I always enjoy Ronnie’s Ice. I’m sure that’s been apparent over the many hockey entries I’ve written. Yesterday morning’s, however, was Ronnie’s at its best.
After three weeks of being at 8am, due to the holidays, it rolled back to 4am. I loved that hour the most because it means fewer people and getting to play with people who are a higher level than me. Yesterday was perfect: nine people for the drills and 11 people for the scrimmage (Ronnie and John joined in for the scrimmage). For the drills we did some concentrated work on penalty kills, which was great and then we moved into small games. Small games is one of my favorite things we do all winter because it really makes you think about how to move and get positioned to make plays happen.
The scrimmage yesterday was similarly great as we played 4-on-4 on three quarters of the rink. Again, it was about getting to the right place and being open to make plays happen.
I played pretty well through all of this. In the small games, while playing offensive position, I scored two or three times. For the scrimmage I scored three or four more. The scrimmage, by its nature had me playing both offensively and defensively, depending on what was required in a given moment.
The evening games were losing efforts.
The Tigers met up with the Scapegoats and while we held up well in the first period, the Scapegoats turned up the heat and we couldn’t match it. I had a good time in this game though. We never gave up trying to run up more of a score and I felt like I played solid. I shut down a number of attacks and even made a couple of offensive rushes as well as a couple shots from the blueline that all landed on net–just not in net. I’m not sure why the New Year’s scoring and the scrimmage scoring couldn’t follow into a game, but that wasn’t meant to be.
The Ordinals extended their losing streak to eight games with a 8-5 beatdown from the Knights. Even though we had good spark, we couldn’t stop the team from scoring 8 on us. It was another frustrating game. Even the Knights were surprised that we didn’t win given the players we had on the ice.
Meanwhile, the Wizards played last night as well. They lost by a single point to the Moose.
Next week will pit the Ordinals against the Blizzard (in a game I’ll have to miss), the Wizards against the Tsunami (which I hope to play in since it’s later) and the Tigers against the Rockets (which I will definitely play).
