There was more hockey than usual this weekend with the Ordinals having games on both Friday and Saturday nights, plus the usual Ronnie’s Ice and Wizards game on Saturday. It all took quite a toll on my body as I gave and received a couple of good hits, plus ended up playing with short benches. It made for one exhausting, but fun, hockey weekend.
Friday’s Ordinals game was not pretty. We played against Hegemony for the first time this season and, while it started well, it ended in a disaster. We had been up 4-0 into the mid part of the second period and we ultimately lost 4-6. I was stunned that we managed to give up a four point lead like that. Granted the final goal for Hegemony was on an empty net since we’d pulled Peter trying to get the tie, but it was still a heartbreaking loss. I’m not sure how the team went from dominating the game to loosing control over the situation. As a few people put it during our time out, suddenly it seemed that Hegemony just wanted it more than we did.
Friday was just the start of the sore body too as I had to really use my body to keep some of Hegemony’s big guys from crowding in around our net too much.
Saturday Ronnie’s was a lot of fun. It was crowded but full of good people to play with. The scrimmage was fun. I got beat up a little more there too as the opposing team had some good forwards that needed to be stopped.
For the night games, both benches were short. The Wizards and Ordinals both played with 9 and for both games I was one of three defensemen.
We went with a very conservative defense in the Ordinals game so that we could keep energy and make sure we could get setup for the Knights to come at us. They went up early with a score of 0-2. We called a time out with a couple minutes left in the third and decided to just go for it, including pulling Peter out of net as quickly as possible when we got into the offensive zone. It worked and we picked up the two goals, the final one coming with just 0.05 second left on the clock. We got through the five minute OT with no change in score and we brought the game home with a shootout victory. It was an awesome victory after the horror of Friday night.
The Wizards played a solid game, beating the Moose 8-2. I also picked up my first goal for the Wizards in this game. I made a wrist shot from the blueline. With the Moose goalie screened he didn’t see it coming in as it went right into the corner of the net. It was thrilling to watch that shot work as I’ve been working the past few weeks on being able to hit the corners more accurately.
Both games on Saturday brought their share of hits and crashes to the ice. I’m very sore today and expect to be even more sore tomorrow because it’s usually the second day that hurts worse. Oh well… it was fun!
