Strollerderby : hockey

Best of FameCrawler: Week of October 3rd

Whit Honea — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Matt Bryant Plays, Honors Son (Updated)

Duggars Reveal Sex Of Baby # 18

Bill Maher Calls Sarah Palin "A Bimbo"

Sarah Silverman Is Still Doing That Baby-Making Thing With Jimmy Kimmel.

Angelina's Post Baby Body Revealed- Photos

Travis Henry Arrested

Jim Carrey Says Jenny McCarthy's Son Taught Him a Deeper Love

Jenny McCarthy Hits Back At Amanda Peet On Vaccine Issue

Chris Rock: Sarah Palin's A Hockey-Mom Version Of Kim Kardashian

Justin Timberlake Proposes To Jessica Biel! Is She Pregnant?

Sarah Palin: Miss Alaska Pageant Video

Baptism by Hockey

Amy Kuras — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:29:00 GMT

One of the cooler things about hockey is this: Each player on the team which wins the sport's championship trophy, the Stanley Cup, gets to take it home for a day.
And yes, there is a parenting angle here. "Stanley sightings" are a big deal around here in years the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup, including this year (and 1997, 1998, and 2002 in recent years). My friend and her husband had a little anniversary no-kids getaway earlier this summer and witnessed players Kris Draper and Darren McCarty with their kids, spouses, and the Cup, including a baby posing in it.
Turns out that may have been Draper's little newborn daughter Kamryn, who, oh dear, pooped in it. (It's been cleaned).NHL officials have since instituted a "no babies in diapers" rule in for the Cup, according to this Vancouver Sun article. Two guards from the Hockey Hall of Fame travel with the Cup wherever it goes, to avoid too much damage or someone hocking it for bail money or whatever.
Right now, the Cup is in Sweden, where seven members of the team are from. And it served as a baptismal font for team captain Tomas Holmstrom's cousin's 6-week-old daughter. And even odder, this is the second time that’s happened with the 115-year-old trophy.
It's also been dropped several times, dented once, used as a feed bag for a racehorse, gone to a strip club repeatedly (including at least once being incorporated into the act, which makes my head hurt to even think about) and lost once.
Makes baby pooping not seem so bad

Skating Close to the Edge of Overdoing It

Amy Kuras — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:02:00 GMT

It seems impossible, living where I do in a place that calls itself Hockeytown, but there appear to be areas on Earth where people are not obsessed with hockey.

So this article from the Calgary Herald, up in our neighor to the north, about life as a hockey parent may seem strange to some – but really, substitute dance parent, soccer parent, overly-involved-in-whatever-kid activity parent, and it's about the same ethic.

Now I'll admit to raging personal biases on this one – some good friends of mine joined a hockey league a few years ago, and it's inexorably taken over their lives. A longstanding close friendship broke up over a fight about the team roster, at least three nights a week are taken up with games and practices, and parties over there inevitably find my non-hockey-playing husband and I hastily making our excuses as the discussion descends into eye-glazing hockey talk and rink gossip. And these are the people whose kids don't play yet – real hockey parents have like no frame of reference for normal non-hockey people.

Mind you, I like hockey (I think you eventually have to move out of Michigan if you don't, or they charge you higher taxes or something). And the article makes good points about why families get so involved, like that it teaches kids valuable lessons about teamwork, dedication and sportsmanship.

But I just have issues when any activity, no matter how worthwhile, dominates a family's time. When you don’t have one open day on your calendar, as was the case for one family mentioned in the story who had three hockey-playing kids, that's a problem. When do these kids study, sleep, or enjoy the time-honored tradition of staring into space and thinking? How do you become a well-rounded person when all of your time is spent at the rink (or the dance studio, or the soccer pitch)?

Photo: Calgary Herald