I hope some of you weren’t in the middle of reading my book, Down the Rabbit Hole: A Guide to Puck Bunnies because, as you’ll notice, the content has been removed from Psycho Lady Hockey. It has been five and a half years since I finished writing DTRH, and nearly three years since my former publisher delivered the sad news that he had fallen ill with cancer and was closing down his business for good. However, there is a new light at the end of the tunnel. Over the past three months, I have been in discussion with those in the biz about the future of the manuscript of my teen years, and it has been decided that Down the Rabbit Hole: A Guide to Puck Bunnies is officially back on the market! I guess we’ll see what happens this time around, but the next time you see it, it will (hopefully) be in book form. Right now, we are looking at a 2-3 year timeline, so I apologize to those who didn’t get through it, and will now have to be extremely patient before they can find out how it ends. Sorry!

However, the original Down the Rabbit Hole is not the book I want to discuss today, it’s actually the sequel. I mentioned last week that I recovered some long lost and long forgotten hockey shit from my old PC, and that several chapters of my abandoned manuscript were rediscovered. After uncovering the unsettling finding that I had named the fictitious hockey team in my story the Coyotes, not only five years before I started following the team, but a solid four years before I had even heard whispers of the Arizona Prophecy, I decided to reread the rest of the book. The odd coincidences started to pile up, it was almost as though I had predicted my life until this point. The characters, including the protagonist, all bore the names of people who would fill those exact roles in my life years later. People I wouldn’t even meet, or hear about, for years to come. The names of teams, the names of cities, and even some events all played out exactly how they would in real life.

At first I was amused by this, until I came across two possible death scenes. Death by hockey player. One scene was unfinished, but the other one told an eerie story. In the finished version, an anonymous hockey player does something so horrible to my character that she runs off in the middle of the night, and into a snowstorm. She is barreling down an unnamed interstate (which, by the way, I hadn’t even been on a hockey road trip in the States at this point in my actual life), and inevitably hits black ice, and is thrown off the road to her death. For a brief moment, before crossing over, she finds herself at the bedside of the hockey player who had thoughtlessly pushed her away, only to discover that he was actually obsessively in love with her. Naturally, I would think nothing of this, if it wasn’t for one glaring detail. The car I was driving, the car that ended up killing me in the States, was the EXACT car I just bought three months ago. I went into great detail in the story describing the make, colour, and interior of the car. The thing was this car isn’t a dream car of mine. In fact, I had never owned a car of this make, or even this colour before, nor had I even thought about owning one. I wasn’t even going to buy this car, but while I was waiting for the dealer to bring me the red car I was going to get, Lynxie, my black beauty, called to me from across the lot, and I ended up signing his papers that day! Crazy. Needless to say, my friends have pretty much forbidden me from making any American hockey trips by car this winter.

Now, you can be of the attitude that I subconsciously moved my life in this direction because I had written this story, and that may be true, but the whole writing process of the DTRH sequel was a bit odd. The parts of the book that were completed were written in a series of scenes. I would see a scene in my head and write it down. However, I had forgotten all the scenes that weren’t based on real life events. That’s why I was so shocked to see the thing about the Coyotes, and the characters, and the car. I kind of feel now, that rewriting the sequel to Down the Rabbit Hole should be a priority. Maybe it’s crazy and superstitious, but I almost feel like I need to rewrite MY story and end it the way I want it to end – not in some grisly accident on the side of a highway.

You see, the sequel to Down the Rabbit Hole was written as a type of fantasy revenge plot. It is hard for any writer to keep themselves completely distant from the personalities and the lives of their fictitious characters. Although, parts of the story were changed, DTRH 2 was essentially the “what could have been” story had I personally chosen a different path after certain events in my life. The story discusses what could have happened if I had decided to go the way of the puck bunny and completely submerge myself in that world. The events leading up to this pivotal decision were real, but everything after that was invented.

Largely, this book had to do with a relationship I had with a hockey player and how my character decided to get her revenge on him by becoming a full fledge puck bunny. She felt that the best way for her to injure him was to become this thing and all it symbolized. For he would surely believe that if she was a puck bunny all along, that she never truly cared about him, and was merely using him for the number on his back. In real life, this was my actual reasoning, and I had more than ample opportunity to execute this plan. However, my heart got the better of me, and at the eleventh hour, sure enough, I had a “headache.” Instead, I chose a life of celibacy for the next four years.

I wish I could tell you that our real life relationship was something extraordinary or worthy of a fairytale. I wish I could tell you that one random winter’s day, I decided to go to a hockey game far away from home, and that I causally looked up from my seat to find that an unknown yet strangely familiar pair of eyes had surgically attached themselves to me for what would end up being half a decade. Unfortunately, that is not his story. There was nothing special about us. We met through the team scout, or rather I should say, he tried to meet me that way. I guess these scouts are responsible for scouting more than just player talent. I was flattered I guess. I thought he was beautiful, but I never really noticed him, or anyone for that matter, apart from how they performed on the ice. He was pretty decent on skates.

The details of the good times are a blur. I remember we only had an argument once, and it was over a charity. We disagreed on its value and possible “corruption.” However, the “good times” were pretty short lived when the ugly truth came out. As you might have already guessed, he wasn’t a one woman man. But the most shocking thing of all was that I was the OTHER woman. He had kept his secret well – I had absolutely no idea that she existed. You’d think I’d feel better in knowing that I was the home wrecker, but that satisfaction only goes so far. I was still the loser in all of this.

I remember a period of great sadness, though, the actual agony from the time period is trapped in a memory that can’t quite be recalled or relived. I couldn’t even watch his games on TV for a very long time. I swore I’d never date another hockey player, but for someone so involved with hockey, this essentially meant that I was refusing to date anyone in my social circle, which didn’t quite make sense. Eventually, I started to give hockey players a chance again. Guys who had been waiting years and years to get a date, were finally getting the OK to take me to dinner. But they were all the same. They all had the same past and they all had the same li(n)es, “You’re different from other girls.” Well, that may be so, but different doesn’t seem to be what hockey players want. They all marry the same woman; some anorexic blonde who doesn’t mind being cheated on so long as he buys her things. They have an “understanding.”

I’ve had several people email me about puck bunnies, or how they have been mislabeled as such. One woman said to me, “The truth is, I would date a hockey player, but I would also date someone working at Starbucks.” It’s true. When it comes down to it, hockey players are just guys. Could I get serious about the right one? Of course, I could. I think for a lot of women in hockey, the dream of the “different”
hockey player is the uncharted territory that everyone wants to discover. However, does a hockey player who didn’t sleep around or take advantage of all the women that throw themselves at him really out there? I doubt it. Instead, I believe that somewhere out there a hockey player may find his “soul connection” with a woman involved in the game. Maybe that connection will be strong enough for him to change his filthy, whorey, three-some having ways. However, not a lot of people find these connections in their lifetime, so it’s more likely that the uniform hockey wife will continue to be the norm as far as arm candy is concerned.

As for this hockey player, he ended up marrying that girl. He had to. He knocked her up, and they had a shot gun wedding. I’m not going to lie, I was kind of glorified in how massive she was in her white dress. I’m sure his mother was thrilled, too. She was VERY religious. The truth is, I never loved him. I never really had the chance to. And I mean if any part of me really cared about him, I have to wonder if it was really him I was into in the first place. The whole situation was based on a lie. He had me so convinced that he was this good person. He even told me several times over that he was different from other hockey players. He was “smart,” “nice,” and “not a whore.” Sure he was. The strangest thing of all was his final words to me, “You should stay away from hockey players, most of them are bad guys, they aren’t like me.” Right.

I don’t follow his team. Once in a blue moon, I’ve seen him play the team that I’ve been following by chance. Does he notice me in the stands? I don’t know. I try not to pay attention to him. From time to time, I’ll flip through my Center Ice and I’ll see him playing a shift here and there, or he’ll be featured in a highlight on TSN, but it’s just like seeing any other player. I feel like I never knew him, and that the fading past was just a horrible dream. It’s like it never happened, and in a perfect world, it wouldn’t have.

Top Photo: The Kiss. My favourite piece by Gustav Klimt.