Trick serves. Touch shots. Drop shots. Chop blocks.
There’s so much to love about Ping-Pong—especially if you’re a hockey player. Ping-Pong tables have become a locker room staple for many pro clubs, and now it’s become the main event of NHLer Dominic Moore’s annual Smashfest fundraiser.
“For the record, I’m not talking about the kind of Ping-Pong you play at your family reunion with your cousin,” Moore wrote in a piece for The Players’ Tribune on Thursday. “I’m talking about stand-back-and-swing-out bash ball, where you’re diving for shots 12 feet from the table to keep the point alive. I’m talking about Ping-Pong that’s actually fun to watch — where teammates gather around the table and scream when a reflex backhand off a smash finds the corner edge.”
That’s exactly the kind of Ping-Pong you’ll see at Thursday night’s party, which raises funds for concussion and rare cancer research.
“The event, I thought, would be the perfect way for [NHL] players to show their personalities, and also bring the inside of the locker room culture out to the public,” Moore wrote of the Toronto-based event, now in its fifth year.
In his post, Moore wrote about the success of Smashfest, the game of Ping-Pong and some of his favourite teammate tales involving Marty St. Louis — “the best teammate I ever played with,” Moore says.
Here are some excerpts:
On the idea behind Smashfest:
If you haven’t been to Smashfest before, the event is basically a party. With over 25 NHL players and a few surprise celebrity guests, the tourney is held at Steam Whistle Brewery beneath the CN Tower in downtown Toronto. The festivities start with a pro-am doubles tournament with teams captained by NHL stars, followed by a singles bracket to crown a players’ champion. The first half is definitely more of a social scene, and the second half is where it gets intense.
On just how intense things can get:
Last year the two finalists, Patrick Eaves and Stephane Veilleux, even got into a heated argument when one of them claimed interference with a camera on an important point. The official had to make a ruling to end the spat, and even though he had to remind them it was a charity event, I was actually proud of the intensity the guys were bringing to the table. For me, it was the culmination of the vision that those of us on the Smashfest team had all along.
On the importance of funding concussion and rare cancer research, the two causes Smashfest supports:
Both of these areas are underfunded and often neglected. For rare cancers, for example, the problem is that when there are so few cases and they are scattered in different places around the world, there is little data and knowledge to work with, so the idea of collaboration is not only an idealistic concept, but an absolute must.
On Marty St. Louis as a teammate—and a Ping-Pong opponent:
Marty and I would play set after set because a) It was fun; and b) Marty would want to keep playing until he won one. Yes, trash talk is also a big part of the action, and most of our banter usually revolved around me laughing at his “win-a-point, lose-a-point” body language, and him taking issue with my stalling tactics (if he got on too much of a roll, I’d pretend like I couldn’t find the ball under the table). We also had contrasting styles. He loved to play an aggressive topspin game that was good when his swagger was up, and I preferred to play with backspin, not because that was my game, but mostly because it drove him nuts. He just couldn’t handle it, and his body language would reflect that.
Read Moore’s Players’ Tribune article in its entirety here.
