Day 6 Without Hockey

Dear Panther Parkway Readers,

As the title of this article suggests, I’m having a hard time keeping track of time at this point due to the fact that there are no sports games happening. See, I usually only know what day it is based on the Panthers or Heat schedule and what games they have during the week. And with sports absent from my life right now, I am completely out of sorts. Is anyone else like this?

With that said, there are a couple things I’ve done in the past two or three days that, after looking back, are definitely regrettable but I blame these incidents completely on my hockey withdrawals. Hindsight is 20/20 though so there’s no use feeling sorry about it now right? The first questionable decision I made was on my way home from work yesterday. As I was clocking out of work, my boss was walking into the office. We usually just exchange a simple “goodnight” or “see ya tomorrow” and that will be that. But, this time was different since I haven’t seen any Panthers hockey in a week. I was a little excited to go home after a long day at work, so after clocking out, I couldn’t hold back my inner Steve “Goldie” Goldstein, and I shouted “Let’s go home baby!” It’s important to note that this is a small and quiet office, and my boss has never seen a hockey game in his life so this is not a reference he would understand. And I screamed it like we just won a game in overtime. It’s hard to describe the pure confusion in his eyes, followed by the the disappointed shake of his head as he walked out and left me there in the office.

The next hockey-related mistake I made was just a little while ago. I was walking to my bedroom and passed my younger brother in the hallway. He was minding his own business of course, but it’s my little brother and I haven’t had any hockey in days. So I instinctively lined up a perfectly-timed hip check that turned my brother and sandwiched him into the hallway wall. He’s a tough kid though and he’s just two years younger than me, meaning there’s no real size mismatch so he didn’t seem too rattled by it. He just looked up from his phone and said, “Dude, what is wrong with you?” I took that to be some sort of challenge so I asked him if he wanted to go. He rolled his eyes, I dropped my imaginary gloves and grabbed his shirt before throwing two jabs at him. He just shook his head and said “Jake, just let me go man.” I gave myself a 10-minute misconduct for instigating…I’m writing from the “penalty box.” But, in my defense, my brother needs to know the unwritten rules of the game. Keep your head up at all times in anticipation of a hit. Even if you’re not playing hockey and you’re just innocently walking by while on your phone.

I have to serve the last few minutes of this penalty so I’ll leave it at that for today. Stay safe everyone and stay out of the penalty box if you can!

-Jacob

Thanks for reading this article! You can follow along with Panther Parkway @pantherparkway on Twitter! You can also follow our writers: @FrankRekas, @Josh_LOPanthers, @JacobWinans8, @prudentia0, @Mister_Joester! Make sure to follow and listen to our podcast @LOPanthersPod All images unless otherwise noted are courtesy of @KimSmithImages