My first sweater, first real sweater that was all mine to take care of, and keep in my hockey bag, with a number that I would always wear, was maroon, and it had an orange No. 17 on the back. I had worn other numbers before, but on my first team, the coach always just threw the sweaters to us, and we got whatever we got.

But the maroon sweater, that was mine.

I was the shortest kid on the team, so my mother had to make the sweater shorter to keep me from falling on it when I skated. Now, if Phyllis Gretzky had done that, we’d never have seen the Gretzky trademark, his jersey tucked into his pants on one side. But my mother didn’t just take a pair of scissors and cut two feet off the sweater. No, no. She took the two feet from the middle, starting from underneath the number, and the club symbol on the front, and ending just before the wide, white stripe on the bottom – and the advertising we had on the back.

The advertising was a big deal. The advertising, with LEMMINKAINEN in big block letters, that’s what made the sweater real. That’s what made it look just like the sweaters the club’s men’s team wore.

That’s what made us just as cool as them.

Just as cool as the sweater, was the jacket. The team jacket. It was dark blue, shiny, with a yellow-and-maroon striped collar and the club symbol on the chest. The club was called Bear Cats, after a Canadian team by the same name, the symbol being a, well, “bear cat,” a strange metamorphosis of the two animals. My father had had one when he played for the same club and now I, too, was a bear cat. Or just a cool cat.

I still remember the smell of the blue jacket when it was new. I remember the winter evening we drove up to some warehouse to pick them up, and how I wore it around the house that night. Karhu-Kissat, 1938, said the patch on the chest.

One year, everybody in my team got new toques. We would be going to Sweden to play against some Swedish teams, and we, yes, wanted to look like a team there. On the front of the hat, there was the logo of some motor oil company, but on the side, we had our sweater numbers.

Not only did we look like a team, we could still show off our individuality, in a way.

The maroon sweater, the blue jacket, the red hat, they made me feel like I belonged. I was a part of a great big and cool club, proud to show my colors around our neighborhood, at school, and at rinks around the city. I could always spot another blue jacket in a crowd at a junior game, and we’d know, oh yes, we’d know that we were in it together.

I recently saw a man wearing a blue training suit at the grocery store. That, in itself, is not unusual. A lot of men do that. This one, though, was sporting a smile as he trotted up the aisle. On the chest of his jacket, he had the logo of a local soccer team so I assumed he was the coach. I turned around and watched him walk to the vegetables and I saw something on the back. Advertising. The ultimate proof. He was a real coach.

I was wearing a New York Rangers hat and somehow I felt like a fake because if you buy the hat, you’re a fan. I have nothing against being a fan – we all are that, too – but it just isn’t the same as being a member of a team.

And I think that’s why he was smiling.

He was on the inside.