The college guys are back

A few days ago I went out for open hockey, making sure to get there nice and early because I had a feeling it would be a popular time. There was one other goalie signed in when I got there, so I signed my name and went off to watch the kids playing before I changed. It was a short session, only an hour and 20 minutes, so I was a little disappointed to find three other goalies waiting to get on the ice when the time finally came. One however said he was going to leave halfway through, so that helped a little bit.

Imagine my surprise when warming up, I noticed a fifth goalie standing around on the boards waiting for his turn. Now, every place I’ve ever been for open hockey limits the number of goalies to four. With four goalies you can take shifts and still get some decent playing time but anything more than that is just flat out ridiculous. Please note that I have only been playing ice hockey for a year, and I am aware of this practice. Enter Kid With Awesome Pads (more on those later). With the planning-to-leave-early goalie already on the bench, the rest of us conferred as to what to do. All of us but Kid pointed out that we had signed in- Kid played dumb and pretended he didn’t know you were supposed to do that. He was probably college age. And judging by his play, he’s no stranger to rinks, and certainly knows open hockey is limited to 4 goalies. I’m sure he just looked at the list, saw 4 names and decided to head to the locker rooms anyway. Fortunately, he offered to stay on the bench until the other guy left, and then he’d jump into the rotation. Fair enough. And he was good enough to actually do that, too.

What cracked me up was about 10 minutes before the other guy left, the gal from the front desk came into the rink, opened one of the doors and yelled “GOALIES!!!” The game came to a screeching halt, and 20+ skaters crowded around her at the door, us goalies lumbering over behind them. She read off the four names on the list, we raised our hands when called, and she fixed Kid with a stony look and told him he had to leave. He explained how we’d resolved the issue and she let him stay. I got a huge kick out of all the skaters crowded around to see who was going to “get in trouble”.

Speaking of the skaters... A large portion of them had helmets and/or practice jerseys from a college team. And man, was it fast. It was absolutely exhilarating, to be perfectly frank. I loved it, after I got over my initial nervousness. Fortunately, I was on the end of the ice with a lot less shots. Even so, I did really well against them. On my first shift I didn’t allow any goals at all, and on the second shift, I allowed 2 that I probably should have had, but I got back into the swing of things. Stopping one particular player on a breakaway was gratifying, because he is one of the four ringers on a team in our instructional league. Funny how he was keeping up just fine with the college guys, if he’s in the instructional league…

And here’s the part where I totally geek out, so feel free to skip this part if you’re not a goalie. Ok, Kid With Awesome Pads. They’re only Awesome Pads because they’re the ones I’d buy if I had $1500 lying around. And they’re only the ones I’d buy because I’m a marketing whore and some of my favorite goalies wear them. Ok, that’s not entirely true. Lundqvist is my favorite of any of them and there’s no way I’d want the pads he wears. So I’m not a complete marketing whore. I do know what I want in a pad, and flat straight boards aren’t it. Someday I’ll try one on just to see if it really is what I want, or if I’m responding to what I see people I admire wearing. But beyond that, Kid had my attention for his style of play. He was a completely pure 100% butterfly ‘tender. I swear he could have been trained by Francois Allaire himself. His style was textbook-perfect and it was really cool to watch. It also made me realize how few goalies are pure butterfly goalies- and probably with good reason. Personally I think a hybrid style gives you more options and more success but that was just damn cool to watch, seeing him execute moves I’ve read about perfectly.

There may be a chance for me to get Awesome Pads though. On June 11th, a committee is meeting to discuss further trimming of goalie equipment. If these pads end up not conforming to the new standards (mostly having to do with thigh rises and knee blocks, in terms of pads anyway), they’ll have to find a way to get rid of all the ones that are already made, won’t they. And that means prices will drop… a lot. I’m not kidding myself, I know they won’t make me play better. But mine are starting to get beat up so it’s not out of the question that I might need new ones by next year or so. Cross your fingers for new standards, folks. Hey, even as a goalie myself I think the thigh rises right now are pretty ridiculous. See: Henrik Lundqvist.