For longtime Macon hockey official Kim Lander, the ice is everything

As far as Kim Lander was concerned, the Macon Mayhem changing their name for a night was nothing new.

The local hockey team became the Ocmulgee River Monsters for one evening earlier this month, donning brand-new, bright green uniforms instead of their typical red-and-blue fare and changing their logo.

From his compact glass box at the end of the ice closest to the Macon Coliseum’s lobby, Lander said he liked the new, one-night-only uniforms. It was another name and logo to add to his list, at the very least.

After all, the hockey veteran has seen plenty of Bibb County teams hit the ice only to move to another city — or go extinct entirely — in no time flat. He’s been a fixture amid Macon’s often low-profile hockey scene, in one way or another, since it began in 1973.

Lander has seen it all, from the Whoopee to the Mayhem and everything in between. He’s skated with star players. He’s driven a Whoopee van across the country and gone to training camp. He’s fashioned his own makeshift jersey with leftover logos.

What Lander has done the longest, though, is his current job as an off-ice official for the SPHL. Since 1996, the goal judge has sat in those aforementioned tight quarters, encased in glass behind the net at one end of the rink, ready to light the lamp if he sees that black puck cross the red goal line.

It is a strange job, one of simultaneous anonymity and infamy. 

“It is a job no one wants,” Lander said. 

It is a responsibility that draws the ire of fans and players alike, despite the fact that many of the former — and probably a few of the latter — would not recognize Lander if they saw him.

But, most of all, it is the job of a man who has loved hockey for his entire life — and a man who wants others to love it, too.

Pond skating and van driving

Lander, originally from New Jersey, grew up with skates on his feet. He started tearing up his local frozen pond when he was just 3 years old, and his love of hockey followed soon after.

After he moved to Macon and graduated from Central High School (when it was still called Lanier), it was only natural that he wound up on the ice during a public skating session and encountered a player for Macon’s first-ever hockey team.

“I was just out there skating and one of the top draft picks for the Macon Whoopees was nearby. We just started talking,” Lander said. “We became friends pretty fast, and then I was working for the team.”

Lander was a jack of all trades for the Whoopees in their inaugural 1973 season. He sold advertisements, he worked with team equipment — he even drove the team’s Whoopees-branded van all the way to Canada for the team’s training camp. 

The vehicle drew quite a bit of attention given the team’s novel moniker inspired by a hit Doris Day track, even drawing the eye of a news crew that filmed Lander and his friend as they drove.

“It was a blast. It was really an experience going through training camp with a professional team. I even had a uniform they made me, ‘just in case you have to get out there,’ they said. But then the IRS came and shut them down nine games before the first season ended in 1974,” Lander said. “The first owner was a great guy, but you gotta pay your taxes.”

And just like that, hockey in Macon went dormant. But Lander waited patiently for the sport of his childhood to return.

It only took a little more than 20 years.

“When they brought hockey back down here in 1996, I was the most excited,” Lander said. “That’s when I started doing the job as the goal judge, and I’ve been doing it ever since. It’s a way to be involved.”

‘I have a conscience’

The new team dropped the “S,” calling themselves the Macon Whoopee after getting permission from the original 1973 team and league, but Lander couldn’t be partial to them anymore. He had a job to do.

“That’s the most important thing. I love Macon hockey, but I have a conscience, and I love hockey more. I have to call it like I see it,” he said.

Lander means it, too. Just earlier this season, he had one controversial call that, in the eyes of some, cost the Mayhem a seemingly crucial goal when he chose not to press his button to light the red LED bulb atop his glass box. 

Though Macon went on to win the game in a blowout, the key call by Lander — or no-call, as it were — did mean the player who shot the puck came up a goal short of a hat trick that night.

Even on “River Monsters” night a few weeks ago, some fans griped as the Mayhem failed to net a goal on Lander’s end of the floor.

“That’s the toughest part, by a mile, when folks get upset. Somebody told me, ‘you better remember what city you live in.’ But that stuff I just have to let go. I feel bad for ‘em, because they really want the goal,” Lander said. “I’ve had guys get mad at me and come up trying to get through the glass, but I don’t worry too much.”

Lander has seen a lot of antics in his decades with the game — coaches throwing bundles of hockey sticks onto the ice in protest of a ref’s call; a fan accidentally throwing a real, hard puck right next to him during a contest where the crowd throws rubber ones onto the rink — but he’s loved every second of it.

He’s done everything he can to spread that love of hockey, too. He and his first wife enjoyed the sport until she passed away. Lander married his second wife in 2015 — he’d actually dated her in the early ‘70s when she was a student at Wesleyan College — and turned her into a fanatic as well.

“Before she moved back here she was down in Florida, we would call each other and keep up with hockey games together on the phone,” Lander said. “Now she can tell you just about everything — who’s been cut, waived, moved around, you name it.”

Though Lander can’t be a fan of the Mayhem himself, he wishes everyone else was. He commended the dedicated fanbase developed by the team over the last decade, praising the watch parties for road games and the fervent support at home games.

“I love the people who run and comment on the Mayhem fan page. I can’t say anything on it, but I do like to read it,” Lander joked. “I just wish more people knew about hockey being in Macon, or hockey in general… Some people come for a fight and then enjoy the hockey game, then they might learn more about it. Hockey is such a great thing.”

When Lander says it, it’s easy to believe. Why else would a man spend decades in this glass box, biding his time until a puck crosses that line?

Lander’s cubicle seems a bit lonesome on its own. The pucks during warm-ups firecracker off the glass and boards with shocking intensity. The button sits on a stool, ready to light the lamp at the earliest sign of a score.

But when Lander steps into the coop and shuts the door behind him, getting ready to work, his confines change. He does not flinch at the rapping of pucks against the nearby wooden boards. He’s all business during the game, but he cracks a smile long enough for a picture in front of the spot where he’s spent hundreds of nights intently watching the ice.

With Kim Lander inside it, that little box looks a lot like home.