This article appears in the Dec. 11, 2008, edition of Let's Play Hockey.
BLAINE, MINN. – Area hockey player Geoff Kaiser picked up the sport a mere three months ago, but the Plymouth, Minn., native is already considering hanging up the skates for good due to his rare red-blue colorblindness. A forward for the Elsinore Brewery team in the Norris Division of the SuperRink D League, Kaiser has gone offsides a league record 114 times in 16 games this season, apparently because of his inability to discern the difference between the red and blue lines.
Even though Kaiser, 32, wholly understands the rules of hockey, he routinely gets confused as to which lines are which colors, leading to multiple whistles for offsides during nearly every one of Kaiser’s shifts. Just last weekend in a league game against the rival Bourque Chops, Kaiser skated offsides an astonishing six times in one shift.
"Being colorblind has certainly taken a toll on my development as a hockey player," Kaiser said after a game which featured 29 whistles attributed solely to the hapless forward. "It’s just so darn confusing out there on the ice. I mean, what’s red to you is blue to me and vice versa. It’s like bizarro world. How can I be expected to stay onsides when I can’t tell if the line I just crossed was really red or blue?"
In an effort to combat the obvious conflict of Kaiser’s visual disability with the rules of hockey, Elsinore Brewery teammates have gone to great lengths to solve the maddening problem. Team captain Mike Lunderbergh thought he found the solution upon finishing his box of Fruity Pebbles late last month.
"I’m just polishing off a box of my favorite cereal when I notice something amid the crumbs," Lunderbergh said. "There it was. The solution to all of our problems – 3-D glasses. It seemed like a great idea and it was to a certain extent. The glasses solved the red line-blue line problem, but it sure did a number of Geoff’s depth perception. He wasn’t going offsides anymore, but he was constantly running into the boards. Back to the drawing boards, I guess."
When the 3-D glasses experiment failed, the Elsinore Brewery squad tried several other tactics to handle the issue, including hypnosis, behavior modification, looking into retinal transplants and playing Geoff only when they had a faceoff in the offensive zone. When all those strategies failed, the team turned to league director Sam Lombardo.
"The Elsinore Brewery team came to me with a drastic suggestion to help rid the league of the offsides epidemic that has plagued it since Kaiser started playing hockey," Lombardo said. "Lunderbergh asked the rink manager to re-paint our lines in more Kaiser-friendly colors like green and orange. That just wasn’t going to happen. We’d be the laughingstock of the ice arena world."
The majority of Kaiser’s teammates have been nothing but supportive as Kaiser has battled his colorblindness on the ice. Some Elsinore Brewery players, however, seem to be losing patience.
"Listen, I like Geoff. I respect Geoff. I just don’t understand Geoff," veteran defenseman Karl Coughlin said. "How hard is it to figure out that the center line is red and the other two lines are blue? Seriously, I’ve had just about enough of this. If he doesn’t quit, I quit."
Other team members have taken a more pragmatic, look-on-the-bright-side approach to the problems that Kaiser has brought to the ice.
"I’m as annoyed by all the whistles as the next guy, but I’ll tell you this, I’m getting really good at taking faceoffs," center Stefan Gellar said.
Kaiser claims he didn’t anticipate the impact his visual disability would have on the Elsinore Brewery team and the SuperRink D League.
"I really didn’t expect my colorblindness to be a problem in hockey," Kaiser said. "I mean, it’s never really been an issue before...aside from my short-lived career as a high school quarterback when I passed to the wrong team because I thought they’re wearing blue when they were really wearing red. Oh, and every four years during election time, the whole red state-blue state thing gets really confusing. Come to think of it, maybe the reason I get pulled over all the time for running red lights has something to do with me having trouble seeing red. I guess I should have seen this coming."
Lunderbergh has called a team meeting to address the future of Kaiser on the Elsinore Brewery team. League officials are anxiously awaiting the team’s decision.
"As officials, we need to stay as impartial as possible," linesman Jim Backlin said. "But the sooner Kaiser is done as a hockey player, the better. I’ve gone through 14 whistles this season. My whistle budget is through the roof."
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