So with the holidays falling on Tuesdays this year, there isn’t the usual time off right now. In fact, last night all three teams played so I got to spend the evening at the rink, which I, of course, enjoyed. Sadly all three games were losers for the teams.
Things started off with the Tigers meeting the undefeated Hotshots. It was a solid game for the Tigers. Daniel must have had 15 to 20 shots on Peter alone. I had some pretty solid shots, and did pick up an assist on the only goal for the Tigers (it was a 5-1 loss for us). It just wasn’t meant to be for us last night. Two bits of frustration I had here was that I did have a shot blocked by one of our own players who didn’t see me winding up for a shot. Second, there were two or three occasions where I went made the offensive rush only to find that my defensive point wasn’t covered. That got better as the game went on, but it still made for some major cross ice chasing when breakouts would happen.
The Ordinals had the disastrous game of the night, losing to the Hitmen 5-0. We seem to have real issues winning two games in a row. Our passing game was off last night, and we weren’t doing as good a job of forechecking/playing defense in the neutral zone as we did against the Blizzard the week before. It was disappointing, compounded by the fact we had a bench of 11 compared to the Hitmen bench of 7. Now, yes, I’ve seen short-benched teams come out on top before, but I did think we’d do a lot better than getting shut out. We’ll still end up in 4th (of 8) place in the standings, so that’s still a solid place to be.
The Wizards had the fun game of the night. It was interesting that I felt strongest in the third game of the night. I felt my D here was pretty solid and the give and go between the Wizards and the Tsunami was really good. Unfortunately, this was a 3-2 loss. Part of that loss rests with the refs. This was the sloppiest ref’d game I think I’ve ever seen at Sky Rink. The refs were gliding to their positions, often not calling goalies freezing pucks (even when the opposition was right there), not calling off-sides, not calling slashing. This was true on both sides. Worst of all, in the last 40 seconds one of the refs missed a blatant off-sides because he wasn’t watching the whole blue line… he was only watching the area right where the puck was. And it was on this rush that the score clicked to 3-2 for the Tsunami, not leaving us enough time to get it back. But, like I said, it was a fun game.
I worked a lot on my shots last night in warm ups too (and a used a couple in the games). Both the wrist and the slap shots are getting better, still inconsistent but signs of improvement are there. I had a couple good wrists shots in the Ordinals game too…since I was playing center I got to use them a couple of times so that was fun.
Next week Wizards and Ordinals play back to back. Hopefully the New Years games go better than the Christmas ones!
