Part 1

Steve: I'm talking today with Mark Kaufman, who has been playing hockey for quite a few years. In fact, how many years have you been playing hockey?

Mark: Well, I started playing as a kid, probably when I was five. I started organized hockey when I was six. I'm thirty-two now, so that's twenty-four, twenty-five years. Twenty-six years.

Twenty-six years.

Recently, you have been playing in Japan, I believe.

Yeah, that's right. I've been in Japan for the last four years, actually. Before that I was in Switzerland for a couple years, I was in Austria. I played in the American Hockey league; I played for Team Canada for a couple years.

And I think you played university hockey in the States?

That's right. I played four years at Yale University, which is in New Haven, Connecticut.

And then when you graduated, I think you went with the Canadian National Team right from graduation. Or were you somewhere else first?

When I graduated I went to try out for the Canadian Olympic Team, for the '94 Olympics, which were in Lillehammer, I believe. Um-hmm.

I didn't make it. I was there for a couple months, and then they brought in some other guys. Then I was let go. And then after that I went to Italy, actually, for the rest of that season.

Whereabouts in Italy?

I was in a little town in the mountains, Asiago. You might be familiar with it; they're famous for their cheese. Asiago cheese on all the menus these days in Italian restaurants.

That's right. We were in that town.

Did you have a chance to sample Asiago cheese while you were there?

For sure. Actually it was a lot of fun. It was a little town up in the mountains, and we and everybody in Italy, for that matter, at least in our little town, would go out and do your grocery shopping every day, for that day. Which is quite different from here, of course, where people are more likely to do their shopping for the week. In Italy, in Asiago, we'd get up in the morning and we'd walk into the town. We would go the bakery and pick up our loaf of Italian bread. We'd go to the meat store, get some prosciutto, one of the different varieties of prosciutto. And then we'd go to the cheese store, and they would have many different varieties of Asiago cheese. And so yeah, we had lots of Asiago cheese.

And how was the quality of the hockey?

The hockey was pretty good! Most of the teams in the league had a lot of Canadians on the team, whether they were foreigners or Italian-Canadians. I should say, foreigners weren't just Canadians: we had Russians and Swedes, and assorted other foreigners. On the whole, there were a lot of Canadians in the league. The Italian players themselves, there were some good Italian players as well. So the level of the Italian league at that time was quite high.

Um-hmm.

I think, too, that the weather could be quite unpredictable. And sometimes you would be off on a trip, going up and down very narrow, steep mountain roads in snowstorms. Was that part of the experience?

Yeah. The Italian league, for the most part, all of the teams are in, sort of smaller, mountain towns like Asiago. So, when you're in the mountains you're going to get more weather like that. For sure, we would be off in our little mini-busses, going from one mountain village to another? Well, not quite village, but quite small, little resort towns. And we would go from one to the other and play our game. At night we would be driving home, in the dark, in a snowstorm, on these curvy mountain roads. It was a little disconcerting.

I see. And the fans were quite loud, were they?

Well the fans, I mean most of the rinks were outdoor rinks with a roof on them, but not enclosed, so that the fans, to keep warm, had to partake of the local grappa.

Which is a strong liquor.

Right. Or the local wine. At the end of every rink there was the wine bar. So that by the end of the game the fans were well on their way to A happy evening!

A happy evening. They certainly were quite boisterous.

I remember visiting you in Austria. The Austrian fans were also quite boisterous.

For sure. The Austrian fans, similar to the fans in Germany or in Switzerland, they approach the game a little differently than in Italy. They're there, like two hours before the game, drinking beer and singing songs in their team jerseys, and warming up for the game. I can still remember in Austria, they would be there before I got to the rink. I was quite surprised, initially. And then the singing and drinking, of course, continues basically throughout the game. Unless, of course, the home team isn't doing very well, in which case it's replaced by taunting and booing. Well not booing, but whistling in Europe.