Off season is dating season!

When the hockey season ends, many players head home for a summer of relaxation, shinny, and catching up with their hometown girls WINK. After I posted my Ragetastic entry yesterday, I was inspired to share a G-rated Ragetastic Voyage of my own. Well it’s not very Ragetastic, or a voyage for that matter. It’s more like what I can only imagine is in a hockey player’s top ten for worst possible things that can happen on a date. I figure it’s OK if I talk about it since training camp is only a few weeks away, so if the guy reads this blog, then he’ll be out of town soon enough and I’ll be safe until next summer. Here’s my story.

It was the off season, and I was headed a couple hours outside of Toronto to visit my friend for the weekend. We had planned to go out to one of the two bars in town that night. She took me to this intense country bar, and I introduced her to the Awesome (a drink my friend made up: Amaretto, pineapple, and cranberry – tastes like candy!). After I’ve had a couple Awesomes, I noticed this guy just STARING at me. He looked familiar, so I was trying to figure out how I knew him, and it looked like he was trying to do the same. Finally I realized he was one of the Leafs. He must have recognized me from my brief stint with MLSE because you KNOW I definitely don’t go to enough Leafs games for him to recognize me that way!

Anyway, once I realized he was a Leaf, my peripheral suddenly expanded and I noticed that there were about fifty hockey players standing right in front of me. As it turned out, the local OHL hockey team was having their alumni reunion that weekend, which was funny because that summer I think I crossed paths with about three different teams’ reunions – including the night before. A few of the guys talked to me that night, which led to a lot of irritating messages during the season whenever their team beat the Flyers. However, I was lucky that the Flyers did finally win one of the match ups.

One guy was from Toronto, and he wanted to “go out sometime.” So, two weeks later we went out for drinks, etc. (Don’t get excited that’s not a scandalous “etc”). The drinks went well until we had to leave and I ran into one of my sorority sisters – eek. I don’t like to introduce dates to people I know until I’m sure if I like them or not – definitely not a first date thing. (I’m eccentric, whatever. Are you just figuring this out now?) After drinks, we went to another place to get dessert where I was forced to set my phone on silent so he wouldn’t notice my friend texting, “Who’s the hot guy?!?!?!” every five seconds.

We were being seated in a backyard patio, so we didn’t see who our waitress was until it was too late – too late for him that is haha! Our waitress comes over and, to my surprise, they know each other. He didn’t look impressed, but he was being civil. So, we order our dessert and beverages and she takes off. Naturally, I had to ask him what that was all about. He says, “She was one of the puck bunnies back in [OHL team city]. *lowers voice* You know, one of the baaaad ones.” I started laughing and told him we could go somewhere else if he was uncomfortable. He didn’t want to go and began regaling me with tales of the girl’s (and her friend’s – he claimed that the bad puck bunnies always travel in twos) extra-curricular activities…if you catch my drift. He only interrupted himself every so often to lie to me and tell me that TSN just announced that they traded my Flyers crush to the Kings to piss me off. Apparently, it’s unpatriotic of me not to follow a Canadian team – you can probably guess where he plays (or played at the time).

The waitress was definitely rattled by the fact that he was on a date as well. She was reading a lot into the situation, and you know she was hiding in the kitchen texting her partner in crime and telling her how ugly and gross I looked lol. We had each ordered our own dessert, but she only brought out one. She obviously assumed we’d want to be coupley and share – boo, I wanted to eat all the cake! Grumpy. Way to make my evening even more awkward than it already was.

If the puck bunny situation wasn’t bad enough for the guy, he was crashing and burning on top of it. This guy was pulling out all the lines. The “you’re so much different than other girls,” and some others that are so embarrassing, I can’t even type them or remember them with a straight face. One of the best parts was when he assumed that I must read a lot, and tried to convince me that he is the same way. He told me there was this book he was planning to read someday haha, which, I’m not going to lie, it did mildly impress me at the time. It sounded like a ridiculously long textbook-esque book that I don’t think I’d ever touch in a million years, and definitely wouldn’t read for pleasure while I was in the height of my university career.

The end of the night was the most awkward part, though. While walking back to the cars, buddy has his arm around me and wouldn’t you know that I would run into the guy that I was currently (mildly) into – noooooooooo! To make it more uncomfortable, he was too scared to even try to kiss me. But he was trying to desperately work up the nerve. We were seriously standing there for twenty minutes (awkward) while he was concentrating intensely on how to make his attack. I was naturally standing there with my most taunting Clint Eastwood make-my-day face. Twenty minutes later he finally gave up and settled for the hug haha! He is still scared of me to this day, but continues to entertain me with his “romantic” lines.

So, that’s my story. What? I told you this was a G-rated adventure, and I didn’t mean that in the, “there’s actually an X-rated version that I’m keeping to myself” way. After all, I’m not one of the “bad ones.” Until next time…keep your stick on the ice.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 16th, 2009 at 9:25 PM and is filed under Hockey Players, mating game, off season, puck bunnies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.