In an odd bit of scheduling I only had one league game last night with the Ordinals squaring off against the Moose. While our offense played a pretty decent game last night, defensively we had issues and ended up losing 12-5. Four of those goals came in the game’s opening minutes and I think if we’d hit the ice more ready to play (which can be difficult at 11:30 at night) we might have had a closer game.
So now we’re 2-12 for the season and have approximately 130 goals against us and only 61 for us. With only three games to go for the season, we’re headed for our worst season record ever. The previous holder for worst season was our first one in Fall 2004 when we had a 5-10-1 record.
As the losing progressed over the past few weeks, it’s been a challenge to try and find the strategy to pull us out of the slump (the game I missed while in Alabama was a win at 15-14, but that was still an odd game because that’s a bizarrely high score). I have to admit, I’ve come up blank. I’ve captained new teams, as well as teams with a lot of novice players, through losing seasons even worse than this Ordinals season. But those are different circumstances. There it was trying to build teamwork or helping players build skills. It’s different when you’ve got a team that has the amount of talent the Ordinals have and you can’t figure out how to get it working right.
So I announced to the team last night that I was stepping down as captain at the end of this season. It’s been in the works for a few weeks now as I’ve talked to Doug and Andrew, the alternate captains, and John, the goalie and the guy I co-founded the team with, about the situation. Andrew is taking over the team for Spring. My hope is he’ll figure out what’s missing and be able to jump start the team and put these talented guys to work on a team that can put a winning game on the ice more often than not.
I know one of his first things to figure out is if the team stays in 7A or drops to 7B. If the teams stays in A, I’ll stay with it if Andrew will have me. If they drop to B though, I’ll have to step off because I don’t want to leave the Wizards.
Meanwhile, besides the one game, I bookended the day with hockey yesterday. I was up early for Ronnie’s Ice, which was a good session since it was early (5am instead of 4am, but still a nice light crowd which allowed for a lot of icetime). I also stayed late for the Saturday Night Scrimmage, which was also a lot of fun. It was challenging playing defense for SNS because of some high level players that attended. It made for some good practice.
The thing about yesterday’s hockey across the board that concerns me is that my puck movement was weak. Whether it was passing or shooting, the power was abotu half what it should’ve been. I know I’m inconsistent in the power area, but usually with passes I generate the power I expect. Yesterday it was consistent in its weakness. I’m hoping that is a fluke. I’ll be paying close attention at Ronnie’s next week to see what’s going on. I need to look good for next weekend’s games (Ordinals and Tigers) becuase it’s likely that Will is going to come to the games. Since he’s not seen me play in a couple years, I want to put on a good showing!
