A 34-year-old lawyer finally realizes his dreams in professional hockey

If you work hard, persevere and never give up on your dreams, you too could be a 34-year-old rookie in the lowest tier of professional hockey.

The bus always quiets down after a few hours. After the post-game adrenaline burns off and the alcohol diffuses. The stories fizzle out. Seats recline. Legs bridge across the aisle as players go horizontal, trying to sleep. It’s sometime after midnight. We’ve been on the road for two, three hours. We’ll travel through the night, straight on ‘til morning, 20 Peter Pans postponing adulthood.

I’m still awake, sober as always. I never sleep well after hockey. Tonight, returning from my first ever road trip in the minor professional FPHL, I’ll be amped for hours. Looking out the window, I listen to Van Halen and reflect on our weekend split with Port Huron. We lost on a late 5-on-3 power play goal. I was on the ice. A teammate blames me. I blame him. We’re probably both right.

I am ready to go home after a long weekend behind enemy lines. The fans were ruthless — and pretty amusing. Tonight, a guy sitting on the glass held up a woman’s purse and asked if I’d lost something. After the game, a teenager looked me square in the face and suggested I might prefer the company of men. My teammates, who I was still getting to know, were pretty ruthless, too. Last night, some players hosted local Tinder girls for this weird, orgy thing that another teammate sat and watched. I wasn’t invited. I’m a 34-year-old attorney, and likely the oldest rookie in pro hockey. I don’t advertise my age or credentials, but my younger teammates seem to sense I’m not the hotel-orgy-type-of-guy.

Interrupting my reflections, one of our rookie wingers stands up and staggers to the front of the bus. I assume he’s going to speak with Coach Dave MacIsaac, who sits next to the driver. I’ve grossly misread the situation. When the rookie gets to the bus’s front stairwell, he plants his feet, lowers his waistband, and begins to urinate. Thick streams of foamy piss splatter off the bus’s rubber floor. The kid doesn’t know where he is. The driver looks back, horrified. Coach shoots awake, shocked. A captain rushes from the back of the bus to intervene. I smile and watch. I am most certainly too old for this shit.

Professional hockey dreams that started early

You’d think I would have started playing pro hockey earlier. I’d harbored professional ambitions my entire life. As a child, as a teenager, as an adult. My intention persisted decade after decade, unyielding. In childhood, my pro intentions likely seemed far-fetched. I could barely skate. Youth coaches assigned me to the lowest level “C” teams, where my teammates and I toiled in shame, beating the puck square, a real-world District 5. But I loved to play. So, I played. On my own, in the garage, in empty parking lots, under street lamps. Hundreds of hours alone, stickhandling and daydreaming. And in high school, on Friday and Saturday night, when my friends would go drink in some empty field, I’d go to the rink, knowing I’d have the place to myself.

I was a late bloomer, but I bloomed in a relative sense. I never became an NHL prospect or a blue-chip NCAA prospect. Jerry York never called to check in. But by the time I graduated high school, I had surpassed my local peers. My focus on hockey had become myopic. Instead of going to college, I went to play “junior” hockey — a venue where high-end players from around the Northern Hemisphere converge to further develop, earn an NCAA roster spot and put themselves on a pro trajectory.

People say junior hockey is where “boys go to become men.” Maybe. For me, junior is where hockey started to suck. The odd thing about junior hockey is that, for the high school grads, there’s nothing else. Maybe some part-time work or classes. But for the most part, it’s just hockey. Some players call the hockey-only format “living the dream.” I thought it was a nightmare: long bus rides stringing together too many games in dreary, grey-brown cities like Troy, Binghamton, and Hartford; sadistic coaches who, seemingly without exception, were bitter about their own stunted pro careers; fights against Neanderthalic opponents; fights against Neanderthalic teammates; entire 25-man rosters chasing the same three girls from the local community college. It’s an ugly existence. I played for three years.

In junior, unhappy, I never got any momentum going. I got traded from team to team. Yet, by my third year of junior, I had developed a well-rounded skill set — a long, powerful skating stride, a snapshot that absolutely exploded off the toe of my blade. I was one of the most physically capable players on a solid east coast Junior-A team — typically a recipe for continued advancement and success. But I failed to Voltron my skills into a consistently productive package. My last year, slotted as a winger after a career primarily at defense, my coach expected me to have a 15-goal season. I scored once. It was a mess. As my recruitment prospects dwindled — and as the kids I grew up with entered their senior year of college — I became aware of the opportunity-cost incurred from pursuing hockey so strictly.

My NCAA career followed a similarly flaccid path. I bounced around, playing freshman year for a school I didn’t belong at. Before sophomore season, I transferred. Few of the players at my new school could keep up with me, but I’d transferred in unannounced, and the roster was set. I was assigned to the practice squad and promised an imminent promotion. When that promise was broken, I didn’t take it well. Instead of playing nice, biding my time, I laid my indignation bare. My relationship with the coaching staff imploded and it became clear: I was never playing for them. I had a simple choice. I could transfer again, I could drop out and maybe find a low-level pro team, or I could quit hockey.

I quit hockey. It was time to focus on something else. On school, music, travel, girls, whatever. Hockey hadn’t been going well for years. I was the common denominator in a half-dozen failed arrangements. It was a deflating, heartbreaking failure.

A hockey dream deferred

Now, none of this is particularly noteworthy. It’s a tired story, really — a sports prospect falls short of his dreams. My narrative arc deviates, however, from the legions of sorry saps whose careers terminated in college, in that I never really laid the thing to rest. I never accepted the most rational, apparent conclusion – my hockey career was over because I wasn’t good enough. On the contrary. I knew I was good enough. And a little, shining ember in my subconscious refused to accept that my hockey career was over. Perhaps, because it wasn’t. Technically, I moved on. I lived without hockey. But my cratered scapula ached and ached.

Playing hockey had been a childhood dream. And a time-consuming adolescent venture. When I quit, I needed another outlet for those energies and ambitions. So, I dug up another long-shot, childhood aspiration to pursue with vigorous abandon.

As a toddler, still small enough to be carried, I hounded my family to take me to the Intrepid Museum. There, on the East River, I would be led past the A-6, the A-12, and the F-14, enchanted. Now, as a college graduate, (and washed-up hockey player) those enchantments resurfaced. I decided (remembered) that I wanted to be a US Air Force fighter pilot.

A USAF pilot slot is one of the most exclusive gigs in the US military. The vast majority of USAF pilot applicants are told to get lost. I didn’t mind—the vast majority of Junior-A hockey applicants are told to get lost. Despite the recruiters’ warnings — you got a better chance at getting into Harvard, kid — I committed to the process. Actually, the process consumed me.

I spent almost three years obsessed with becoming an Air Force pilot. I worked odd jobs and entirely eschewed other professional pursuits. I outwaited a sequestration clamp-down. I studied doggedly and aced the five-hour-long Air Force Officer Qualifying Test. I trained to max out the fitness tests. I took out a $10k loan and began civilian flight training to improve my application. I earned a Private Pilot License, which takes most people several months, in just a few weeks. I passed my MEPS medical evaluations and was declared healthy for military service. I even avoided recreational hockey because certain injuries would disqualify me from the Air Force. When my application was rejected, I started from scratch and reapplied.

My selection, as one of 27 pilots accepted on the 15OT03 board, wasn’t just validating — it was absolving. I had desperately wanted to fly and to serve, yes. But also, I needed the USAF as a salve for the lingering sense of failure my hockey career had caused. When I raised my hand and took the Oath of Office, I felt more soothed than anything. I wasn’t a failure! I was going to be an officer and a gentleman in the United States Air Force. I was going to fly, and fight, and crow. I was going to be alright.

I wasn’t alright, apparently. When the aeromedical team at Beale Air Force Base conducted my Class 1A Flight Physical, they found a few problems that MEPS hadn’t detected. Actually, Beale found a few problems that no doctor had ever detected. Not in 28 years. To stay in the Air Force and commission, to get into that F-15 cockpit and break the sound barrier, I would need a medical waiver. My waiver was denied. My 10-year service contract was voided, and I was medically discharged. Suddenly career-less and financially destitute, my hockey-related failures felt somewhat quaint.

The next day, I drove 90 minutes from where I was living in Tahoe, to Reno, Nevada. The world’s “Biggest Little City” looked the way I felt — dried out and defeated. Now 29, I had spent 10 years pursuing impractical, childhood dreams unsuccessfully. I had no prospects — and no more childhood dreams to chase. So, I’d come to Reno to capitulate, like seemingly everyone else in town. But I wasn’t coming to gamble or to score meth. I was coming for the Borders bookstore, to buy LSAT prep material. I was going to apply for law school, where dreams go to die a pragmatic death.

In law school, each class is graded on a strict curve, making everything a zero-sum competition with your classmates. Your entire grade derives from one three-hour final exam. The curriculum is so time-intensive that the American Bar Association prohibits first-year students from taking jobs and recommends they not commit more than ten hours per week to anything not law school-related. Dropout rates are high. As a 30-year-old running out of runway, in a zero-sum competition with my nerdy, hand-raising 24-year-old classmates, I should have been all law school, all the time. I should have been one of those neurotic bastards, studying hunched, by candlelight, eyes blurred from overuse. And I was sometimes. Other times, I was playing hockey.

Back on the ice

When I got to the University of Oregon School of Law in 2017, I hadn’t skated regularly in seven years. Yet, between classes, I got this little hockey urge. I started putzing around the local rink, where the Oregon Ducks happened to have an intercollegiate (non-NCAA) team. My quads and glutes, formerly thick and strong to the point where I had trouble finding pants that fit, had shrunken back to normal-person size. My snapshot, once an Olympian thunderbolt, now arced limply. Still, my mechanics suggested a higher pedigree. When Oregon coach Rylee Orr saw me one afternoon, he invited me to join the team. I played coy at first. I don’t know, Coach, I have so much work. What I didn’t mention was that I had picked Oregon Law over other options, in part, because Oregon had a hockey team. In truth, I was hanging around the rink, strutting like a little peacock and waiting for someone to notice my bright feathers. I told Orr I’d come to practice, just to check things out. I wasn’t kidding anyone, though — I was back, baby.

I loved being a Duck. I was older than the coaches and it was lower-level hockey than I’d played in my heyday, but no matter. It was the perfect setting for rehabilitation. Gradually, long-dormant neural pathways came back online. Old muscle memories resurfaced. My hands softened. My game sharpened. But things were different; I had a wider perspective now. Hockey was just a game that I loved, not some life quest. I relaxed and, for the first time since I was seventeen, I had fun playing.

Counterintuitively, I began to focus less on law school, and more on hockey. My new, expansive perspective couldn’t change the fact that I didn’t grow up dreaming about becoming a litigator. My experiment with practicality was faltering. While my more responsible classmates were outlining the Rule Against Perpetuities or prepping for mock trial, I was flying across the country with my teammates, practicing at 6 a,m., and desecrating the ABA’s 10-hour rule. I even gave up my spot on law review because I expected it would interfere with hockey.

I have no regrets. I did fine in law school, joined the bar, and accepted a scholarship to continue my studies at NYU. I was also feeling good on the ice, almost like my 2009-self. I had worked hard to get back —  hill sprinting, powerlifting, and stickhandling. I wasn’t ready to retire again. My little ambition-ember twinkled mischievously.

I grew up in Newtown, Connecticut. My first job was at the Danbury Ice Arena, where I worked game day ops for the infamous Danbury Trashers. Now, after a decade of transience, I was back in the area for grad school. The Trashers were long-gone — they folded when their owner James Galante was convicted for racketeering and wire fraud — but Danbury had a new pro team, the Hat Tricks. Dave MacIsaac, a former Trasher defenseman, was coaching. I found his email and shot him a cold message. I told him the truth: I had played Junior-A, NCAA, had just graduated from the University of Oregon, and was now attending graduate school (I emailed from my NYU address). Yeah okay, it wasn’t the whole truth, so help me God. I didn’t think MacIsaac needed to know upfront that I hadn’t played a single game during Obama’s two-term tenure. I reasoned that if he saw me on the ice before he learned I was older than Sidney Crosby — who made his pro debut in 2005 — I would be A-OK. Whether he sleuthed my age or not I don’t know. My bid worked; he invited me to training camp.

“Sometimes you looked good. Sometimes you didn’t,” MacIsaac tells me during my training camp exit interview. It was good enough. Our GM, Billy McCreary offered me a contract: $100 a week — low even by FPHL standards. I, a juris doctor, and esteemed member of the Oregon State Bar, negotiated with McCreary, a long-time pro hockey player, to increase my salary. No dice. Take it or leave it. But he offered a caveat.

“Can you fight? It’s a $100 bonus per fight,” McCreary offered.

When I was younger, when I was angsty and ascendant and listening to thrash metal, yeah, I fought occasionally. I still have a crescent-shaped scar on my right knuckle, from an uppercut that landed precisely against the underside of someone’s incisor. But I’m older now, down to 165 pounds, over-educated, listening to a lot of Phil Collins.

“Is there a lightweight division?” I ask, employing the attorney-certified non-answer. MacIsaac laughs.

“Yes, there is,” McCreary says. Welcome to the minors.

The FPHL is a “single-A” league. No one is going to the NHL. No one is buying a home on their earnings. It’s the only place where a 34-year-old could Roy Hobbs his way onto a roster. But it’s pro hockey, with wily ECHL veterans; imported Russian wingers ripping bombs bar-down; 220-pound enforcers; the occasional NHL draft pick; big arenas; autograph-seeking fans. And now: me.

A few minutes before the season opener, we host two VIP visitors in our locker room. James and AJ Galante, newly famous from the Netflix documentary Untold: Crimes & Penalties. Our team plays in the infrastructure that they built, 15 years ago, so they still enjoy full access. For me, it’s a moment of serendipity. I spoke to James once, before he went to prison, back when the Trashers were in town. He saw me skating during one of my solo sessions, taking a zillion shots on an empty net. Afterward, he told me that if I kept shooting like I was, I could play for the Trashers one day. I’m sure he was just being nice, in the rote way public figures often are, but I was a kid, and I took it to heart. It seemed poignant that he was now christening my pro debut.

“Tough times don’t last,” James tells us, “tough people do.” Amen, brother. AJ throws a handful of hundred-dollar bills into the air. I’ve arrived.