By Matt Skoufalos
For a man who’s spent a decade-plus in goalie pads at the club level, Jim Zheng came late to the game of ice hockey.
In Watertown, Massachusetts, where he grew up, most of the neighborhood kids had been on ice skates before they started walking. By contrast, Zheng was capable of skating forward, “and that’s about it,” by the time he was in high school.
During his senior year at Buckingham Browne & Nichols, however, Zheng decided to join the ice hockey team. He and another senior co-captained the junior varsity club. Zheng liked it enough to play club hockey in college, and thereafter took up with a “beer league” team — the universal nickname for structured adult recreational club play — in his thirties.
“In hockey, all roads lead to beer league; even for the pros,” Zheng said.
Ice hockey yields an opportunity for players to maintain a level of physical fitness, but it’s mostly an excuse to socialize and relieve the stresses of work and family life. Club play opens up opportunities for players to form relationships that they might not otherwise enjoy.
“It’s hard to remember the last time I may have had my friends over at home,” Zheng said. “Instead, I get to hang out with my buddies every week. It’s a chance to not worry about your day-to-day stuff, and focus on something silly that we get to take seriously.”
Beyond that, Zheng said club hockey provides a sense of physical and mental freedom that he doesn’t find elsewhere. He described it as “a mini-recharge during the week.” An avid cook, he’ll frequently bring a grill to the postgame parking lot, and serve up warm brats and gyros for his teammates to enjoy alongside their cold beers.
“When you step on the ice, gliding forward as opposed to walking anywhere, your stresses of the day just leave you,” Zheng said. “You don’t think about anything that’s bothering you, and you get to unwind your head, your body, for an hour or so, and then in the parking lot after.”
For the past decade, Zheng has alternated between playing one game a week at a skating position, and playing another as a goaltender. Minding the nets is a challenging task that requires above-average athleticism, flexibility, and the ability to clear your head quickly after an error. Zheng’s favorite NHL goalies include former Boston Bruin Tim Thomas and Hockey Hall of Famer Dominic Hasek, although he is quick to say his own level of play doesn’t match theirs.
“We’re mid-tier in skill level, so we’ve got a wide range [of players on the team],” Zheng said. “Some of the guys might be in their late 50s, early 60s; we’ll also have a couple of 20-year-olds.”
The league in which Zheng plays is organized by Hockey North America, a 45-year-old recreational league with chapters in cities across the United States and Canada. Every team has matching home and away uniforms; the league provides referees and timekeepers, and maintains a database of player statistics.
“One of the best things that they do is assemble a beginner’s team, and then for the first 18 weeks of the season, instead of playing a game, you have structured practice,” Zheng said. “You learn your basics – shooting, skating – have a few games at the end of the season, and enter the league next season at the lowest level as a new team.”
Zheng’s team, the Cardinals, has been together in various forms for years. They play in rinks around the Boston area, and he’ll drive anywhere from a half hour to an hour to attend a game.
The leagues also host annual tournaments, with five levels bracketed by ability. The winners are invited to an annual round-robin tournament of champions in Toronto, Ontario, Canada every June. Zheng has been there with the Cardinals three times, most recently in 2024, when he played goaltender for the club at Westwood Arenas in Etobicoke.
“You get three games guaranteed in a round robin,” he said. “In the first game, we got blown out, and I gave up eight goals against. So I was like, ‘All right, I just ruined the weekend for everyone.’
“The next two were better, and at the end of it, we were 2-1, but we made the playoffs,” Zheng said. “The first game, we won, and the fifth game [we played] in 48 hours was against the first team that blew us out.”
“We beat them 2-1 at the end. I went from giving up eight goals in the first game to seven goals in the next four.”
Team photos from those trips to Toronto are the main focal feature in his office at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), where Zheng works as the senior director of radiology clinical operations.
The photos are reminders of good times spent with his friends, some of whom have since passed. Among them is a career highlight from the 2015-16 season, during which one of Zheng’s club teams got the opportunity to skate on the outdoor rink created at Fenway Park for the 2016 Winter Classic.
He still gets excited thinking about it.
“You got dressed in the visiting team’s clubhouse; then you walked out the dugout and the steps to the rink,” Zheng said. “It happened to be lightly snowing. The lights are on at Fenway, it’s dusk.”
When he’s not playing himself, Zheng is training up the next generation of backstoppers, including his eight-year-old daughter, Minty. Of his four children, three are figure skaters, but Minty has taken up the goalie position on her ice hockey team.
“Watching her play is a whole different level of excitement and stress,” Zheng said. “She has a much better and wider butterfly [stance] than I do, but she’s also very tall for an eight-year-old: at five feet. We’re very excited to keep watching her.”
