A lesson in sledge hockey

This weekend, one of Canada’s best, national sports teams begins a round-robin tournament against the toughest competition on the planet. The world sledge hockey challenge is a four-team event beginning Sunday and it will help shape the final roster for the Sochi Paralympics. Our Scot Urquhart plays some hockey. So we thought we’d give him a chance to try out his puck skills from a slightly different angle.

It’s not every day that you get to hit the ice, with team Canada. Intimidating for sure. And worse when you have absolutely no idea, what you’re doing.

Dundas native Kevin Rempel was willing to give me some pointers but I needed some more encouragement: “Definitely one hand only.”

Bal Gosal: “That’s why I come out and try these different sports, so I can explain them to Canadians, explain them to the young kids. There’s nothing that should be stopping you from participating in sports. Inspired by the Minister of State for Sports, I dove in, seat first.

Or feet first perhaps. But once I was on the ice, Kevin made it easy. Or maybe it was that he made it look easy.

Rempel plays right wing. He’s on the short list for Sochi but says this weekend will be a pretty good test: “We have the three top teams in the world, us, the U.S. and Russia, and like Korea’s just right below us, so it’s like the next best thing to being at the Olympics.”
These guys go pretty hard, and the speed is unbelievable. But Rempel has a special attraction for another part of the game: “I love the fact that we actually play full contact and that’s one of my roles as one of the bigger guys on the team is sorta, you know, I wanna rough people up.”

So I found out. But I also learned a little bit about turning, and scoring, and a lot about falling over. Ok, so I’m never going to be good enough for this team, but I’d do this again any day. It was a blast.

If you’ve never seen one of these games up close, you owe it to yourself to take in some of the tournament. It runs at the Mastercard Centre on Kipling Avenue in Toronto from the first to the seventh. Be prepared for some wicked shots, high speed, and some bone-crunching hits. And help cheer on our national team before they head off to Sochi hopefully with Kevin Rempel on right wing.