Winter boots serve as goalposts. No referees call penalties. No goalies guard the small nets. The teams don’t have names. Sometimes they don’t even keep score.
But make no mistake. The impromptu pickup hockey games at North Pond in the Lincoln Park neighborhood represent Chicago hockey at its finest.
“No matter who you are, strangers just kind of come together and pull together a game,” Stephan Nowelski, 25, said. “People are lending each other pucks and setting up nets and helping shovel the ice. It’s like being a kid again.”
When there’s enough of a turnout to play a game, they usually try to separate those who play competitively so that games can be more even but all are welcome.
There are times when the group is asked to leave by police or park security and while there is no known city ordinance that regulates access to frozen ponds, according to a spokesperson for the city’s law department, police officers have general powers to protect residents in the city.
Nowelski said there was “a little bit of contention around ... if we’re actually allowed to be out there, but the local community was very supportive of it. Weeks like this when it’s below freezing, the ice is very safe.”
A group of teenaged boys skate around and practice their hockey skills on North Pond near the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum as temperatures were just above 0 degrees.
Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times
Many of the players live in nearby Lakeview and have been coming out to North Pond over the last few winters. Madeline Carroll, 28, lives in Lincoln Park and says she started playing there three years ago. These days she tries to go out on the pond as often as she can, so long as the ice stays frozen. She usually waits four-to-five consecutive days of below-freezing temperatures before putting on her skates.
“The nice thing about it is that it makes you enjoy the cold temperature and you look forward to below-freezing temperatures rather than dread it,” she said.
Wednesday afternoon, the sounds of skates scraping the ice and thud of a puck landing on the stick filled the otherwise quiet air around the pond as Carroll and a friend practiced skating and passing.
The rink is always placed in the shallow end, near land. For extra safety, players check the pond around the edges near land to see if it’s frozen all the way through and slide a rock on the ice to make sure no cracks form. Then there’s the check to see if there are any wet spots.
When snowfall melts and refreezes, the pond’s surface becomes wet, uneven and off-limits for the game.
Carroll came to Chicago from Connecticut a couple of years ago to attend school at Rush University and joined a men’s hockey team because a woman living in one of the apartments overlooking the pond saw her play.
“You start interacting with your neighbors more,” Carroll said. “That’s what’s so fun about it, is that you can just make friends by being out there.”
Madeline Carroll and a friend practice hockey at North Pond in Lincoln Park.
Mohammad Samra/Sun-Times
One of the pond pals Carroll made was Alex Levine.
Levine, 26, says as many as 25 people gathered at the pond one day last winter to play, including a few teenagers who were several years younger than most who were on the pond.
“[Pond hockey] brings people together,” Levine said. “Even though we were, you know, eight or nine years older than them, it was a lot of fun to get involved with them and talk to them.”
Passersby sometimes stop to chat and tell them how happy they are to see them playing outside during the winter.
Levine and Carroll both spent most of their lives playing organized hockey and enjoy skating around and practicing on the pond, but those who don’t play competitively are encouraged to join.
“It’s a lot more carefree as opposed to a competitive game or a practice for a team where there’s a lot more structure,” Levin, who plays defense for a West Loop competitive team, said.
Nowelski never played hockey competitively, but knew how to skate and roughly understood the sport, which was “all he needed,” he said.
“There’s people like [Carroll] who like playing hockey and are very good and there’s people who just barely know how to skate but want to be out there hanging out, and that’s totally fine,” Nowelski said. “Everyone’s totally OK if you’re not that good.”
Carroll believes coming out to the pond is an “awesome way to build community in Chicago.”
“Any way we’re able to keep doing this is important, not just to me but to the entire community,” Carroll said. “I’m really supportive of just trying to continue that and allow access to all people to get out to the pond if they can.”