So, let me just start off by saying… THERE IS NO FUCKING DRESS CODE!

I should warn you right now that this is about to be another puck bunny inspired rant, so if you don’t like when I get all cunty with truth, then this is your cue to bounce.

Ever since I can remember, what a girl wore to a hockey game said a lot about her brain and her motives, or at least that’s what all the misguided 15 and 16 year old she-fans thought. Back in those days, girls practically wore a uniform to every junior hockey game they attended. It was the standard “I’m trying to look casual” jeans, coupled with the “I’m trying to look put together, but not overdone” black top. Seriously, you could have looked around the entire arena at the sea of black tops with varying depths to the neckline – it was actually kind of ridiculous. But the thing that most people don’t know is that these outfits weren’t meant to be a disguise to hide bunny ears and/or cotton tails, they were meant to be deterrents so as to not undeservingly be branded a puck slut by the strangers scattered across the rink, and the planet.

A couple years ago I had my head bitten off after an interview I had with another hockey site. I had tried to be all do-goody, and inspiring for young female hockey fans by telling the world to simply not care if someone unfairly branded them as a “puck bunny,” because, frankly, it didn’t matter in the long run. I wanted young female fans to stop feeling like they constantly had something to prove, because that can be extremely exhausting, and can completely taint the hockey experience. Being a fan is supposed to be FUN, remember? Anyway, evidently, according to some giant gummed she-horse, the only women that get called puck bunnies, are women that act like puck bunnies, and I was obviously conducting myself in a horrific manner. Nice, huh? But, actually, I can say with 110% certainty that most if not all young female hockey fans have been identified as a puck bunny at least once at every hockey game they’ve ever attended, whether they are aware of it or not.

“Puck bunny” is more often than not a label earned, not by actions, but simply by appearance alone. Think about the last time you saw a “puck bunny” at a hockey game. She probably wasn’t doing anything that different from you, but you categorized her as such likely because she was young, possibly blond, not dressed like a bum, and Caucasian. Yes, even race plays a role in who is and is not identified as a puck bunny, but let’s not get into that, that’s one of my third year Anthropology papers!

Basically, female hockey fans developed this set of unspoken guidelines for how to dress and behave at a hockey game, so as to not come across as a puck bunny. If you didn’t dress like a bum or wear a hockey jersey, you were a puck bunny. The funny thing is some women don’t feel comfortable in hockey jerseys, especially back then in the age before the nice fitted ones came into existence. So, how not wanting to feel fat all night translates to, “I’m trying to blow hockey players,” I’ll never know. If you looked pretty or visited the ladies room (to check your make up obviously, not pee or anything normal like that), you were a puck bunny. Because, in case you didn’t get the memo, women can only look their best anywhere but a hockey rink. It’s all so ridiculous, and I really wish that girls today would try to rise above all these non-existent rules. Sometimes I think those of us that grew up with Canadian junior hockey were lucky because we grew out of this phase a lot faster than our American counterparts, that seem to take these concepts with them into the NHL arenas of adulthood.

And don’t think I’m ahead by a century because I wasted so much time in high school trying to obey these rules, too. Back in 2002, Toronto was the host of the NHL Entry Draft. I really, really, really wanted to go, but I had no idea I’d be in Toronto (I didn’t move back to Toronto until August that year) until the day of the event, so I didn’t even think to bring it up to my parents until it was too late. On the day of the Entry Draft I was wearing a Psycho Lady red sundress. My parents had just agreed to drive me to the Air Canada Centre, if I wanted to be there. I must have vacillated for a good half an hour. I really wanted to go, but I didn’t have a change of clothes, and there was no way, NO WAY that I was going to waltz into the ACC in a spaghetti strapped RED sundress because I didn’t want to deal with the glares, and the suspicious looks that I got at every hockey game I had attended since I turned 16. So, I didn’t go. I missed out on the NHL Entry Draft because of a stupid insignificant rule that shouldn’t have mattered. To this day I still haven’t gone to a Draft, but the funny thing is, in the 2009-10 season, I wore a bright Psycho Lady red dress to my first ever game at Madison Square Garden.

We can’t all be perfect and unbiased all the time. Hell, there are times that I see a couple girls in booty shorts, bikini tops, and hooker boots at hockey games, and I just think, “Come on, really?! It’s freezing in here! What are you trying to pull?” I’m sure we’ve all seen those girls, but the weird thing about these girls is that they are often found up in the cheap seats. So, if they are dressed like a “puck bunny” to attract a player, it’s not gonna do them much good way up there. Maybe, just maybe, these girls aren’t puck bunnies at all. Maybe, just maybe, they are the female equivalent of the overzealous man-fan that shows up to the rink half in the bag with bare chest painted in team colours.

I guess where I’m trying to go with this is to remind people that when you are at a hockey game this season, try not to get preoccupied with all this silly dress code crap. My intentions are good, even if people don’t understand them. If I had one wish for female fans this year it would be to stop caring about what you or other women are wearing or doing, and just enjoy the game you likely paid good money for. And if you ever get stuck because some girl walked in practically naked, just remember that you don’t know the story of anyone in that rink. You don’t know where they came from before the game, or where they are going after. Look at my top photo! That’s an actual game day outfit for a match between the Flyers and Sabres circa 2007-08! We had a birthday party to go to after, and there was going to be absolutely no time to change as we sped back to Toronto, so we just went to HSBC Arena as is. Luckily, I had a long coat, so I don’t think anyone, other than the parking attendant, who clapped for us, I might add, knew how scandalous we really were.

Anyway, this goes for the guys, too! There’s a lot of flack dished out to all the guys wearing suits at hockey games as well! Sure, I get how fans that have been banished to the cheap seats are pissed because the lower bowl is filled with corporate season seat holders, but that doesn’t mean that any of those guys that scored tickets through work don’t actually LOVE hockey, and want to be at that game just as much as you do. I mean, what do you expect them to do? Get off work, make a 90 minute commute back to their house to change, just so they can drive back downtown, miss the first half of the first period, just so you won’t hate them because their office has a business attire policy? Ridiculous.

OK. I think that’s it for my brief-ish rant. But, of course, I can’t end a post like this without first commenting on the pink jersey variable. I’ll be the first to admit that I own a pink jersey. It’s a Florida Panthers jersey that I bought in Florida at that big fancy mall thing near BankAtlantic Center prior to a game against the Bruins back in 2008! Here’s the thing… The jersey is pink. Some girls like pink. Get over it.

Looking for a place to happen. Making stops along the way…

Somewhere on the Eastern shore of Japan Konichiwa! Watashi wa Psycho Lady desu. Kanada shushin desu! Shumi wa ice hooooo-kaaaay desu!* Ask me how many times I’ve had to say this since I left Toronto on June 19th! When time limitations and language barriers come into play, my brief summary of myself seems pretty damn predictable, and, sadly, one-dimensional. However, as sad as that sounds, that’s exactly who I’ve come to be.

If you asked ten people to introduce themselves, chances are eight or nine of them would start by telling you their nationality. What makes us who we are? Finding myself on a plane to Japan exactly one year, one month, and one week after I left for Korea in 2010, I started to take a deeper look at myself (if you haven’t noticed). And aren’t you the lucky ones, that you get to read about my self-discoveries? It’s the offseason, and I’m in Japan! What do you want from me? Plus, it’s not like you read this site for the hockey, because, really, when have I ever actually written about that, anyway?

Coming to Japan, I knew one thing about me was true – I was restless. I moved from place to place more than most international travelers. I’ve met a surprising number of people here that have only been to two countries, their country of origin, and Japan. I always find it bewildering that someone would uproot a stable life at home, just to jump into a similar setup overseas, but maybe I just can’t identify with a need for that stability yet. The truth is I can’t identify with much more than my Japanese introduction entails.

After I settled into my life in Japan, and reviewed my three year plan for countries I plan to live in, the pessimism finally set in. I started thinking about that old adage that you’ll never be satisfied with what you get, if you aren’t satisfied with what you have. If I said that my restlessness wasn’t in part because I felt that I didn’t belong anywhere, then I’d be lying. The truth is, and this may shock a lot of you that have painted me as a true, patriotic, red and white, hockey loving Canadian, in terms of any sort of nationalistic pride, I pretty much have none. So, I suppose my biggest fear is that because I don’t feel like I belong where I came from, then I’ll be hard pressed to find a place where I do.

I’ve always been a peculiar case. Yes, I was raised in Canada, but I was both conceived and born across the Atlantic, in Germany. That little DEU on my Canadian passport has caused more than a few annoyances when trying to get VISAs to foreign countries, and even just crossing the border to enter the US for a damn Red Wings game! But you already know how the US Border Service hates me! A single female shouldn’t be traveling ALONE for any type of sporting event, after all, and I suppose being born in the same country as Hitler doesn’t help my likability much either.

So, I was born in Germany, this much is true, but if you asked me which of my EIGHT nationalities (nine if you include Canadian) I most identified with, I’d probably tell you Spanish, but even then, not that much. Espana is the matriarch of my family. My grandmother was born and raised in the North of Spain, and growing up, she was like a second mother to me, especially since my mom was a young, single mother until I was about four. So, while she was out working hard for the money, I was at Yaya’s house being brainwashed into believing that Spain not only discovered the world, but invented everything in it. Essentially, Spain is God, if you didn’t know.

And, boy, you didn’t mess with any of those historical facts either. I remember when I was in fourth grade, still being a bit of a Grandma’s girl, I had called her to tell her something I had learned in school, as I often did. After they got married, my parents and I relocated from Leafs Land to (Kitchener) Rangers territory, so my daily visits to the G-word’s (as my parents called her) house were over. Anyway, that day in history class, I had learned something that didn’t jive with the stories… I mean… facts I had been told since I was wee. Surely, Grandma wasn’t wrong, she just probably hadn’t learned the truth about Christopher Columbus yet! You see, Columbus may have been Italian, BUT he was employed by the Spanish, and he, therefore, THEY discovered America AND the world, and on purpose. He totally meant to do that, by the way. However, that fateful day in 1994, the enrichment teacher at St. Agnes Elementary School decided to fill our heads with vicious lies, probably fueled by racism, and tell us that there was evidence to suggest that the Vikings had been to Canada long before the famed Italian representative of Spain!

I still remember the phone call like it was yesterday.

Little Psycho: Grandma, Grandma! They were talking about Christopher Columbus in my Canadian history class today.

Yaya: And did dey tell ju dat he wass essent by dey Espanish?

Little Psycho: No, we learned that the Vikings got here long before he did!

Yaya: (Silence)

Little Psycho: Isn’t that interesting?… Grandma?…

Yaya: … Put jor mudder on dey phone!

I can’t be sure what was said exactly, but my mother picked up the phone and wouldn’t hang it up again for a good forty minutes. In that time, my Grandmother reamed her out for sending me to a school with such a poor education system.

My Grandmother, the most patriotic Spaniard that has ever lived, I’m quite convinced, went to England in her 20’s to study English. While she was there, she met an engineer from Poland, and they fell in love, though she tells me that he was very good looking, and that was the only reason she liked him. They got married and had little English babies. Since neither of them spoke the other’s language, English became the language of our family, and the language that is spoken at home.

I won’t get into the back story of all of my bloodlines, but in a nutshell, I have blood from eight European countries. However, if you met me you’d probably guess that I’m Irish (I am), or a Russian prostitute (I’m not… Russian, that is). I am eligible for citizenship in four countries other than Canada, and I’m actually in the early stages of getting my hands on one of them now. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve felt compelled to do anything other than watch the Free Agent Frenzy on July 1st; actually, make that one finger. During the Winter Olympics, I will cheer for Canada, but during the Summer Olympics, and pretty much any other international sporting event, I’ll usually be cheering for Spain. Other than hockey, poutine and health care are the only other Canadian things I really get excited about. People usually call me, “International,” but really I’m just a woman without a solid cultural identity, and I think that’s largely why hockey has been so important to me.

Hockey has been a lot of things to me over the years. It has been a friend when there was no one else. It has been a reason to get excited when there was nothing else. My greatest joys and greatest tragedies have all happened in and around the arena. There were many firsts, many lasts (I hope), and many “let’s never speak of that again” moments. I think somewhere along the way, that bizarre and twisted subculture of hockey became the only pure undiluted culture I had ever experienced, and I adopted it as my own more seriously, and more religiously than your average fan. The problem is I’m starting to realize that I made the mistake of confusing hockey culture with Canadian culture. I just assumed they were one and the same, and they really aren’t. Other than my passport, hockey was the one thing that I thought made me Canadian. So, where can I call home when the only place I’ve ever belonged was a rink, and not a country?

These days, whenever I meet someone new, and they ask me to tell them what I’m about, whether it’s in English or some semblance of Japanese, I will always say the same thing. “Umm, well, I’m a huuuuge hockey fan, and umm, errr…” This statement is often met with an uninterested stare, and a polite, “Oh, that’s nice,” while I’m still racking my brain trying to think of something else to add to my (evidently) uninspiring autobiography. Eventually, I will throw in the towel on this doomed task, but the mild sting of defeat will quickly give way to a wave of shear panic, as I suddenly come to realize the ugly truth about my life. I’m a hockey fan, and nothing more.

*Translation: Hello. I’m Psycho Lady. I’m from Canada. I like (ice) hockey.

Top Photo: My Canadian citizenship card. Between the ages of 2-3. Aggression Level is a 10! Yes, I looked like I boy, but you can respect that I was known to make my Kindergarten teacher cry with just one look – true story!

Don’t you want me to wake up? Then give me just a bit of your time…

Mississauga and St. Catharines, ON It has only been a few hours since the curtains closed on the Niagara IceDogs 2010-11 OHL season, and I feel like I’ve been jolted by a sudden electric dose of reality. To me, my affair with the IceDogs has felt a bit like an intermission from my real life. What started off as me trying to kill time with some hockey games turned out to be a lot more than that, as I sorted out my life in the wake of Korea.

When I got myself banned from the Asian country I had been calling home since last May, I arrived back in the land of pucks and Tim Bits “half dead” as my mother keeps telling me. My health was the worst it has ever been in my life. I had all the warning signs of cancer, and who knows what else was wrong with me. I had gone through a lot of mental and emotional anguish while I was away as well, and as much as these past five months have helped me to move on, I still remember that I was in a very bad place before I finally boarded my plane to come home. And let’s not forget that my hair was also ORANGE!

I hadn’t been home for two weeks before I was off on my first NHL road trip to New York. I think I just wanted to feel normal again. I wanted to be the Psycho Lady that I hope you had missed while I had my romance with the mysterious East, and hockey took a back seat for the first time in my life since, well, I’m not sure – the 90’s, probably! I had already been to a Leafs home game, but in NYC, as I attempted, once again, to rejoin the Phoenix Coyotes on the path of our love/hate relationship since 2009, I realized that the Psycho hockey lifestyle as I knew it just wasn’t fun anymore.

I tried again in Minnesota. I rang in the New Year all alone in my St. Paul hotel room on my first night in town between Preds and Yotes games, as I tried, and failed, to force myself to love the only thing I had ever really known. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. My life as Psycho Lady seemed like it was just about over until I decided to revisit the Niagara IceDogs less than a week after I returned from Minny.

It was just supposed to be a casual game. I had been there once before in the 2009-10 season during Puck Bunny Month, when I was trying to track down the elusive junior hockey puck bunny and revisit new theories pertaining to this new generation. I got a little more than I bargained for this time around, and I suppose I got invested… somehow. I don’t even know how, to tell you the truth. That whole night seemed like something right out of the pages of my favourite worst nightmare, and yet here I am nearly four months later with sixteen games under my belt.

It seemed like I had come full circle not just in my “real” life, but in my hockey life as well. Attending two Preds games in December was the first instance of this, and returning to junior hockey was the second. Although, I wouldn’t really get behind the IceDogs until they started the playoffs (I only went to one other regular season game this year), I never missed a single one. I was present for all fourteen games of all three rounds of their amazing run for the Mem Cup. Going to these games kind of felt like my job in a way. And I worked hard at it, boy. Whether it was wearing the right lucky underwear, or no underwear at all, or sending in Midnight Bambi as a failed attempt not to cause a distraction (if I felt the players were slacking), or missing my mother’s birthday for the third season in a row, I did it all to try and “help” this team pull through.

For two years I had been a psychotic hockey fan with no team. I sometimes wonder how I lasted in what shall now be known as the Dark Period where I entertained prophecies and let the Phoenix Coyotes run my life. I remember very few moments of joy in that era, and sometimes I wonder how I managed to persevere at all. The IceDogs became the first team since the Philadelphia Flyers (Golden Age) that I supported wholeheartedly, and I’d like to think that by the time the buzzer sounded to end the third period tonight, I was just as true a fan as any of the other patrons wearing worn out black and red hockey jerseys. I know I was certainly more emotional than I have ever been in my life to see a hockey season end.

The thing is I had forgotten what it was like to be a fan. I was so caught up in the adventure, and blowing through hockey towns taking nothing more than an interesting, if not scandalous, story to tell, that I never stuck around long enough to awaken that passion and pride that comes with the territory of being a fan. I wanted to see and meet the other hockey fans of the world so badly that I never took the time to actually become one. Sure I’m a hockey fan alright, probably the fiercest one you’ve ever met. But in terms of loving a specific team and belonging to its legions of supporters, that ship sailed long ago.

The IceDogs made an honest woman out of me. Perhaps for my health and the rebuilding of my life, I needed to be a little less Psycho and a little more localized – which as you know, I consider local to be anything in a six hour radius of Toronto. Perhaps I needed to know what it was like to love a single team above all others – hockey monogamy – since there are not many ports left for me to pillage in my NHL misadventures. Who knows? All I know is that I liked being a part of a community again, and I definitely want to be emotionally invested in my hockey team next season. I don’t know if I’ll be back to the land of IceDogs and their diehard fans, or even if I’ll spend a great deal of time in the OHL next season. Truthfully, I find watching junior hockey players cycle in and out of the League depressing. It’s the reason I left the OHL behind in the first place. All I know is that it is time this girl finds herself a brand new NHL hubby. One that will stick this time for better or worse! Like the first great lay after a very long dry spell, I have the IceDogs to thank for my reawakening as a hockey fan.

Sadly, the fun is over for yet another season, and I find myself asking, “What now?” Where one story ends, another will surely begin. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty excited to find out where the Psycho will be lurking next. Watch out, world! No hockey league is safe!!

Oh, and one more thing… Yes, my perfect Memorial Cup record has been destroyed when the IceDogs fell to the Majors tonight. You know, I’ve NEVER seen the IceDogs win at Hershey Centre, and that includes when they were the home team. So, what was the record hmm? Well… any team that I have had a “connection,” that team has earned their way to the Mem Cup (except tonight, of course). Let’s see if you can use your sleuthing skills and put it together:

2002-03 Kitchener Rangers [Mr. One Timer]
2003-04 Guelph Storm [The Evil One]
2010-11 Niagara IceDogs [Enter Name Here]

Enjoy that. I clearly lost momentum when I initially moved onto the AHL and the Milwaukee Admirals in 2004-05! Oh well. Obviously, I don’t “pick” winners anymore tee hee. The End.

Anyway I don’t want to go off on the wrong tangent here, but I feel like I need to put into words what I think people should already know, but are quick to muck up. A few nights ago I was watching a small market game at a local bar (I had to get one of the bartenders to flip it on in the first place as usual). My friend was checking his tweet-feed on his phone, and started laughing at some of the things being said about the fans in attendance at the game. His laughter was quickly stifled out of what I can only assume was fear because I, on the other hand, was not at all amused by these statements.

Small market fans are what I would call an “easy target” for these types of attacks. Because they happen to be located in cities like Atlanta, Long Island, or Phoenix, they get sucked into the vortex of the mysterious “Other” or “non-fan.” What people seem to forget is that the fans that are filling the seats, however few, are not the actual problem. The problem is the faceless majority that don’t actually like hockey, and therefore don’t show up to the arena, and don’t support the game on any level. Yes, sometimes hockey teams are located in places where hockey just doesn’t thrive, or the team goes through an epic stretch of suck, and the fans turn away as to not have their hearts broken anymore. And, yes, perhaps these teams would be better off relocating to other cities, but the people who support these teams, in spite of it all, should not be forced to bend over and take it like some $10 hooker because they weren’t as fortunate to be living in hockey towns like the rest of us.

It seems like a simple concept to grasp, but for some reason it’s not. I don’t know if people just want to put a face to the non-hockey loving population in some of these markets, and the only faces they see are those of the actual fans. But, again, why they want to play the blame game, I’ll never know. What frustrates me, and what frustrates fans in these markets is the fact that they’ve been painted in an inadequate and inauthentic light over and over again. I know a lot of the Coyotes fans that I have met over the years always complain to me about how people think they aren’t real fans, and that they don’t know anything about hockey. I always say the same thing to these people, “Anyone with half a brain knows you aren’t the problem. We know there are fans in Phoenix, the problem is there aren’t enough fans.”

However, the harsh reality is that (sometimes) I’m not so sure that fans in other markets are actually aware that these fans are not the issue. Sure, Phoenix has to resort to putting up detour information on their website when the major highway into Glendale is not running, so as not to deter people from coming to their next home game, but that’s not to say that all their fans are as finicky! I guess what I want to say is that no matter where a hockey team is located, whether it’s Phoenix or Montreal, there will be fans that have never seen a live game, and there will be fans that have never missed one, there will be casual observers, and there will be die-hard fanatics, there will be people that love the game, and people that hate it. The only thing different between a big market and a small market fan base is, in all honesty, the ratios of these demographics.

And that’s my rant for this Sunday evening.

It was late 2006 or early 2007 when my path last crossed with the Devil. It’s kind of funny that I would see him playing the Devils for the first time in years because I pretty much refer to him as Satan or “the evil one.” There was something about him that sparked unspeakable fear in people he didn’t even know. I had friends that wouldn’t be caught dead in his presence, and some couldn’t even look at a picture of him without covering their eyes. People felt that he was genuinely evil, and to tell you the truth, I probably agree with them. But I suppose these are favourable qualities in a hockey player.

Attending this Preds game wasn’t premeditated. Meaning: I didn’t plan a trip around this game. I just went to this game because I had planned a trip to NYC, and they just happened to be the team playing in New Jersey that night. I opted not to go for my usual glass seats because, although I doubt anything would happen if I was seen at the game, part of me still doesn’t want to be recognized by him. Michelle was up in the press area, and Nick and I were up in the cheap seats. He was cracking jokes about New Jersey, and I was busy devouring the biggest sundae the Prudential Center has ever put together (you bet your ass!), while trying to stop myself from throwing my boot onto the ice.

Although I pretty much had to say “eww” or utter a grunt of displeasure of some kind whenever his skates hit the ice, the truth was I don’t actually hate him or care all that much about what happened in what seems like another life now. He wasn’t the first hockey player, and he wouldn’t be the last either, but he was the one who really changed my life. He sparked this desire in me that I couldn’t ignore. He made it so I basically had no choice but to become the person, the seeker of truth, that I am now. So he will always be very significant to me even though, years later, it hardly even feels like I ever knew him in the first place.

“He’s the one you wrote about, isn’t he?” Nick asked sometime during the second period. It was true. Down the Rabbit Hole was written because of him, and the creepy sequel, the one where I seem to have predicted my future, my affair with the Coyotes, and even my own death, was written about him. As we would later discuss, sometimes events happen in our lives that take us to a point where we can no longer return to the person we were, or the life we had before. Of course my life changed a lot because of this man, but what changed most of all was my reality as a hockey fan.

I remember the purity of the time before. I remember writing down every Leafs game in my school agenda. Blue highlighter meant it was a home game, yellow meant road, and pink, the most important colour of them all, meant that I had tickets to the game. I remember baggy, beer stained hockey jerseys, and staying home on Saturday night to see what Don Cherry had to say that week. I remember looking up to the players and seeing them as awe inspiring idols. I remember loving my team no matter what because I was oblivious to the entire culture of the sport. I remember experiencing the game the way most of you still experience it, and, from the bottom of my heart, I promise you that I feel a great deal of sadness because I will never be able to return that place again. The devil-Predator introduced me to something, a world, I didn’t want to know. What I found there touched my soul, and made it so that the innocence I once knew could never be reclaimed. Hockey to me has almost become an abusive relationship. When we’re in love, it’s great, but under the surface a resentment still bubbles over the things I cannot change in its bitch-mother of a subculture. The strange reality is that now I actually need this culture to enjoy the game. I need to be watching not just the game, but everything around the game when I’m sitting rink side. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps just proof positive that sometimes you just can’t go back to square one and start over.

Top Photo: Pre-game. The green eye shadow means A) yes, I’ve been in Korea, and B) who’s evil now? Take it!