Hockey is a contact sport, and when things get heated, sometimes the gloves come off. The goalie, unlike the rest of the position players, isn’t in the same type of contact throughout the game and seldom goes one-to-one.

But sometimes, the temperature of the game rises to such a degree that the skating players pair off in a line brawl, each finding a dance partner. When this happens, there are only two partners left. They play at directly opposite ends of the ice, two players who have absolutely no contact during the game and no beef with each other.

Occasionally, to show team spirit, the goalies will meet at centre ice and pair off too. That takes commitment and bravery.

Rookie Year in Haida Gwaii

One summer break from university, I got a job as a rookie deckhand on a two-man commercial troller, fishing mostly out of the Queen Charlotte Islands (as they were known then). I was just a kid trying to make enough money to go back to school for another year.

The skipper was a seasoned old-timer with no sense of humour and even less patience. This was strictly a work environment, and we were not buddies, to say the least. He mostly taught me the ropes and only berated me all the time. It was all work and no chit-chat.

The Boat Rivalry

The troller I was hired onto was new to the skipper, and he had branded it with a name that sounded similar to another commercial boat that fished the same waters. The skippers of these boats did not like each other.

I assumed that this rivalry started long before the boat naming, but who knows? Almost every day there was a commotion between these captains: cutting each other off and rubbing each other off a tack, name-calling and bad-mouthing from boat to boat, and sometimes even over the radio.

On one such day, there were numerous heated exchanges—both skippers screaming from boat to boat. We finished the day and headed back into harbour to unload the catch. On the dock, my role as deckhand was to drop into the hold and move the iced fish into the tote, which was then lifted out by the processor.

A Dockside Confrontation

About 10 minutes after I started, I could hear shouting somewhere above me. I stuck my head up to see my skipper and another man standing toe-to-toe on the dock, yelling at each other. The other man had to be the skipper of the enemy boat.

I was curious, so I pulled myself up from the hold and climbed onto the dock, standing directly behind my skipper but only for a better look. That’s when I noticed the deckhand from the other boat do the same thing behind his skipper, and it hit me—us two deckhands stood at either end of the dock, watching our “teammates” gear up to fight just like two goalies at the far ends of the ice.

But I was neither committed to my skipper nor brave. What had I gotten myself into? I was standing on a dock in a town I had never been to, inadvertently signalling support for my teammate.

The Unspoken Truce

As the two yahoos threw insults reminiscent of a baseball manager and umpire trading spit and kicking dirt, I snuck a look at the other deckhand. He was at least six inches taller than me and not built like the squishy school kid that I was. If the two skippers went at it, the other deckhand would walk over and tear my head off.

But then he smiled and shrugged. He’d seen this before—tantrums between these two skippers; it was all show. The whole thing settled down to a dull roar, and they eventually parted, one walking to the processor’s office and the other back to his boat.

I never saw that deckhand again, but for one heated afternoon on a remote dock, we shared an unspoken truce a quiet understanding between two “goalies” who didn’t really want to fight.

And hey, if you were that deckhand and you’re reading this, thanks for not flattening me. We should grab a beer.