Take Me Back…

A couple months ago a buddy of mine reached out to me and asked if I wanted to fly to Colorado and get some photos of his team for the annual pond hockey tournament in Georgetown, CO.

Obviously, I couldn’t say no.

Check out the video and don’t forget to like and subscribe.

Pond hockey season!

Captions:

Hockey was literally invented on a frozen pond… there's not a chance in hell I'm going to miss the opportunity to take photos of pond hockey.

Oh you want to get walked i'll walk you i'll [ __ ] walk you.

[Music] what's up y'all welcome to the Goat Path the channel about photography and my journey through it today we're talking about [Applause] hockey in covers Shane Wright hit hard by thought he had it somehow that is kept out specifically we're talking about pond hockey and the chance I had to go to Denver to shoot a tournament for a buddy of mine shout out to Justin on Twitter i've loved hockey since I was a little kid grew up playing goalie which probably explains a lot anyway I've loved hockey since the Rangers won the Stanley Cup back in '94 ark Douglas Messier i remember when Tim Salani played for the Winnipeg Jets with 54 goals how did he celebrate he went duck hunting i remember Marty Brodeur's goal his first one broad controlling the net is empty he throws it down and in he scored a goal i watched live as Patrick Roy fought Mike Vernon huddles up with the

right how about this and then Chris Osgood here we go once again we go again osgood and Wah it was a a year ago i remember Curtis Joseph going [Applause] crazy Joseph is furious Dominic Hasek being well Dominic

Kosik i don't believe it ladies and gentlemen another miracle kujo was my favorite though curtis Joseph got the paddle down on that one he was out of position and rallied back to make the incredible save i remember Mario

retiring and then [Applause] unretiring hell when I was growing up they were still teaching kids the kicks save it eliminates much of the inconsistencies in a goalender's play yeah that's a real thing they taught point is the Phoenix Coyotes were created and died in my lifetime and they were awful the entire time just bad i think I'd rather be a Browns fan

so every year in Colorado there's a pond hockey tournament and hundreds of teams from across the world literally across the world come to play in this threeon-ree tournament on a pond so the two teams I got to follow around throughout this whole tournament they're from the USA Warrior hockey program which is a program for disabled veterans um and their sister team brother team some sort of siblings uh from Denmark let me say from the start those guys can drink like we got to the hotel at 400 p.m and they had been at the brewery next door since 10:00 and they were out drinking everybody still

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yeah they tried to teach us the song we just said skull when we got to that point

pretty easy so keep in mind I'm doing all of this on 10 days notice justin sent me a text he's like "Hey man i'm going out to this tournament do you want to come get some photos i was like "Hell yeah dude pond hockey why not?" The night before I can't sleep i got a 5:00 a.m flight it is 4:30 in the morning [Music] didn't sleep at all and I just I'm too excited and I'm a little worried that I'm going to miss my flight kind of reminds me of getting up rock practice remember those 4:30 a.m all that gear so I've never shot hockey before so this was a new experience for me so I figured take basically everything that I think I could possibly need for the entire weekend so I took my 24 to 105 lens i took my 150 to 600 lens i took my Osmo Pocket 3 which game changer if you don't have one get one best 500 bucks I ever

spent anyway both teams had four games they played each other once which was the highlight cuz uh there was some definite chirping going on worse than the goddamn Glade plugins hit him so hard he only has eight toes might want to dust that buck off oh yeah okay hey great pass why don't you put into a skate together i mean it wasing spot on hey Robbie 5 minutes is enough for you to inbreed at least two more kids go get on it hillbilly how the [ __ ] are you doing over there huh i don't know ask your mom she's pretty satisfied with my work so for that one game perfect amazing i'm getting photos of everybody i'm getting video of everybody no issues the other three games though they're playing at the same time in two different places so I got to split my time and figure out how I'm going to get the best shots of both teams so that I have something to give back to them honestly that's where the long lens came in handy uh I had both camera bodies on me so um I was able to get you know some nice wide angle shots and some nice enclosed shots and sometimes I was able to get shots from one rink towards the other rink it came in handy to have two different lenses and I got some great shots out of

it now there was a lot that went on that weekend a lot of good food a lot of good beer a lot of great hockey obviously but I think for me the best part had to

be the nostalgia hanging out with those guys all day every day for 4 days chilling drinking beer eating the good food having good conversations cuz it took me back to those days where I was in the locker room and I haven't been in a hockey locker room since college which is uh over 15 years now so it was it was just the best way to kind of relive th those years growing up on the ice playing with all those guys and it was almost like the hockey was secondary like it was just an excuse to get everybody together and I think for me that's the best part to go back to a game that I love so much to where it all started and to really try to capture that spirit that that community of people who just love hockey and love skating love being outside love being on the ice love being with their buddies that's what hockey is all about and I think that's that's what I was trying to capture and I think that's what I did

capture i think the community aspect of it is something I've been missing since I got to Montana i've only been here a year um you know I'm I'm still learning where everything is still kind of building my own community here but it was very good to to get to a place or go to a place where I was accepted pretty much right away um you know everybody knew I was the photographer they knew I wasn't playing they know I'm a vet and we just had a good time laughing drinking joking you know it was uh it was one of the cooler experiences and and this is part of why I love photography so much is that I have a curious mindset i'm curious about a lot of stuff you know leatherwork painters cooking hockey obviously all sorts of stuff and photography allows me the opportunity to go to these places and go to these events and meet different people and and just kind of learn about other people and I think that's something that we're really missing in this country is just being able to learn about other

people anyway thank you for watching hope you enjoyed it hit that like button hit that subscribe button and we'll see you next time [Music]

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[Music]

it's honestly kind of [ __ ] that the bar is not open