Yes, both teams lost last night. Yet it was a fun and exciting night of hockey.
The Tigers met up with the Scapegoats, number on in the division and currently undefeated. We didn’t turn that around last night. They beat us 8-1. That said, this is one of those games were the score doesn’t accurately reflect the game. We kept our heads in it and fought right down to the end. The Scapegoats are a talented team on both offense and defense. Their goalie performed very well against most of our assaults and we could never get more than the single goal.
I was happy with my performance in the game. I believe that my defensive partner Laura and I only allowed three of the eight goals. We put up a pretty solid game. We’d trade off on manning the offensive blue line on the strong side of the ice while the other would be more in the neutral zone to guard against breakaways. We even got pretty good at shutting down their top players. I had a couple of decent offensive moves too. They didn’t yield goals, but there were still shots on net. The skating was strong too as I covered end to end a couple of times.
The Wizards game was exciting. Playing against Tsunami is always a good time and both sides brought it. The game got down to an overtime shootout with the game ultimately going to Tsunami with a score of 3-2. The defensive pairing split up the first two goals in the game. As happy as I was with my play in the Tigers game, I was thrilled with this game even more. Greg was a solid D partner and had me covered when I would pinch to keep the puck in the offensive zone (Jason at center also covered me a couple times so I could do what I needed to). I also made mostly good choices on when to step up and when to hang back a little. There was only one point when I cursed a choice–passing back and over to Greg without seeing that one of the opponetns was too close to him for comfort (luckily he reacted quickly and recovered it).
Overall the Wizards played great too. We had a lot of buzzing around in the offensive zone and a good passing game going on most of the time. Even with the loss, the game felt really good.
Ronnie’s was, of course, good in the morning (when is it not?). I’m working this summer with Tommy on my defensive gap control in an effort to have much less space between me and an oncoming opponent. It’s hard because a fear getting out-skated, but I’m determined to get better. The big problem yesterday morning is that, during the breakout drill, I caught one of Keith’s slapshots in my ankle…right on the bone… ouch! I’ve got a nasty bruise today and last night in hurt inside the skate. It didn’t affect the game, just hurt.
Next week… no league games because of the Chelsea Challenge. I’ll have a game Friday night at 9:20, games on Saturday at 1:40pm and 4:40pm and Sunday morning at 9:10. Hopefully I’ll also be playing Sunday at 11:40am in the finals.
