Saturday night was a hockey night. Friday night had not gone particularly well for the home team. A three-minute stretch early in the third period pretty much sealed it. After that, we decided the first break past the 10-minute mark would be our time to leave. We weren’t alone. With the team struggling, the people who stayed were probably doing so more out of loyalty than any expectation that the evening was suddenly going to turn around. The coach seemed to share our assessment. At 11:00 that night, one of the captains contacted the boys and told them they needed to be at the rink to help some young kids skate. This wasn’t a few guys volunteering for a community activity. It was the entire team. The coach had apparently decided the best way to disguise his frustration with a loss was to make the boys do community service while calling it a team bonding. I respect the creativity.

When Judy and I entered the rink Saturday night, we were hopeful the boys would be a little more locked in. In fairness, the coach had been bouncing the lines around quite a bit, and the other team had gotten its first victory of the season the night before. I was pretty confident our boys weren’t going to help them make it two in a row. After I cleared the ticket check with my season pass, I was approached by the guy who was now the billet dad for our recently departed hockey boy. He had a job for me in the penalty box. He was very focused on getting me properly set up for my new responsibilities, so there wasn’t much time for conversation. He took me into a room, handed me an official game vest and gave me some basic instructions. He also warned me that the entrance to the penalty box off the ice could be slippery. This was apparently important information. I tipped my Warriors hat at him before calculating that, based on my age and my newly elevated position within the organization, I should probably use the bathroom before the game started.

The penalty box is right there on the ice, so the view is excellent. The only problem is that the home hockey boys tend to lean out from the bench and occupy approximately 73 percent of the visual field. With a better view comes greater responsibility, and I was careful to keep that in mind. I had also forgotten about the smell. From our regular seats on the other side of the rink, I had largely forgotten what comes out of a hockey locker room. Really, “smell” doesn’t adequately describe it. It’s more of an atmosphere. A heavy, humid fog of fermented effort, sweat, equipment and several things that probably shouldn’t be combined in the same zip code. I hadn’t missed it, but I recognized it immediately. There was also no bench for me. I assume this was intentional. The penalty box is designed to make the boys feel guilty about their actions. I quickly discovered there is no guilt taking place in the penalty box. There is sitting, drinking water, laughing, watching the game and occasionally wondering why you were given a penalty. Guilt was not on the agenda.

My job description was pretty simple. When a boy came into the box, I handed him a water bottle and asked, “Do you want me to open the gate or are you going to jump it?” I was relieved to discover that, over three periods, I only had to open the gate once. Every other boy cleared it easily. In my mind, this was perfect. If they chose to jump the gate themselves, I couldn’t be blamed for putting them back on the ice too early. I had essentially delegated liability. There were probably three or four guys in the box during each period, so there was plenty of opportunity to practice my gate-management strategy. I was also responsible for the replacement pucks. This was a revelation. The pucks were stored on ice in a cooler. As I thought about it, this made perfect sense. A warm puck would bounce differently than a cold puck. Why introduce an unnecessary variable into a game where near-grown men are already skating around at 20 miles per hour trying to hit each other with sticks? So every period started with a fresh puck from the cooler. We went through about four pucks a period, which meant I was basically the cold-chain logistics manager for the Oklahoma Warriors. I had not prepared for this level of responsibility.

Beyond the water and gate questions, there was very little conversation. I had been told, “If they want to talk, they will talk to you.” If I knew their first name, I used it. Other than that, I was much more quiet than usual. That may have been the biggest sacrifice of the evening. The first period was pretty uneventful. The second period got worse. Or better. I’m still trying to decide. I did go visit Judy during the first intermission. I felt bad that she had to sit alone, although she was a good sport about it. She had actually snuck into the bench area before the game and gotten a picture of me wearing my official vest. I’m pretty sure she was documenting the moment in case my new career suddenly took off.

The biggest challenge after the first period was the photographer. During the first period, I had mostly been standing at the front of the box, watching the game at eye level. Then the photographer arrived and my job description changed from “penalty box monitor” to “avoid becoming a human obstacle in a professional sports photograph.” The photographer was constantly moving around me, and the only place I could retreat was toward the stats booth on my right. I could back up about a foot and watch the game through their somewhat cloudy plexiglass. This created a problem. At one point, the photographer was snapping pictures while a Warriors player was serving a penalty. Suddenly, I heard the Rhinos making a huge commotion. It sounded exactly like they had scored a goal. I did what any highly trained penalty-box professional would do. I opened the gate. The player looked at me. I looked at the player. He did not move. This turned out to be fortunate because there had been no goal. I had simply confused excited hockey players with an actual hockey event. The player had apparently decided to save me from myself by not immediately sprinting onto the ice. That was the last time I acted on instinct. From that point forward, I committed to only responding to the referees. No more gut feelings. No more reading the room. No more interpreting crowd noise. If a referee didn’t move, I didn’t move.

The same little cubbyhole that made me think a goal had been scored also made it difficult to see pucks that flew out of the rink. Most of the time, when I handed a puck over, I received a polite “thank you.” A couple of times, I had no idea what was happening until a referee came skating toward me. That was my cue. I also pulled pucks out a couple of times when they didn’t actually need them, all while trying to avoid the photographer, the boys waiting at the door and the sticks that seemed determined to occupy whatever space I was currently using. As the boys increasingly hogged the front of the box, my available space became whatever area wasn’t occupied by a hockey stick. More than once, sticks were resting across the front gate while I was wedged into the corner like I was part of a Kerplunk game. It was an impregnable trap, but it was a battle I chose not to fight. At one point, the photographer and I nearly shared our little space with a Rhino who took a hit right in front of us. That was exciting. But the real scare came when the puck hit my empty water bottle tucked into the front corner of the box. The bottle fell over. The puck slid into its place. And for a second, that puck just sat there looking at me. It had the expression of a puck that was disappointed it hadn’t been allowed to cause more trouble.

By the end of the game, I had survived three periods, several hockey boys, a photographer, approximately a dozen sticks, four million flying pucks and one gate that I now considered a professional responsibility. And, as is often the case, the thing I’m grateful for isn’t really what I did. It’s the opportunity the thing gave me. There were the little exchanges. The thumbs-up to the kid on the bench who had just scored. The boy who came into the box and told me, “I don’t always deserve a penalty, but I did that time.” There was the player who had been suspended and got to hear me say, “Good to see you out there again!” And there were a few boys who had to suffer through my highly sophisticated hockey analysis. “You guys are looking pretty good tonight.” I didn’t overwhelm them. That would be irresponsible.

But I did take the opportunities when they presented themselves. Because of our breakfast club, I have a little more permission to talk into the lives of these guys. The penalty box gave me even more. These boys have coaches. They have teammates. They have parents. They have plenty of people telling them what to do. I’m not trying to become another one of those people. I’m trying to become someone they’ll listen to when I have something worth saying. That’s the part I don’t want to lose sight of.

The penalty box gave me a chance to hear a little more of what they were saying, see a little more of what they were feeling and have a few conversations that probably wouldn’t have happened from my regular seat across the rink. For one night, I wasn’t just a fan. I was a fan with special privileges. Would I want the job every game? Probably not. I could see Judy sitting alone for an entire season while I played professional penalty-box monitor. But I did come away with something valuable. I learned a little more about the game. I gathered enough information to continue pretending I’m more hockey-smart than I was the previous day. And if asking better questions gives me more credibility with these boys, I’ll happily learn a few more rules.

I’d do almost anything in the hockey world to gain a little more permission to speak into their lives when something matters. Referee? Absolutely not. Those guys are hated no matter how good a job they do. Although, from the penalty box, I will admit something I didn’t expect. Sometimes it looked like the players actually respected them. Of course, I’d have to learn all the rules first. And that seems like an unreasonable amount of work just to be yelled at by teenagers.