During elementary and middle school, Darcy Kuemper and his classmates in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, walked to a nearby frozen pond with their hockey sticks during recess. They played in their shoes because with only 15 minutes, changing into skates would have been a waste of time.
After school, Kuemper would walk -- this time with hockey gear in tow -- the 10 minutes to the frozen pond near his house and play there. Sometimes his friends would be there, sometimes it'd be kids from a different school he didn't know. But it hardly mattered.
"Everyone would throw their sticks in the middle and separate them, and those were your teams," Kuemper said.