Purple Rain wrapped up the Chelsea Challenge this morning with a second place win in the tourney after being shut out 5-0 by the Royal Tenenbaums. We gave it our all, but they were simply better. In the end, we were trying to just get a point on the scoreboard because after how well we’d played to that point we didn’t want to get shut out. But, it was still a solid and fun game for us.

Earlier in the morning we played White Heat in the semi-finals and won that game with a 4-1 score. I was quite pleased here because the first goal of the game was mine. In getting that, it meant that all the lines scored at some point during the tourney and that was satisfying too.

The whole tourney was great, perhaps the best tournament weekend I’ve ever had. Everything mixed so well. Purple Rain was a great team. The executive board pulled off the event great (if I do say so myself). We were the most organized ever, all thanks to Kim who got us on a schedule. I had the best time at the banquet ever. I’m not sure why this year was so good… for some reason I was more social this year than ever before.

Plus, I enjoyed getting Josh started on the ice (you can check out more of that story with “A Hockey Debut“). From the first game Friday night through the finals today, he played better and better with each shift. He cleared the puck on defense. He made smart passes to Adam and I. Finally, in this morning’s semi-finals he nearly scored, but ultimately did pick up an assist on my goal. It’s going to be great to see how he progresses with some real instruction once the Thursday clinics start this week.

Adam was also fantastic. This was his first tournament and only second time on the ice to play. You’d never know that from watching him play though as he was quite solid. He picked up a couple assists, worked hard for the puck and has a real knack for stealing the puck away from the opposing team.

We made a solid third line. Adam pointed out when it was all done that we were never scored on as a line either. That’s impressive for five games. So overall we were +1 for the tourney (Adam managed +2 because he pulled off an assist after Josh and I had already gone to the bench.

Happily I survived all the hockey too. In about 40 hours I played the five tourney games, one Ordinals game and did about 40 minutes of warm-up this morning with a bit of Ronnie’s Ice. I had a blast!!! (Glad I took tomorrow off though since my body is pretty beat at this point.)