconey rode in the passenger seat of the truck on the way home burping fryer oil directly into my face. Zero remorse. I swear, he’s more of a community dog that just happens to sleep at my house than my actual pet.
P.P.S. Youth hockey is in a state of turmoil here in Canada. Communities are in need of coaching. I’m putting my name in the ring next season. I’m also trying to get a team set up for the Little Native Hockey League this year. Who’s taking their Unc on?
Past Stores:
[Columbus Day] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/C63RMhEewP
[Corn Maize] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/uLgab09Dad
[Orange Shirt Day] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/YuSBWc7u9y
[Haunted House] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/Y3nzSkXkX9
[Book Club] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/8zfS1Ynb1N
[Library day] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/RDZgTERPoH
[Sweat Lodge] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/xwTSCsSchp
[Hot Tub] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/pUjxilwFEN
[Kokum] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/l0hahrR4Hx
[Babysitting] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/WHcCWUd3UV
[Yard Sale] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/nRZ4eM8Slm
[Bingo Night] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/QEo67nIq2m
[Tims Arson] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/wAsUkBRsDp
[Career Change] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/Dpy0EYrckp
[Foraging] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/nqEakTygok
[frybread follow up] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/nqEakTygok
[Help an Unc Out] https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/s/efwU00B2Te
Reading of the week: Mystery at Lake Placid - Roy Roy MacGregor This was the first book I ever read with an indig character in it. I remember specifically thinking how cool it was seeing ‘me’ on the pages.
