Geneseo hockey team looks to romance books for advice

Photo courtesy of Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels

SUNY Geneseo’s hockey team has found the ultimate performance enhancer—hockey romance novels. With dramatic miscommunications, last-minute roster cuts, and mandatory teammate hookups, the Ice Knights are manifesting their way to victory.

The Ice Knights have been Geneseo’s shining stars for a long time. While their performance on the ice has been spectacular, they have been looking into new performance enhancers off the ice. Some may assume the players will be using unsafe substances like steroids ​​to enhance their athletic or physical performance; however, I must report that this situation is much more serious and infinitely more dangerous. 

Geneseo’s hockey team has begun reading hockey romance novels outside their practice times. While this does not seem that dangerous, it must be mentioned that these cartoon “lovey” covers can be terribly misleading. These are not the high-level academic works expected of college students and certainly do not encompass any use or real hockey plays, so why enforce the reading of these dreadful, so-called works of literature?

The thought process is simple: no matter how insane the odds or how little time they actually practice, the hockey teams at the end of these books always win. In reading hockey romance books and mirroring the lives of these fictional hockey players, the Ice Knights are sure to succeed— allegedly. Pretty please don't sue me if this flops.     

Move one: Have players fall in love.

In accordance with several hockey romance novels, two players on the team will form a deep and useless rivalry solely based on a series of easily handled miscommunications. This can only lead the two enemies to make a pact to fuck before each and every game. Why is this? To ensure a winning season, of course! 

This is the only way to ensure the team will continue to win. It is also mandatory that these teammates fall in love at the end of the season. If two people who share the same hobbies and interests spend every waking second together and have a shared goal, they can make it in this wild world; anything can happen!

Move two: Cut the most valuable player.

Another recurring theme in hockey romance books is cutting the best player on the team over yet another miscommunication. Do not fret; the player will be back in the eleventh hour, just outside all of their teammates who worked hard all season and actually attended every game and practice. 

There are several ways in which the star player can be booted off the team through miscommunication. They can switch a failed drug test, frame them for campus destruction— bonus points if the hockey rink is destroyed —or fail them in all their classes. Now, what you might expect the cut player to do during their free time is perhaps more training, focusing on grades, or even trying some therapy. NOPE! They will be coaching a youth hockey team— for free, for some reason —and falling in love before they make their triumphant return to win the big game or whatever the fuck.

Move three: Pull a Troy Bolton.

If all else fails, the hockey team will be forced to make aggressive and unnecessary choices on what they would rather do in life: Play professional hockey in the National Hockey League— Geneseo is a Division III team, by the way —or pursue a secret second hobby that for some reason everyone— particularly their dad —is against. God forbid, the fifth-semester bench warmer wants to take up watercolors after graduating with a sports management degree; they do not know how to use them.  

Whether it leads our team to a historic victory or, enviably, drives the hockey program into burning disarray, at the end of the day, at least we got these hockey players to read a fucking book.