Ice-Hockey: The Day Dream

A local men's ice-hockey team in Michigan races against the superior Stars in an American tale of pluralism divide.

A sports fanfiction dedicated to a world sport of unique...diagonals! Hope you like it, 

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The local story from Michigan this day is a tale about ice-hockey dreams held by new athletes, men, who want to bring good cheer for their town after 9/11. Ice-hockey as you may or not know is a sport requiring great swiftness, balance, control, speed and grit, scoring, concentrated defensive moves, and sometimes man talk! It's a game that makes you want to cuddle up to the fires of human dreams. Follow along.

The newly built local Michigan ice-hockey rink has enabled local businesses to band together to fund the teams who'll compete annually and in this first year in a division of 20 games before the playoffs which will include the top half or top-10 teams. The favorites are the Stars led by Bart Starr but an upstart challenger is the Fury led by Amlan Satan, an Algerian-American. The rink is handsome and prepped for these newsworthy ice-hockey games in Michigan.

AMLAN SATAN: I love ice-hockey and Michigan, and it reminds me of the competition behind male spirits and cheerleaders.

Many companies (e.g., Stihl) have offered special nifty equipment to ice-hockey players locally or professionally! This is a game requiring endorsement but also offering social diarism. It's not as artsy as say tennis but it certainly generates novelty-drawings.

This story takes place years ago, and now Amlan Satan, the star of the Fury, is older and thinner too. However, he too recounts and remembers these glory days of local ice-hockey league invested by Michigan businessmen and how the games reminded him that local sports is as dream-worthy as any nationally broadcast professional sports event. Look at Amlan now, he's so thin!

Look at Amlan in the days of the Fury in Michigan, and he's standing all the way on the left next to the coach. He's stockier and not as thin of course as expected and of course he's not wearing his signature librarian eye-glasses. Amlan and the Fury were in position to challenge the domination of the Stars and Bart Starr. Look at Amlan in this vintage photo, kept by many a Michigan local ice-hockey fan and his future wife Linda.

AMLAN SATAN: Daydreams about ice-hockey move us to tell our kids to draw comic book doodles of ice-skating ghouls!

Local ice-hockey fanfare is nothing new. It's generated local headlines and cheers around the world for generations and in areas as disparate as British Columbia and green emerald Ireland. Of course, in America ice-hockey is both a college champagne sport and a professional dream (NHL). It was a surprise when the Fury drafted Amlan Satan, a gifted ice-hockey player with a flare and flair for steals and swift goal strikes and setting up offenses to create a 1-2-3 scoring stance. He's a minority, and it was a thrill to see a minority contribute dioramic to this Caucasian-dominated sport...around the world, really.

AMLAN SATAN: We used to drink after the games and remark on the appreciation of our local Michigan cheerleaders.

Pro-hockey (NHL) cheerleaders of course have turned fanfare for the under-appreciated world sport into an art-form. Ice-hockey requires so much courage, and any kind of fanfare is always appreciated, and in this age of TV and media, it's a thing of great dialogic dance. It makes for great video-games too for youngsters.

The Fury and the Stars were coasting through that first historic Michigan local ice-hockey season. They made it to the playoffs with the Stars ranked #1 and the underdog upstart Fury ranked #3. No one expected the success of the Fury despite early predictions and hype surrounding the Algerian Satan (Amlan!). However, Amlan managed to carry his team in ways that highlighted the Fury's general ability to corral offenses while creating inventive forms of ice-design. Here's a photo of him trying to steal the puck from an opponent in one of the playoff games. No eye-glasses you see.

The Stars were the superior team, but Amlan Satan's Fury wanted to challenge their special brand of organized brutal offense and defensive confidence with a sneaky kind of team-coordinated fury. The Stars were coached by a gifted man and exhibited multiple forms of on-rink diligence.

The fanfare generated by Satan's Fury during the local Michigan ice-hockey playoff games crystallized into some relevant and related pro-sport 'cousin' games involving Red Wings and Flyers and other teams interested to see how their nationalized media-embraced sport was catalyzing localized forms of team-dance! It was an American dream, friends.

The Fury reached the championship game against the Stars. Amlan Satan scored a quick early goal by speeding around the goalie's legs before the Stars offered a maelstrom of goals, bringing the lead to 4-1 at halftime. In the halftime locker-room, the Fury coach urged everyone to work around Satan and bring the team to inventive forms of offense while the defense simply remained focused. In the second half, Amlan derived two nifty assist-goals to the Fury strikers who're standing right in front of the Stars goal and then two goals of his own by weaving around the Stars defense in a twisting and circular maneuver, helping the Fury win a heart-stopping final 6-5 victory. After the championship was won and the game over, the coach took the local team and their star Satan to a local re-airing of Slap Shot at the local theater. There were drinks of course.

AMLAN SATAN: I want to be remembered as the 'Gabriela Sabatini' of local Michigan ice-hockey diaries!!

Ice-hockey is such a diligent yet graphic sport and requires so much human drama and dance on the ice that it's no shock that an ethnic minority finally broke through the ranks to bring a glorified local Michigan men's team great social dreams. This was a story of American fanfare, American excellence, and yes, American dimension.

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)