Doug Auld Hockey Weekend Warrior

Foreign.

Welcome to the Mike Hartman Show. Mike is a performance coach and former Stanley cup champion with the New York Rangers. Topics on this show are focused around stories, mindset and champions. Mike will also go into details about helping you with your pain points and struggles and finding motivational solutions on how to have the mindset of a champion. Now, here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Welcome back to another episode. Today we have a good friend of mine. His name is Doug Al I met Doug in Hoboken when I was living in Hoboken, New Jersey. For those who do not know, it's a seven minute ferry to New York City. In fact, I think personally Hoboken has some of the best views of New York City as it's just right across the Hudson, just gorgeous. So we, you take the ferry or you could take the path into the city. It's just a really nice place. Actually. I think it's a hidden secret or it used to be. I think everybody knows about it now, but it's just such a great place to live. And I met Doug and I started playing hockey early mornings with the firemen, the police officers, Doug and we would drive together. We became like really good friends. Share stories earlier in the morning he would do his morning ritual that kind of make me a little nervous. He would take me for coffee early morning. He would run in and grab his coffee. But that didn't make me nervous. What made me nervous is we had this little two seater car that I would drive in with him and as he was pulling out onto the highway after he grabbed his coffee, I was always nervous that someone was gonna smash in the back of us. But, but maybe I was just a little paranoid. But Doug's a fantastic guy. We do a lot of our podcasts around stories and mindsets and champions and I've had some champions that played at the highest level. Then I bring on some other champions. I call them weekend warriors. Like we had Steve Knickerbocker on 70 years old goaltender. I think the world of him. Just a great guy. Had some other people on. We had somebody that plays pickleball, who's a pickleball amateur champion. I call them still a weekend warrior. You're not playing at a professional level. And then I have Doug who's turning 70 and this guy is such a competitor. He's a lot of fun, great guy. We, you know, they, they, they guys love him. You know, they, they joke with him a lot too. I mean he's, he's, he's just a lot of fun. He's the one that organizes the game. And he's got a system in place and no one can, can never deviate from that system with Doug. But I really want to bring the weekend warriors on. I feel it's important that we hear from them, we listen to them, and Doug has some great stories. I hope everybody enjoys the show. Hey, if you are a person who's a weekend warrior that wants to share their story, hey, love to have you. I'm looking for those weekend warriors that have those great stories. And, you know, we're not going to just go with the age. Doug's 70 years old, playing hockey against some former pros. One player in the khl, which you'll hear him talk about a little bit about one of the players that did play for the Devils and played the National Hockey League and now the khl, and he's out there competing. And you have to just, well, feel like you're almost in awe of these guys. We're not spring chickens anymore. So a lot of young players coming out having fun. In fact, I remember one time they had a couple girls from the pro hockey league come out. These girls could play. And just. All kudos to you, Doug. I hope you enjoy the show. Again, if you're a weekend warrior, please reach out or go to hartman.academyno.com. leave us a message. We love to hear from you. Enjoy the show.

Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me on your great show. Hello to all your listeners. This is Doug Aldi, open hockey player for over 45 years. Hard to believe. And this is my story. My dad asked me one day back in 1970, hey, Doug, you ever watch hockey? I'm like, no, not really. And he said, come here, sit down, take a look. There was the Philadelphia Flyers and the Montreal Canadiens. Canadians were in white and the Flyers were in dark. And I remember taking note of this one player on the Montreal Canadiens with long hair flying around the rink. And that was Guy Lafleur. And that was the guy. And that was the event that got into me and got me to look at this game and start playing it. So in short fashion, I decided to drive to the Bergen Mall Ice Arena. At the time it's no longer there, turned into a Rickles store and I started to skate. I bought skates and started to skate in the Friday night public sessions. And then I remember meeting a woman on the ice who turned out to be the Islanders skating coach and her name was Laura Stam. And I began taking skating lessons with her. Before long, maybe over a summer, I started to get my angles and my confidence and feel pretty good. Went out and bought complete Montreal Canadiens gear, jersey and all. And ever since then, I've been known in this area as the guy in the Canadiens jersey. Started playing hockey at Fritz Diedel's Ice arena in Westwood, New Jersey. That rink was chaos. It was solid cement walls, very, very low ceilings with fluorescent tubes that would get hit by. By the pucks, and the glass would come raining down on top of us. We'd have to stop the game, clean it up, and start again. And then they had double doors and double doors. You would get hit and knocked out of the double doors into the lobby, and you'd end up hitting or smashing into the glass cases, hopefully not breaking them. But that was my beginning. It was a small rink, and there was a great guy there named Johnny Ruck, who was a pretty good player, and he kind of took me under his wing, and that helped me get a little confidence and get going from there on in. I was playing at four different hockey rinks, and I would say at least five, six times a week, sometimes two times a day. I just couldn't get enough of hockey. It was the greatest thing. I found a whole new group of guys and friends that I could hang out with. Women, too. We played with a lot of different people from all over the country. I remember we had the Swedish national women's skater on one of the teams, and we got to know each other. Her name was Haga, and it was great times. And I grew up with hockey ever since. Another good hockey friend and longtime rink rat, my buddy Jerry Zachary, got me involved in a hockey tournament in Austria. So we traveled to Selim, see Austria, played hockey with a whole bunch of guys and traveled up into, I believe we were in Venice and traveled back. So that was a great experience. Believe it or not, I played 20 years without a helmet. I would not advocate that. That's not what I'm doing. I'm just saying that that's what the time was. And whenever you got hurt or you hit your head, we called it getting your bell rung and you shook it off, or you went home and you came back, but there was no diagnosis. Nobody worried about it. And lo and behold, somehow I'm still here and many other players are, too. I learned that you could get a lot of ice time by playing defense, because we didn't have many players at the time. So I would go back on defense, and I remember many times when we only had five or six players on the ice that I would play the Entire game, two hours on the ice, non stop on defense. And that pretty much etched my reputation into being the premier ice hog, which I've never been able to shake, even though I think I'm coming off the ice all the time. They're like, would you get off the ice? And it's really just a remnant of my memory of skating like that. But I started to organize hockey because I noticed that everybody was just skating around and hitting pucks against the boards and taking slap shots and playing in their own world. And I wanted to get a game going. So I started tapping my stick on the ice and trying to get these guys attentions. And many of the. Many of them were cops and firemen and guys twice as big as me. And I wasn't certainly going to boss anyone around. But little by little, I got their attention. Said, hey, let's go, guys, let's start a game. Come on, guys. And sooner or later, we started to do it. Then the key to the entire organization of hockey was getting goaltenders. And I started to put my feelers out, get names and phone numbers. There was no Internet at the time or email. Started to collect phone numbers of goalies and players. And if you could come up with goalies, the players would follow. So lo and behold, I became the hockey gm. And that lasted throughout three or four different rinks over the years, I guess culminating in Floyd hall arena at the time in Montclair, and now presently at Clary Anderson Rink in Montclair, where Mike, you and I were playing for that year. So I did this for the goalies and I also promised the skaters we would only take 20 skaters, 22, 23, 24 that were over at the other rinks became a little bit of a hassle. People wanted their ice time and I understood it, including me. So that's how I started to run the game. The hard part about doing that is that you have to make decisions that are not popular. And this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do regarding my hockey group. Was telling guys, 30, 40 guys that are all my friends over the years that, hey, you can't play. I'm sitting you out. Sorry, whatever the story was. And every one of them would always react the same way. Why me? Why me, Doug? We're friends or whatever it was. And I'd always get that look. And I knew that there was not an easy way around it. And the other problem with it was I'd be playing with guys that disappeared for a while. They were traveling or they went away, and then they returned so they'd be old time friends. And now I've got to let my old time friends back in the game. I'm not going to exclude them. So I'd have to drop out some of the newer players. But one way or the other, it seemed to work itself out. And today we have a really balanced group. Maybe you know, 25 players during the holidays, more, but I pretty much keep it to 20. And I think the guys understand the, the situation that I'm under. My friend Joe runs the rink that we play at now. And he has just been the greatest. He's allowed us our free reign of the rink. We play 7:15 in the morning, two days a week and sometimes three. Then we have our friend Mike Sass, who is the guy who sharpens our skates, opens up the ring rink, lets us in, and in general has fun hanging out with all of us. He doesn't play any longer, but he runs everything for us. Many injuries over the years that are somewhat comical. One particular story is the famous squirrel incident. I was playing hockey at McKay park in Englewood, New Jersey, an outdoor rink. And I remember the gals were down to watch their husbands and boyfriends. And I was on the ice and all of a sudden I started to break out in a terrible itch. And I looked at my arms and I had hives on my arms and my neck and I just started to disrobe on the ice. I had to get my jersey off and figure out what is going on. And the guys were yelling at me old, get off the ice. What are you doing? You're ruining our game. And I'd be like, I don't know, man, something wrong. And I noticed my sight started to narrow and I started to see this crazy blinking lights and like as if I got knocked out in the corner of my eyes. I skated off the ice, walked to the, to the waiting room. And I just remember a woman saying, are you okay? And I said, call an ambulance. And then from what I heard, I passed out, threw up on the floor and the ambulance came, rescued me. Some of my good friends followed to the rink with my clothing and my car. And the doctors told me, they said, we thought we were going to lose you. They had to give me steroids, bring me back. And finally I came out of it, had a rather embarrassing moment in the bathroom, you know, because what happens is you do let go when you pass out. And that was not cool, especially for a second date with the nurses. Anyway, I got through it and started to try to Figure out what happened. The best thing we could figure out is where I park my car is where I leave my hockey bag. Because I live in a small apartment. So I would leave my hockey bag out there and open it up and air it out. And in the fall, I noticed squirrels running back and forth under the car, but I never knew what they were doing. Well, this time when I got home and I looked at the bottom of the hockey bag, there were chestnuts and nuts down at the bottom of the bag. So our best problem solving on this event was I had anaphylactic shock from squirrels in my hockey bag. Either the fur, the dander, them peeing, whatever you want to call it. They got on my hockey gear and when I started sweating, I soaked that into my, my, my skin. So that was one rather comical moment. Other than that I, I pulled a hamstring really bad and I'll tell you, it felt like I got shot in the back of the leg. And my friend, Lieutenant Dan, as we call him, helped me to get off the ice and hobbled me into the car, got me home, and the whole back of my leg, the hamstring area was blood red. And I never got it checked, never went to the doctor. I'm kind of anti involvement with doctors when I can be. And I elevated it and I meditated on it and I healed it myself and I was back to playing with no, no problems. Had an eye injury that I got through and eventually got to the point where I wear a goalie cage as a mask, as a defenseman that my good and longtime friend Andre gave me many, many years ago and I've worn it ever since. We have a great group of guys and nicknames for everybody. We have a guy named Gigantor, Pond hockey Paul, Patio Furniture, Lt. Dan, Laser, and we have a brain surgeon goalie named Doc. And that's just a small selection of them. We have so many different guys from so many different areas and fields, cops, firemen, construction workers, any number of things, doctors. And we pretty much all get along. Our main age group is anywhere from the rare times we have a 14 or 15 year old, somebody's son, up to 71, which is my friend, pond hockey Paul, who always gives me the advice, don't let the old man in. And so I'm right behind him. I'll be 69 this September, he's 71. And we are the senior statesman there. We do get the new hot dogs that come down and they are fast and the only thing I can do to compete with them is, and I will admit I do that. And I. Much to the chagrin of a lot of players, I'll trip people. And every now and then, the hardest thing about aging as an open hockey player is that you remember what you could do and somehow you think you can still do it. And I remember my friend, Frank Baker Sr. Great guy who doesn't play any longer. He was some years up the road, told me, doug, someday your legs are going to go just one day on the ice and you're going to notice you don't have the snap in your legs. And that hit me, I would say right around 65, 66. I still played fairly well up to that time, best as I can remember. And I do think my best years were in my 50s, because it was a combination of speed and dexterity with a little bit of know how and, you know, passing and everything like that. I would say that I was never really a goal scorer. That was not really my thing. I was more of a skater and a puck carrier and a playmaker. That's what I always enjoyed. Plus, I couldn't score. I would always shoot straight at the goalie's chest. So I knew what I could and couldn't do. But today I'm happy to be a defenseman with my group and it is absolutely a joy to play hockey up to this age that I'm at. And I think about all the injuries that could have happened. I'm still healthy, still happy, don't have a great memory for keeping the score, but I'm known for being Mr. Magoo on the ice and have a great group of guys that are all my friends. And so I just want to say to Mike, Mike, we miss you. It was just great having you down at the games. You and I would drive up together, talk about hockey, all of the NHL. I remember you inviting me to the Ranger game and you and Stephan Matteau and I sat down and had dinner and that was great. And I have to say that hockey players are a rare breed. I played with the Devil's alumni group game at the Bergen Mall and at the Englewood arena, sitting in the locker room with Valerie Kaminsky and Gary Howitt from the Islanders and Glenn Resch, the goalie. And I've got pictures with these guys. They're all just so down to earth. Something about hockey and hockey players makes them very down to earth. And so they're great guys and they're willing to talk and be real and nobody's carrying an air. And you, you know, Mike, you're one of the great examples of that. You're a Stanley cup winner and you'd embrace everybody down at the ice and you were friendly to everyone. One one of my funny stories with you, Mike, is when I was skating up towards you on the boards and I wasn't going to do anything. I was just going to try to get to you and take the puck away and all you did was put out your arm. And I remember I felt like I got pile drive. You didn't even try to do anything to me. Just put your arm out and I went, I felt right back on my butt. And that's how strong a guy you were. And you never used it. You always made the plays and moved the puck. So you a joy to have down there along with Anton Velchenkoff. What a great, what a great guy. Great player. So much fun to have Anton there and some other players, Randy Velicheck through the years. So I guess that's about it. Mike, just want to thank you again for having me on your show. I certainly do miss you and Cheryl and you guys not being in the area. But if you're ever up this way, please let me know and join one of my games again and if I come in your direction, I will do the same. Thanks very much and hope to talk to you soon.

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