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I like to say that you should never blame a loss on the refs because you should never let a game come down to reffing. I still like to say that, now that a day has passed since the game. I’ll also say that not only should you not let a game be decided by a single goal because of reffing, you should not let a game be decided by two goals because your entire team including goalie is so upset by the first goal that you immediately let in another one. That’s all I’d like to say. Final score: 1-3 Tired legs! After a Friday night game, Saturday mountain bike ride, and Saturday evening clinic, my legs were a little toasty. That’s my explanation for falling on my butt almost every time I had to defend 1-on-1. On the upside, falling on my butt seemed to disrupt the rush quite effectively. The one time they scored coming in on me I stayed on my feet. ;) Lots of people went splat today. Did everyone arrive with toasty legs? Durros. Final score: 1-3. What a good game last night! Traded goals with the other team all the way until 18 seconds left in the 3rd period. Final score: 4-4. Played D and managed to not have any moments where I pinched, got totally burned, gave up a goal, and got yelled at by imaginary coach John in my head when I returned to the bench. (That’s a figurative imaginary yell; he doesn’t actually yell at us in real life.) Managed a fun rush when I batted a puck out of the air, bumped it with my leg, skated it into the zone, launched a solid wrist shot (yay for practice) top left corner, beat the D to the rebound, and one-time backhanded it to my trailing teammate for a solid chance at scoring. My teammate got flattened on that play, but recovered in time for some havoc that resulted in a goal in the ensuing play. Got an assist later. Yay for points playing D! Had some fun playing center tonight with with Mark the ref calling his bet on who would win each faceoff. After a while he started to call every faceoff against me… as motivation. Turns out it’s great motivation. Apparently I’ll work harder to prove that wrong than I will to win the puck for the sake of the game. Maybe I should pretend the ref is betting against me on every puck drop? Played against the team with the really strong D, augmented with T’s daughter who’s home for the summer. Oddly, T subbed for us, and we only had 9 skaters. I don’t know why her daughter didn’t sub for us also. Felt like the rink didn’t have enough oxygen today. Was it because of the heat? Was it a fast game? Am I out of shape? Got an assist on a faceoff. Actually managed to backhand the puck toward the net, and Leslie finished it off. Final score: 1-3. Another Memorial Day weekend I don’t want to travel, another local fun tournament! Since so many people are out of town, we had *just* enough players for a 4 team, 4-on-4 NCWHL tournament at Ice Oasis. Game 1 We mixed things up a bit by putting super solid Maroon D Thu up at forward. Turns out she’s awesome at it! She scored our first two goals off two assists from our Green skater Rosemary. I wanted in on the scoring fun too, so I deflected one of the other team’s shots into our own net. After that, I got called for not-tripping, laughed about it with the not-tripped player, then watched the not-tripped player score during our penalty kill. I made up for helping the other team score twice at the end of the game, when I finished off a great effort by Nancy and Maryann with 30 seconds left on the clock. Phew! Final score: 3-2. Game 2 Saturday evening we played the team with the really solid skaters and beginner goalie. Their roster concerned me, since you need offense to win and I wasn’t sure how much offense we’d be able to mount against such a team. There was definitely a lot more chasing people down than in the first game, but our skaters did a great job tying up the other team so they couldn’t get too many shots off. Early in the game I picked up the puck and started skating through our zone with it looking for a pass. This immediately triggered the “Stop and let Viv go ahead” reaction in the rest of my team, followed by a full line change. So I weaved right, then left, then right to buy time. Fortunately, Thu got on the ice and busted her butt into the zone. I passed her the puck, she passed it back, I got some stick on it, and it went in. Thank you Thu!! We spent the final minutes on penalty kill trying to protect a one goal lead. Held on, held on, buzzer! Final score: 2-1. Game 3 Ugh, morning legs! Games before 10 AM are not for me. Maybe not for the rest of my team either? Let in a couple trailer/rebound goals in the first half of the game. Everyone made an effort to watch for trailers and cover open skaters in front of the net after that and we did just fine. Wasn’t able to make up the goal deficit though. Final score: 1-2. Game 4 Played the same team again for… THE CHAMPIONSHIP. Actually, it felt like any other game once we got on the ice. I was able to connect with Thu again for an assist on her beautiful backhand one-timer chain-rattling goal. But alas, I also f’ed up a couple times for opposing goals. Pfffffft. Final score: 2-4. I went into this tournament a little worried that it would feel like a messy league-wide, but we had a great mix of skaters and good overall game pace. That was pretty fun! I have a new favorite astronaut… and although my little US-educated brain had never considered the fact that astronauts could be something other than American, he’s a Canadian! I’ve been watching all of Chris Hadfield’s Expedition 34/35 videos from the ISS in amazement. Zero gravity is super rad! Why didn’t NASA ever think to reach out to the masses like this? I mean, really, first Felix & Red Bull, now the Canadian Space Agency? This is the stuff of dreams, and yet my biggest NASA memories involve space shuttle disasters and retirement. (The Mars Rovers are cool, though.) How did Chris Hadfield find his way to the top of my astronaut list? This: Every single day you’re the result of what you did on the days prior. If that’s not motivating I don’t know what is. “Hey Viv, you wanna play center?” Thankfully, the answer was no. After a mountain bike ride, hockey clinic, and hockey game in a span of 24 hours, my legs were toast. I was happy for the opportunity to play D. Even better, I got to play right D, which meant I got to try this nifty little catch and shoot in one motion thing I worked on at the clinic yesterday. It’s great for getting a shot off fast, but it means I need to see what’s going on between me and net ahead of time. I guess I should be doing that anyway. I can’t remember if I was plus or minus or if I was even on the ice for any of the goals. In any case, we won! Final score: 4-2. No one seems to like skating on a Sunday morning. Yay, subbing opportunity! I played wing. What? I feel kind of whiny. So since this is my blog, I will whine. Whine 1: Slew footing people near your net seems to be an accepted practice now. While I take this to mean I should move more to avoid getting slew footed, I also take this to mean those players who did the slew footing this morning are fair game for when I play D against them in the future. Whine 2: There is a very special player in our division who flings the puck high along the boards pretty much every time she touches it. We can skate all the routes we want while yelling for a wide open pass, and the puck will still get flung. I usually just SMH at this, but when this happens during a power play, and when said player then gets off the ice and complains about how our team can’t take advantage of the power play because we keep flinging the puck up the ice, RAWWWWR! On the upside, I scored a goal! And half a minute later I got an assist! I might have gotten an assist earlier in the game too, but I dunno if the ref counted it. Yay for points! They justify my time spent playing up. Final score: 4-5. After months of D, D, D, D, D, I played center in today’s game. Once again I focused on always moving, skating to the puck, and skating with it immediately to buy myself time and space. This worked beautifully until I got tired, at which point I would either whack at the puck or stand there with it like an idiot. From this, I deduce that (1) there’s something to this new buying myself time and space thing and (2) I should ride my bike up more hills for conditioning. Final score: 0-3. I was minus 3 today, ouch! First skate since Nationals tonight! My edges felt a bit rusty at first, but once I got going I felt pretty good. The best part was I remembered to skate into the puck and move with it immediately all night. Actually, I didn’t have to remember; I just did it. I guess I’ve been working on it in the back on my mind since Florida. Hooray for learning new things off-ice! |
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