Sometimes I wish I had a helmet-cam

Today was definitely one of those days. Open hockey this morning looked at first like it was going to be a bust; three skaters, and TWO goalies. When does that ever happen? But we eventually had enough people for a 4-on-3 (or sometimes 3-on-3, whenever someone on the white team got a clue and realized they had an extra guy on, and someone would sit). It ended up being quite a good game, and I played pretty well despite not being at my best due to some left over grogginess from a tad bit o' wine the night before. With about ten minutes to go, two of the skaters left, and the other goalie decided he'd even the "teams" out by skating out. In his full gear. So for the last ten minutes we played 3-on-3 on half the ice... and I've never seen anything more surreal than facing a shot fired by a goaltender at the top of the circles. Or a goal-mouth scrum, where I desperately tried to freeze the puck while another goalie was trying to poke it in past my foot. I thought maybe I was still in bed, dreaming chardonnay-induced dreams.

And speaking of helmets... I debuted the new mask I bought yesterday. It dawned on me not too long ago that the reason I had such trouble seeing the puck at my feet was because my mask was too small. When I bought my mask, I tried a senior size on, and when it was gargantuan, I didn't even try to shorten the straps enough to make it fit; I just figured it wouldn't. Even a junior mask took a little tweaking to get the right fit. But apparently, it never did have the right fit. It sat too high on my head, which caused the chin portion to block my vision when I looked down. I just assumed that's how it was supposed to be, until I was reading about how a mask should fit, and realized that the cage was nowhere near where it was supposed to be on my face; and I put two and two together and realized I had the wrong size.

So, yesterday I ended up going to a hockey shop, and after some help from one of the staff, got a regular senior size mask to fit me. And what a difference. In warmups, one of the players shot pucks at and around my feet, and I saw them 90% better than I had before. Not only was the line of vision greatly improved while looking down, the cat-eye cage allowed for much a much better view of the game overall. I still haven't got the chin cup quite right, but a little more finagling should get it to where it needs to be.

Oh yeah, and because I no longer have to think about the effect standing in the sun will have on me, I went for a black mask this time. It's cool and imposing... but the one bad thing about it is that it won't show the puck marks from when I take shots to the head. That was pretty cool; shiny new gear is nice, but gear covered in puck marks proves you're doing your job.