It was another hockey filled weekend—and I had a blast with it.
I had another Friday night game this week; this time with the Ordinals. We took on Andrews Kurth and won 5-4 in a hard fought, back and forth game. This was probably my best Ordinals game ever, and certainly in the top games I’ve played period. Andrew gave me just the right pep-talk towards the end of the first. He told me to get a bit more aggressive, to play the game he could see I wanted to play. Most importantly he told me as my D partner that he’d have my back if my aggression didn’t quite work out right.
It didn’t always work out right, but it did work really well. I stepped up on people on stopped them along the boards. I dug pucks out in battles. I pinched on the blue line and got the puck staying in the zone. I wish every game could go like that! I’m certainly going to work to take Andrew’s words to heart anytime I have a D partner that can back me up like he can. Sometimes I get too conservative becuase I don’t want to get burned. Tommy’s been working with me on this at Ronnie’s Ice too. I’ll keep working on the fine line between conservative and aggressive, which can mean stopping the opposition sooner and potentially creating more scoring chances.
Saturday started off with Ronnie’s Ice. Even with the Friday night game, I needed to get back there becuase it’s been two weeks. It was fun as usual, though there was one guy there…hadn’t seen him before…but he was a jerk. It’s not often that I want to lay someone out on the ice, but I wanted to with him. He was a better skater though and I couldn’t line up with him well enough to get him.
Saturday night started off with a Tigers game against the Scapegoats. We lost 8-1. The loss was pretty inevitable since we were against the undefeated #1 team. We certainly played well, even though the score doesn’t show. We held them nearly scoreless (the one goal against was off an accident off a skate) in the third. I had a great rush down the ice for a scoring shot—I made the shot a little narrow from the faceoff dot, then picked up the still lose puck behind the net and get it to the high slot for someone else to shoot…it got intercepted by one of their D who I then chased down and took the puck from in the neutral zone… i curved around and passed back up to one of our wings so they could charge down again while I went in for a change. I was please with that, would’ve been more pleased though had I scored and set up scoring.
Next up the Wizards played a tight game against the Moose that we won 5-4 in OT. I played the Moose the week before when I was subbing in for the Blizzard and it was much the same team that I’d seen then. It was a fun game. I had a couple of nasty flubs that I’m annoyed about—especially a pass from inside our offensive zone that I knew was coming and that I let right out of the zone for no good reason. Argh! At least we pulled out the win.
The night ended with another Ordinals game, this time against the Wolfpack, D7A’s top team. We lost 4-3. This was a hard game for us to get traction on becuase this team was good. I was happy to see the team keep it’s energy and focus up so that we could pull to within a point. I was at center for this game, which was fun. I was as effective, at least I don’t think so, as I was on Friday. But I still got my job done most of the time.
A quick note from Thursday. During the clinic this week we ran timed suicide drills. This is a drill where you go from the goal line to the near blue line and back, the from the goal line to the red line and back, then the goal line to the far blue line and back and then to the opposite goal line and back. Usually when I do this there are two groups and you alternate. So group 1 goes to the near blue and back and then group 2 goes then group 1 goes to the red line and back and so on. So there’s a bit of a rest between sprints.
This week, we had to run the whole thing without stopping and the goal was to get it done in a minute or less. I wasn’t sure I could pull that off, but was willing to give it a go. Not only did I do it in about 55 seconds, but I came in third or fourth in the group I was in (there was about a dozen people running with me). By comparison, our instructor ran it for us in about 45. I don’t think I’ll ever be that fast, but I was very happy with my time and that I came in pretty quickly in the group I was in.
