My holiday weekend started off with a round of open hockey today. I saw a former team-mate there who I haven't seen in a while, so that was pretty cool. What wasn't cool was that he said the reason he could come to this time slot was that he'd been laid off. And what was also not cool was that it was one of my poorer showings of late, at least one particular shift was.
Ok. Here's a secret. I have never mentioned this to anyone because it's embarassing and makes me look really stupid. I hate switching sides in open hockey, because I always have trouble remembering who's on my side. There. Pretty dumb, right? The guys coming at you with the puck aren't on your side, dumbass. But I think what happens is, whoever I play for first gets imprinted on my brain as "my team" and it's hard to make the jump to the other side without literally reminding myself every minute or so when I first switch that those are the "bad guys" now. Usually it doesn't affect my play because my brain manages to catch up just in time. And this lag usually lasts only for the first few minutes. Not today. I started out on the dark team. Everything went pretty well, even though that end of the ice was a total shooting gallery. Then I switched sides for my next 15 minute shift (3 other goalies today, so shorter shifts). When I got into the net I told myself "Ok. The dark guys are your enemy". Unfortunately about halfway through my shift, with play in the other end, the puck ended up coming down into my zone. I saw a guy flying down to get it but knew I could get there first. So I skated about halfway to the blue line, stopped it, and passed it to him. As his dark burgundy jersey passed me I thought to myself "well jeez if you were just going to go take it behind the net I wouldn't have come out to.... oh."
I skated back to the crease in time to retrieve the puck from the net on its way back out from the force of the guy's shot. A (light-jerseyed) teammate met me there and looked at me and said "it's ok if you turn it over, just get back and play some fucking goal". Ouch. I managed to say "I got confused...." but stopped, figuring it was better if he thought I just turned it over, than if he knew that for some reason I'd forgotten that dark wasn't my team. I heard other guys on the ice saying "what the hell was that all about?". Ooops.
Fortunately I managed to make some really good saves on my next shift... back on the dark side again. And the light guys had the majority of the speedy awesome stickhandlers, so I felt pretty good about that. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I shut them out. But I felt more comfortable and made better decisions over there. Like not handing the puck to the opposition on a silver platter.
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