With the holiday weekend there was no league play last night, but I did join in for a scrimmage organized by Marc, the co-captain of the Blizzard. Marc always puts together good scrimmages and is responsible for the weekly Saturday 1am scrimmage that has helped many a D7 and D8 player get more ice time. With the holiday, that scrimmage was able to drop back to 10pm so it was a full house last night.
A good time too. For the first time since Montreal I got to play with Johannes, and unlike Montreal we got to play on the same line, making ourselves a defensive pair. It was a good time playing with him. It felt like we fell right into a good pattern, crossing back and forth across the ice when needed, covering for each other. It was fun to watch him too because he was working on rushing in from the point to make shots. I was working on making shots in from the point and had mixed success with that.
Ling and I also had our first collision in several weeks. We’ve been joking a lot lately that we just haven’t had nearly the number of on-ice running into each other as we’ve had in seasons past. We made up for that last night, clipping each other as we were both turning to go up the ice. The collision actually knocked her down, but she did get back up and into the play. Her husband, Jim, took me down later, so I guess that all worked out to balance the universe again.
I played a bit of goalie last night too. For some reason the goalie for the side I was on stepped out of the game twice. So, I stood in the net. I’ve done this sporadically over the past couple years when necessary. I always enjoy watching the game from the goalie’s perspective and trying to anticipate what the puck is going to do. I did okay last night, keeping about a 50% average between stopping shots and letting shots in. Not bad I guess considering I didn’t have any goalie equipment.
We played a long time last night too. It seems no one rented the ice at 11:30, so we didn’t get kicked off. Suddenly it was 12:15, and I decided it was time to head home since there are things to be done today. There were still people playing when I finally left the rink around 12:30 though. I’m looking forward to doing it again next week!
