Being Canadian, the lore of hockey is always present. Each decade has its share of great players, eccentric characters and their memorable stories. I see older photos and am always tempted to draw the players... the hair, style, the equipment. Some of it seems just too ridculous, playing hockey with no helmets, glorious manes of hair waving in the breeze(the flow). Even specific parts of equipment that were brief fads, that can instantly date when a player was in action.

I decided to do a few classics to start out, just loosely sketching them so that they were more character and less portrait. Legendary rushing defenseman Bobby Orr from the Big Bad Bruins and sniper Mike Bossy from the early 80's Islander dynasty both had unique looks in their day. After finishing up the brush work, I added some splashes of watercolour to liven things up, and give a feel for team colours.

As Canadians everywhere have either rejoiced at the return of hockey, or continue to hold out and grumble about whiny rich players and owners, I decided to look back at my own artistic hockey dryspell. As a young artist, my sketchbooks were filled with pencil sketches of various sports stars...mostly hockey players really. And always goalies. From a development standpoint, it's actually a very useful tool since I can look back over a span of years worth of goalie drawings at different ages, and see how my skills progressed (Pictured here are ages 8, 12 and 14).

I literally learned to draw, drawing goalies. I drew them so much I had the grooves of the pads and brand logos memorized. I found the last goalie drawing I ever produced, done at the age of 14...so while for many the half year without hockey felt like forever, I guess I wouldn't start to miss it for at least another 15 or 20 years.

I recently had the chance to take some snapshots of former Niagara Ice Dogs and Canadian Junior Team Goalie, Mark Visentin. Currently playing for Phoenix's farm team during the NHL lockout, he keeps fit by incorporating yoga sessions into his training routine. Aside from being pretty casual and down-to-earth, he's also extremely flexible, which produced some unique photos.

Back in my youth netminding days I stretched a little to warm up, but it reminded me of how serious athletics have become. I wonder if the old greats like Johnny Bower and Terry Sawchuk even stretched at all. Given that they didn't wear masks, it would seem like flexibility was probably a low priority.