A little Rolnick hockey background...
When I was a kid, my brother and I would play street hockey.
Whether it was on the back porch, or in the middle of the
cul-de-sac, we would run ourselves ragged. During that time,
the NHL Atlanta
Flames had yet to move to Calgary, and both my parents
and grandparents had season tickets. While I cheered on Willie
Plett and Boom-Boom Geffrion, my dad would refer to me as
"the Great Gregsky" (in honor of my youth hockey
idol, the Great One, Wayne Gretzky).
Since my brother and I were the ones with a bunch of sticks,
and even two actual nets, it was up to us to organize neighborhood
games. Unfortunately, I pretty much stopped playing around
age 14.
11 years later, while living in Boston, I began to inline
skate. Then, in the summer of 1999, I moved back down to Atlanta
and stumbled into a weekly pickup game of inline hockey in
an office parking lot. The more I played, the more addicted
I became.
One day, while driving along the highway, I saw a sign for
a place called "Kudzu
Hockey," which actually offered organized inline
hockey leagues. I decided to give it a try, and about a season
or so into it, I began circulating emails after each game,
known as "the hockey update."
This tradition continued when I moved to Chicago, and began
covering not just my summer inline league, but my eventual
floor hockey leagues as well. Starting in the fall of 2005,
the hockey update is poised to return, further chronicling
the adventures of the Chicago
Phantoms ice hockey team in the Hockey
North America league.
While some of the original emails have been lost, the ones
that remain are posted below. Enjoy and STAY TUNED!