It’s not every day that a hockey goalie gets a thundering ovation before he’s even left the locker room.

On a Tuesday night in January, though, that was the scene at Underhill Arena on the Bates College campus. Jessie Turcotte hadn’t yet put on a single skate, glove or pad and the locker room was going nuts.

“He’s very much loved right now,” said Bernie Fortier, yelling to be heard over the ruckus. “It’s no fun at all playing this game without a goalie.”

Make no mistake. The men of the Maine Senior Skaters league don’t lug their equipment over to Bates College each week just to get out of the house. They come to play hockey, and who cares if the youngest of them is closing in on 50 and the oldest is pushing 80?

While other men of advancing age have retired to their recliners, the Senior Skaters are out there playing what is widely regarded as one of the most physically challenging sports in the world.

Why do they do it? Love of the game, mostly. But here’s an interesting thing about the Senior Skaters: half of them have been playing all their lives. They’ve been skating since they were toddlers and they spent a great chunk of their childhoods slapping pucks across frozen ponds.

The other half are men who never laced up skates at all until they decided – for a variety of reasons – that it would be great fun to learn one of the world’s most demanding games after they’d stumbled into middle age and beyond.

“I’ve always been a hockey fan, but I didn’t start playing until I was around 43,” says Jeff Leonards, a Buxton man of 66 years. “And it’s been incredible.”

Incredible, yes. But it’s one thing to skate at full bore on a rink full of stick-wielding man at 10, 20 or even 30 years old. It’s another thing altogether when you’re 50, 60 or, in one man’s case, 78.

“I know what I want to do,” says Les Kane, a man who at 51 is among the league’s youngest. “But my body doesn’t always let me do it.”

Fortunately for Kane, the Senior Skaters league is specifically organized to be more accommodating to those whose bodies can’t quite do what they used to. There is no checking. No slap shots are allowed. You young bucks under 45 years old need not apply.

“I want my older, slower guys to have a home,” says Fortier, who has been running the league for seven years. “Right now I may be 60, but someday I’ll be 70 or 75 and I want to have a place to skate. Some of the slower guys, we want to be respectful of their age and their skating abilities. We want to make sure they have fun.”

The league has no upper age limit at all. The result is a group of men with a weird range of hockey history. Some have been playing for more than fifty years. Others are just starting out. And they are as different professionally as they are on the ice. The men who play in the Senior Skaters League are machinists, bankers, salesman, teachers, mechanics and truckers. Without the game of hockey, these people might never have occasion to mingle with one another. When they get on the ice, though, they share a common mission: try to put the puck in the other guy’s net while artfully keeping that puck away from your own.

Some just do it a little quicker than others.

YOU CALL THIS A RETIREMENT PLAN?

Consider this: the senior member of the league is old enough to remember when the St. Dominic’s ice rink caught fire in 1957.

“I had just gotten my first new pair of skates ever,” said Paul Vallee, now 78. “I had them for two weeks and then the arena burned down with all of our equipment there. We had to go practice at Bowdoin every morning because we didn’t have anything here.”

It seems like the kind of story you’d hear from a tired old man waxing nostalgic about a long gone age. Vallee might be tired on occasion, but don’t call him old if you can’t beat him to the puck.

The others in the locker room are in awe of Vallee, who laces up his skates once a week to play, taking the ice with men who, in some instances, are 30 years his junior.

“He’s our elder statesman,” Fortier says of Vallee. “He’s actually quite good. He has a sense for the game. He knows where to be and he knows how to pass. He’s a very unselfish player.”

When Vallee was growing up, all the local parishes sponsored hockey teams. He played for St. Dom’s back in 1958 and for the most part, he never took a break from the game, even after he got married and raised a couple children.

“I’ve always played hockey, really,” Vallee says. “I know a lot of guys, they didn’t continue playing and when they did come back, they had a really hard time with it. You’ve got to keep going because it’s very difficult to get back.”

Vallee skates remarkably well for a man pushing 80, everyone agrees. Part of that might be due to his size – at 140 pounds, he’s relatively small for the game. And speedy, which helped him elude a fair number of bigger, meaner skaters back in the day.

“I’ve always skated pretty fast and I’ve been very lucky,” Vallee says. “No broken bones. A few stitches here and there and that was it.”

When Vallee first started playing with the Senior Skaters, the minimum age was 35.

“For those of us who are older,” Vallee says, “it was getting harder and harder to keep up with the younger guys.”

Fortier ultimately upped that minimum age by a decade, a move some believe may have saved the league.

“The dilemma for the past seven years has been to find people who are 45 years or older and who are intermediate skaters,” says Fortier, who gets an assist from teammate Ron Cloutier in running the league.

As he’s suiting up in the Underhill locker room, making announcements and joking with the others, you get the sense that Fortier has been involved in the game all his life. Relative to some others, though, Fortier is as green as they come.

“I started playing around ten years ago,” he says. “I was dangerous on the ice. People were afraid of me. I’d run into them. I didn’t know how to turn. I didn’t know how to stop.”

Fortier wasn’t inclined to get into hockey at all until he began tutoring bilingual players on the Lewiston Maineiacs a decade ago. Working with the players, watching them skate and handle the puck so majestically, Fortier was inspired.

“I decided, I’ve got to learn how to skate,” he says. “I’ve got to learn how to play this game.”

After several passes through the popular Rousseau hockey clinic, Fortier learned how to skate – and more importantly, how to stop and how to turn. He stopped running into the boards and other players.

Fortier became a respectable hockey player, and now he runs the whole league.

“I do it for them,” he says, as more men bang through the locker room doors to suit up. “If they have fun then I’m a happy camper. It’s a great group of guys. I’ve learned a lot running it. I pick people’s brains. I try to get people involved as much as possible. I want people to have fun. That’s the ultimate goal.”

Oh, they’re having fun. Take a look at John Mooney who, at 57, has been a hockey fan all his life – from a safe distance, anyway.

“I always watched hockey. I’ve always loved it, I just couldn’t play the game,” the Auburn man says. “I never played when I was younger. I didn’t start playing until I was 32.”

Mooney says that when he first decided to toddle out onto the ice, he was an ankle skater. He was wobbly and unsure of himself. But he kept doing it and the longer he skated, the better he became.

It helps, Mooney says, that the people who play in the Senior Skaters league aren’t out there trying to earn NHL contracts. The level of competitiveness is nothing like that which can be found in other leagues.

“Here, it’s all about just having fun,” Mooney says. “If a guy burns you, so what? To still be out there on the ice and wanting to play, that’s what this is all about.”

“We’re not playing for the Stanley Cup in here,” agrees Paul Baril, a man of 60 who’s in only his third year in the league after a decades-long period of rest from the game.

“I’ve been playing since I was a kid,” Baril says, “but never any organized hockey. It was always pond hockey. I played a little bit in college, but then I gave it up for 30 years.”

In some ways, the men agree, there is a like-riding-a-bike aspect to hockey skills. You never forget how to skate or stick handle a puck once you learn. But getting older means that endurance is on the decline. A man doesn’t have the same lung capacity he had as a kid. He’ll more deeply feel the aches and pains of rigorous exercise.

“When you’re 20, you don’t feel it at all,” Baril says. “When you’re 60, though?”

He winces to make his point.

Leonards, for one, was kind of awed by how demanding the game of hockey is on the body. He’d been an athlete all his life, after all. He runs, he jogs, he skis. How hard can it be to glide along the ice in pursuit of a black disc?

“Of all the things I’ve ever done, ice hockey was the most challenging,” Leonards says. “You have to have endurance, you have to have speed, you have to coordination so you can stay on your feet, you have to have puck control. There are so many aspects. If you made a mistake, you could get knocked to the ice or fall into the boards or something like that.”

Leonards first learned to skate with roller blades. He then progressed to ice skates and took some clinics to learn some skills.

“My biggest challenge,” he says, “was to try to not think of what other people think of me. I want to play the best I can. I don’t want to look bad.”

PULLED MUSCLES AND BRUISED ANKLES

For many in the locker room, staying involved in hockey is a family affair. At 69-years-old, Roger Couturier sees the game as another way to relate to his kids and to his grandkids. That’s kind of ironic, maybe, because it was family that pulled him out of the game in the first place.

“I played hockey when I was young,” Couturier said. “Then I got married and had kids. That takes precedence. I didn’t play again until I was in my mid-40s.”

On occasion, Couturier will skate on the same ice with his sons and three grandchildren, an experience he calls “really a high.”

Playing with the Senior Skaters, though, isn’t family time, it’s hockey time. When the game is on, Couturier’s job as a defenseman is to serve as an enforcer – to keep opposing players away from his net.

Needless to say, doing that at 69 is a greater challenge that it was at 29.

“Keeping up with the other players,” Couturier says. “The stamina is not what it used to be. Every year I find it a little more difficult, but it’s so much fun, I’ll never stay away.”

Further down on the bench, Ron Cloutier says he’s been playing the game since he was 4 years old. Now 66 and helping to run the league, Cloutier skates three times a week. In the Senior Skaters league, he says there are nights when playing competitive hockey is so exhilarating, it takes him hours to come down.

“That’s a problem some nights,” Cloutier says. “You get home and you can’t go to bed. You’re too wired.”

While some medical experts worry that the stop-and-nature of hockey might be tough on an old-timer’s heart, almost all of them seem to agree that exercise the game offers has health benefits. The players themselves tend to see it that way.

“In the winter, I don’t do a whole lot,” says Kane. “I thought it would be good to get out once or twice a week, get a good sweat going and get some exercise. In general, hockey’s very low impact, as long as you can stay off the boards and stay out of everybody’s way.”

“I sweat my you-know-what off,” says Mooney. “It can be a tough game. Again, it depends on how much you want to put into it.”

The Senior Skaters League will see an occasional broken ankle, the men say. More common are pulled muscles and the usual array of bumps and bruises. The trick, the players say, is to use good equipment and to know one’s limits.

Each week, when Fortier puts his teams together, he tries to keep an even mix of young, fast skaters and older slower ones on each side.

“I try to make the teams as balanced as possible,” Fortier says, pondering the roster on his clipboard.

When they take the ice, it’s hockey. Just hockey. As a spectator, there is no sense at all that the men chasing that puck are old enough to get a seniors discount or that one of them is just a couple years shy of the octogenarian mark.

Leonards is out there circling like a shark around the red line. Fortier goes after the puck with his arms pumping just like a player half his age would do it. When Baril goes into the corners, a casual observer would be hard pressed to guess whether that was a 20-year-old or a 60-year-old man coming off a 30-year retirement.

There is no ref and so the Senior Skaters go at it for long periods with no whistles to interrupt the play. There are only five backup players on one side, four on the other. Even a high school kid would get winded fast under those conditions.

It’s good hockey with just enough spirit of competition. Anyone who has played pond hockey, with boots for goal posts and a long crack at center ice, would recognize the pace and temperament of the game immediately. This is a group of guys playing hockey because they love it and because there’s just no logical reason to let the game go.

“I still enjoy it a lot,” says Vallee, who at 78 could not be blamed for wanting to stay on the couch on Thursday nights. “Hopefully I can keep going for a couple more years.”

Bernie Fortier makes a pass during a recent game at Bates College. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Bernie Fortier, of Lewiston, rips off a piece of tape to secure his gear as he suits up for a recent hockey game at Underhill Arena on the Bates College campus. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Dave Ouellette, left, and John Mooney battle for the puck during a recent game at Underhill Arena on the campus of Bates College in Lewiston. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Les Kane jumps over the boards during a line change. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Some vintage and well-used sticks lean against the locker room wall as players get changed prior to a recent game. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

After a long day of work, Jessie Turcotte, of Lisbon, transforms into his goalie gear prior to a recent game at Bates College. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Daryl Cote, of Lewiston, flips his face mask down as he leaves the locker room at Underhill Arena at Bates College to head out on the ice. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Mitch Vallee, of Auburn, winds hockey tape around his goalie equipment in the locker room prior to a recent game at Bates College. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Bernie Fortier, of Lewiston, laces up his skates prior to a game at Underhill Arena on the Campus of Bates College recently. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Goalie Mitch Vallee slides into position to make a save as players battle for the puck in front of the crease during a recent game. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Jeff Leonards, left, and John Mooney, right, battle for the puck during a recent game at Underhill Arena on the campus of Bates College in Lewiston. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Keep yer socks on

In hockey, most players use a garter belt to hold their socks up. Anyone who has played so much as Squirts hockey knows this.

Jeff Leonards, on the other hand, did not.

Leonards has been a hockey fan all his life – he was at the Philadelphia Spectrum in 1974 when the Flyers beat the Bruins to win the Stanley Cup – but he never had reason to ask how a player kept his socks up.

Then the 60-year-old began taking a hockey clinic to learn the finer points of the game. After a vigorous period of training on the ice, Leonards and the other players took to the locker room to catch their breath.

“We’re sitting around the locker room having refreshments,” Leonards says. “The coach comes over, looks down at me and says, ‘You could use a garter belt.’ I thought he was making fun of me.”

You can’t really blame him. Since the garter belt is typically associated with brides, Hollywood socialites and Madonna, Leonards believed the coach was deriding his style of play on the ice.

“I smiled at him and said, ‘Oh yeah, right,'” Leonards recalls. “And the coach says, ‘No, seriously.’ I was totally confused. I found out later that he was talking about my socks.”

Want to play hockey?

The Maine Senior Skaters League is looking for intermediate hockey players. The only criteria is that you be 45 or older and have your own equipment. To find out more, contact Bernie Fortier at 795-6791 or berniefortier@gmail.com

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