I’m 56. I did not have becoming an ice¹ hockey fan on my 2026 bingo card, but here I am, the morning after yesterday evening’s game again Guildford Flames (we won, 4-1, thanks for asking), thinking back not just to the match, but to the conversation I had with my thirteen year old daughter, when I was about to turn out her bedroom light.

¹And yes, I know it should be just “hockey”, but I’m English enough to still find that weird. Sorry to any Canadians out there.

This is all down to Violet. She got into ice hockey first through the film Inside Out, and then through TikTok. Back in January she mentioned that she’d like to go to an ice hockey game, I got out my phone and started googling, and that was where it all started.

Seven games and two and a bit months in, I can’t claim to be much of a fan. I confess that I still find the puck hard to follow. My inner monologue through a match is basically, “Where is it? On there it is! Wait, where’s it gone? Oh he’s got it! And now he hasn’t got it? Where, wait, what? Shit, did we just score?”

There’s been a lot of goals where I saw the build up, saw the shot, and was already rising out of my seat when the puck was going in. But there’s been plenty of others where the first I knew about it was when everyone else started screaming. And don’t get me on the times where the opposition scored without me realising. (Thing is, when they score, no-one in the arena makes a sound, and the restart happens really quickly, so if you zone out a bit, it’s easy to miss the difference between a restart face-off at the centre following a score, and a face-off in the end-zone following the goalie making a save. (Then you look at the scoreboard, and think, wait, did they score?)

But I don’t care, and I hope those fans who can actually follow the game and do properly understand what’s going on will forgive me for my incompetence and ignorance. I’d like to think you can love and appreciate something without fully understanding it. And I do love it.

I love the speed, and the grace of the players, and the sound the puck makes as it hammers off the boards. I love the atmosphere and the chants and the guy who sits in block 112 who bangs the drum that leads those chants (while being slightly glad that we’re generally sitting in our favourite block 106, on the other side of the arena). I love the announcer Aden Millen, who does so much to bring the occasion alive. (I think he’s genuinely brilliant).

I love the themed nights (we’ve done Pride, Retro, and now Pink). I love the music, and the lights when the players come out at the start of the match. I love the warmup before play, seeing both squads out on the ice.

I love that unlike football, the mascots don’t just lead the players out, but instead skate out onto the ice during warmup, with skates, jerseys, and sticks, and get to hit pucks around. (Yesterday, one of the Manchester players joined them, which I though was lovely).

And I even, whisper it, love Lightning Jack.

Now I admit that initially, I considered Lightning Jack to be a creature of utter horror. He is generally voted a strong number ten in any ranking of Elite Ice Hockey League mascots (hint: there’s only ten teams). My description of him then was “imagine a really dodgy and creepy 1970s lounge lizard, but as a mascot”. I was once leaning against a pillar outside the toilets (waiting for Violet, if you’re wondering why) in the interval before the third period, reading my phone, when I looked up and saw him right there, in front of me, like two feet in front of me, just staring straight at me, having just come off the ice. I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I screamed a terrified “Fuck me!” and jumped about a foot backwards. (Apologies to any small children that might have heard me, but it honestly was like a jump scare from a horror film. I kept on thinking about it for days.) 😀

But since then, he’s grown on me, first in a “so bad it’s good way” but now, somehow, in a genuine way. I genuinely love him. I would now cry if some corporate apparatchik replaced him with a cuddly dinosaur or something.

I love the way that by the third quarter, he ends up in the back of block 112 with the drummer guy, with his arms around the shoulders of “the lads”.

I loved the way that during the match against Dundee, he was outside the sin bin at one point, staring out a sin binned Dundee player while stroking a penguin (of the sort that small children use when learning to skate).

(It must be bad enough to be sent to the sporting equivalent of the naughty step, without having the mascot voted the most horrifying in the league staring you out).

I love the Storm Shelter. Yeah, it’s a prefabricated structure that’s now twenty years into a fifteen year lifespan. It’s not posh. It’s rough around the edges. The toilet’s are… well let’s just say that I’m okay with them, but my daughter uses the loos at Tescos before the match. It’s not that big (capacity a little over two thousand). But when it’s full, and the game’s on, what it has bucketloads of is atmosphere.

Put it this way. I’ve been to Guildford (admittedly not on a match day). It’s a leisure centre. Pool to one side, ice rink to the other, cafe in between. It’s a very nice leisure centre.

But it’s a leisure centre.

I love that I now have an answer to the question “City or United?”, which as someone originally from London who isn’t into football was always tricky.

I love that I now have something to do with Violet that isn’t going to a random shopping centre, visiting a Waterstones, and then having a coffee. (Although we have visited the Cafe W in Altrincham on the way to a match, so we can combine all our pastimes).

But this isn’t just about Violet. It’s about me.

And this is where I get back to the conversation I had with Violet last night.

At 56, I’m well into my third age. My wife and I separated (very amicably) four years ago. I have no particular career ambitions. I like my job, it pays well, and my plan is to basically stay there for eleven years and then retire. I’ve reached an age where it’s very easy to think that everything you’re going to do, you’ve done. Like I said to Violet, she can dream of what career she might have in the years to come, but I already know that answer, because I’ve had that career. I’d slipped into a rut where I was thinking my life was behind me, and now it was just about repeating what I already had, until I, well, die.

And then this year, 2026, at the age of 56, I became a fan of ice hockey, having never really been a fan of any sport — certainly not in the sense of actually attending. I really didn’t see that coming.

I love it.

And that was what I thanked Violet for. I thanked for her showing me that I still have a future to explore, a future that will contain new and unexpected things, challenges perhaps, but joys also. Who knows, maybe I might actually snag that publishing contract I’ve been trying to get for the last twenty years?

It’s not so much that there’s life in this old dog, as this old dog still has a life in front of him to enjoy.

Any part of that enjoyment is watching the Manchester Storm.

In the meantime, I’m the guy walking around with “Weeeeeere the Manchester Storrrrrm” playing in my head to the tune of Seven Nation Army.

Wouldn’t have it any other way.

If you’d like to visit the Manchester Storm, they are at the Planet Ice rink in Altrincham (the south-west corner of Greater Manchester, and you can find their website here. Alternatively, other ice hockey teams, are of course, available, both in the Elite Ice Hockey League and in the National Ice Hockey League.