...and I belch, too

I had a kick-ass game at open hockey today. I mean, I was in the zone. I was so in the zone that The Goaliebrain talked to me. It's been a while since I've heard from her. (Him? It? Does it matter?) See, I do my best to keep my regular brain busy/sedated while I play. If it wakes up it starts causing trouble. Either it over-analyzes what's going on, starts in with the negative self-talk, or just wanders off to places that have nothing whatsoever to do with the game and are just distracting. Like how you'd spell "Gretzky" in Cyrillic. I shit you not, that's what I was thinking about for a few minutes today when I was distracted. (In case you're curious, it would be: грэцки)

I use music/repetitive lyrics to lull my regular brain into sedation. It's during these times that The Goaliebrain talks to me. Most of the time she tells the muscles what to do without me hearing her. But today she was like a little drill sergeant in my head. I love it when that happens. It means I know what I'm doing. I had an opposing player a few feet in front of me (out of poke check range, but pretty close) all alone with the puck. I don't remember the exact play that lead up to that but I think he got it from a pass, because I just got into position in front of him as he received the puck. Goaliebrain barked at me "Blocking butterfly! There's no time!" Boom. Down I went into a nice tight butterfly and the shot bounced harmlessly off me and I smothered it. It's different than thinking. I didn't think "Ok, I don't have enough time to read the shot off the stick and he's real close in, so a blocking butterfly would be best here". Its like it came from somewhere else, but still inside me- instant knowledge.

So, I was really rolling. (There was a brief period where I did my best impression of a sieve and no its wasn't when I was spelling Gretzky's name in my head). Apparently I impressed one particular defenseman. He was quite the chatterbox. At one point one of his buddies on the opposing team semi-whiffed a shot and I stopped it easily. He said to me, loud enough for his buddy to hear "Tell him that the girls in your women's league have better shots than that." To which I responded, with mock (mostly) testiness; "I don't play on the women's league."

After that we had a few other short and friendly exchanges. It was after I gave esteemed reader and commenter "#48" a few good shoves from behind for being in my crease, that this guy came over, cleared him out, and then turned to me and told me I was a hockey player's dream woman, being out there and hustling like that.

D-man: Do you drink beer too?

Me: Hell yeah.

D-man: Damn. If I get divorced will you marry me?

Me: I'm already married.

D-man: Ok. If we both get divorced will you marry me?

I figure, sure.... if he can put up with The Goaliebrain.

Delayed review

Hanging out after a late game drinking beer is fun, but it sure does tax one's system. Two such nights in a row tired me out and though I probably would have been fine playing open hockey today, I decided to pass (mostly due to other factors). The second game of our back-to-back schedule gave us another much-needed win, and put us tied for 3rd place. (I think....) I've personally played better games; I did play well overall but two brain farts and one bad angle cost us 3 goals. The final score was 4-3. The new pads are still awesome, but I think I did the straps a little differently, because they felt a little looser that night. One of the goals was a result of the puck getting caught in my feet, and as I fumbled around to find it, I kicked it in. Argh. I'll blame that one (and the first one; a lousy 5-hole) on the new pads. Convenient scapegoat.

And speaking of 5-holes... here's an article that discusses the changes the NHL is making to goaltending equipment over the next two seasons, and why goalies with narrow butterflies will be affected this season while their counterparts with wider butterflies won't have to adjust until next season.

Addendum

In my sleep-deprived state last night (not that I'm in much better shape now), I forgot to mention something I was extremely happy about, besides the shutout itself. I noticed, just as I did in my last clinic, that my rebound control was really good. My coach would be so proud. Just about every puck went off into the corner off my stick, instead of bouncing off my pad right back out into the slot. This is was something we worked on A LOT; getting that first shot to go off into the corner. And in the one instance where I didnt' turn far enough (the breakaway) and got a pad on it instead of a stick, it didn't bounce very far out at all. I'm not sure how much of that is the speed of the shot and how much is the different foam in the new pads. Time will tell. But I do know that some pads are manufactured to give really long rebounds (the thought being that the farther away it goes the better) and some are manufactured to be really dead, and give a very close rebound (so you can pounce on it and smother it). I don't think my old ones were either: I think they were more of the "get the cheapest stuff in there that you can" variety.

Awww, I feel bad. They served me very very well. They're too beat up to try to sell, so I guess they'll just sit in my basement until my niece is big enough to wear them.

Oh and while I'm feeling bad, let me just apologize to that defenceman who I was ready to strangle last week, because I owe that goose-egg on the board in part to him. During a goal-mouth scramble, when I lost sight of the puck but heard the ref yelling "LOOSE! LOOSE!", and finally saw it just as it squirted out of my reach into plain open blue ice, said D-man was half a second quicker than the opponent who saw it at the same time and batted it out of the zone. There was no way I could have stopped that puck if the other guy got to it first. So thanks, D-Dude.

But that doesn't mean I still won't whack the back of your legs if you don't stop screening me.

I should be sleeping

Yeah, it's 1:37 a.m. And yeah, we have another game tomorrow, the second of our back-to-back games in this strangely scheduled season of the instructional league. So you'd think I'd be tucked into bed, snoring away.

Except I can't go to bed just yet.

No, I'm not up stewing over a loss. I'm walking on air because in my debut game with the new pads, I kicked that downward spiral in the face. I got my first shutout!!! My team made it pretty easy- most of the play was in the other end. But there were periods where the puck was in our zone for quite a bit. I'm not sure how many shots I had. Maybe 20? It wasn't a lot. But I'm proudest of two saves; one on a breakaway where I got a toe on it and then smothered the rebound, and the other was a glove save off a shot from about the top of the right circle.

What a way to break in the new pads eh.

It's go time

Oh yeah, I'm ready. I wore the new pads for the third time today and felt a lot more settled and comfortable with them. While the skaters were doing skater drills this morning, I spent some time working on moving around in the crease, and some butterfly slides as well. All systems are go.The biggest indicator to me that I'm getting used to them is that I wasn't thinking about them. I was doing my usual thing facing shots. (And I must add, I put just about every shot into the corner... awesome rebound control today, hopefully it'll stick!) I'm surprised it happened so quickly- the first time I wore them I thought it would take forever. They still don't have enough puck marks for my taste, but that will change quickly I'm sure.

These pads rule. They're just so awesome. Oh and did I mention they're the same ones Kari Lehtonen has? *swoon* (As an aside: he better bring it this season or he's gonna find a permanent place in the doghouse down there).

Making headway

I tested the new gear out in open hockey today. My timing's still a little off and I'm still a little clumsy but it's getting better. While at the rink I ran into my coach, and he seemed to approve of the upgrade. He gave me a few pointers for getting used to them, which was cool. I mean... other than just get out there as much as you can with them. That part is obvious.

The one thing I'm wondering about now is, the more comfortable I get with these, won't it throw me off to switch back to the old ones for games that count? I'm not sure what to do about that. I'm tempted to use them this week in the league but I'm not sure yet. I have one more outing (a clinic) before my game, so that will help me decide. Right now though, I'd just like a nice nap.

Breaking the downward spiral

I won't rehash our last game (much), other than to say we lost 9-4. It was pretty bad. The other team was much better than we were in terms of the little things that make the difference. Scoreboard notwithstanding, I'm a lot happier with my game than I have been in recent weeks. On the whole, anyway. I made one colossally stupid move, the likes of which I haven't made in about 9 months, and put the puck in our own net. Big mistake, but at least its something I know I don't do on a regular basis and recognize the error I made in judgement that lead to it. Two other goals were due to poor positioning, and one would have been prevented if my leg was just two inches longer, dammit. Immediately after the game I wasn't even that upset; I didn't feel like the loss was solely on my shoulders because I recognized that the other team was much better.

It was upon waking the next day, however, that the doom and gloom set in. Looking back at my last 4 or so games (plus open hockey outings), I began to question my coach's sanity in his assurances that I needed to move out of the instructional league. How could I possibly be ready to move up when I'm playing like this? The recent game drove that point home even more; while I felt out of sync in all the other games, in this one, I felt like I had my grove back. I was moving much better, seeing things more clearly, etc. But look at the result.

I was mentioning this to a friend who, until recently, played at a pro level and who also has trained with my coach. I generally don't spew my post-game mental garbage on him; I'll mention the result of a game and how I felt I did but that's about it. So I was surprised when he said "you're in a downward spiral. It's all mental." I hadn't realized it, but he's right. And I guess a more experienced goalie-brain doesn't need much info to pick up on that. So we talked for a bit about how to snap out of it, and I told him that I thought I'd actually already begun that process. Hopefully I'm right. It's just interesting how there can be all this stuff you know, and yet sometimes it takes someone else to point it out for you to go "Ohhh! Duh!" and smack your forehead.

He also gave me tons of advice on breaking in the new pads, as well as how to deal with one particular defenseman who doesn't understand that "SCREEN!" means "you're in my way. move. NOW." (Honestly I'm not sure how this guy doesn't get it. He's been told over and over that when I yell "screen" he has to get his ass out of my way. It just doesn't sink in.) My "mentor's" solution? Violence. A hard shove or a good chop with the stick. I just don't have it in me to do that. That's the difference between me and this crazy sonofabitch. I'm not going to go around hacking at my own defensemen. An opponent? Hell yeah. But my own guy? Maybe I'm a softie because I'm a chick, because that's not the first time I've heard a goalie recommend something like that, but I just don't see the point at our level.

Though give it a few more weeks and a few more goals because I can't see anything but his ass and his number, and that might just change...

Starting over again

I knew breaking in the new pads would take time and effort, but what I didn't count on was feeling like I had to learn everything all over again. Yes, the pads are stiff. But that's not the biggest problem. Its the fact that they are so incredibly different from my old ones in several important ways. Needless to say, even though I have a game tomorrow night, I will not be using them there. I have several more clinics and open hockey sessions to go before I'm comfortable using them in a game that counts.

I should have realized what I was in for when I ambled into the rink, and when I passed by Coach Johnson he asked "new pads?" and responded to my affirmation with "good luck". I stepped onto the ice and was greeted by Coach Mark (who runs the clinics, and is an excellent coach), who asked the same question. When I said yes, he asked if this was my first time using them, and when I nodded my masked head he quipped "have fun". Oh boy.

My biggest problems, aside from feeling like my legs were encased in concrete, lie in three areas;

1. The height of the pads. Yeah... I was wondering what that whole "plus 1 sizing" system is that Vaughn advertises, and I found it out. The new pads are the same size from ankle to knee as my old ones, but they have significantly more height at the top. This causes the tops to crash together as I drop into my butterfly, which slows me down. Not to mention its pretty awkward [insert awkward turtle here].

2. The thickness of the knee stacks. For non-goalie-geeks: knee stacks are the square-ish pieces of padding that are strapped to the area of the pad you land on when you drop into your butterfly. Also referred to sometimes as "landing gear". There's a reason for this; it's the only thing separating your knee from a very hard sheet of ice. Knees take a beating in goaltending just by nature of the butterfly/hybrid style, but they take even more of a beating when there's only about a half inch of foam between them and the ice they're repeatedly being slammed into. That half inch of foam (on my old pads) became indented from my knee, so the foam was actually crushed down to about a quarter inch thickness. On my new pads... I have FOUR knee stacks. I haven't measured it but it's got to be a good 5 inches of foam, all velcroed together, between my knee and the ice. Sweet. Well, "sweet" once I get used to them. Right now they make me extremely clumsy because I have to stand/crouch/skate ... basically everything... with my legs farther apart than I'm used to. Between this and the height on the pads, my stance has to change. Getting used to a new stance is going to take a lot of patience and time. Imagine a batter having to stand a new way in order to hit a ball. Yeah. Fun.

3. Leather inside edges as opposed to fabric. Again "Sweet". Once I get used to them anyway. The reason I was having so much trouble doing butterfly slides and moving laterally while down on the ice was because my pads were actually sticking to the ice, due to the fabric stuff that was on the edge making contact with the ice. It wasn't just weak legs, as I thought. Today in clinic I was sliding all over the place- farther than I intended. I have to get that under control and work on integrating lateral slides into my arsenal of save tactics. But once I do.... man is that ever going to be awesome.

So... all good stuff. But stuff that's going to take a lot of adjusting. And hopefully during that period of adjustments I'll stop a decent amount of pucks and get some scuff marks on those puppies, because as much as mostly-white pads are "hockey camouflage", no goalie wants to take to the ice in a game without so much as a mark on his or her pads.

Bend, Fold and Manipulate

Well they fit. But daaaaaaaaamn are they stiff. I have my work cut out for me breaking these puppies in. I can now see why Arturs Irbe allegedly had his bus driver drive over his new pads to break them in for the Olympics. Or why people might think you need to take a baseball bat to them. Relax, I'm not dumb enough to do anything like that. I do think, though, that I'll be bumbling around the house in them for most of the day tomorrow. Or scrunching them up and sitting on them like chairs while watching tv or surfing the web. One recommended method of breaking them in is to scrunch them up and tie a belt around them to keep them in position. Not gonna happen, not with the belts in this house.

But while I am relieved to know that they do in fact fit, I'm a little nervous about wearing them for the first time. The knee stacks are so much thicker that it changes the way I stand a little bit. And the added height at the top (the "+1" in the 32 + 1 sizing I guess) will allow me a much lower stance, and holy cow... now I know why they want to get rid of that height in the NHL. Super-sealed 5-hole! Sweet. (Well... probably thats the case on everyone but me). It's going to take some work getting used to that extra height; preliminary experiments on butterfly drops had me dropping with my knees too close together, and the tops of the pads overlapped. Not a horrible thing, but it results in double coverage, which means a hole is bigger somewhere else (in this case... at the foot).

Ah but I hear your brain waves lapsing into theta.... so I'll stop rambling about knee stacks and such. Simply put- they're going to take quite a bit of getting used to, and I'm nervous about that. But I can't wait to try them out in a practice. Yay Awesome Pads!

Oh man...

Holy cow, that was fast. My pads just arrived!!! I'm sitting here in my office, with this giant box taunting me. There are pads inside, really amazing unbelievably good quality pads that want me to take them out and play with them. Beat on them a little to break them in, fiddle with the straps, examine them from top to bottom. But alas, I have a conference call coming up, so I'm stuck here. Even though it's Friday and on any other Friday I could blow work off for the afternoon (no bosses here heh heh heh), but not today.

So I sit here and stew. Because it's very hard to tell without trying them on with skates and pants on, but I think they might be a little too big. I'm not sure. I think the first break (down by the ankle) needs to be broken in a bit more so it sits lower on my leg... that might be the problem. I'm screwed if that's the case though, because 32 is the smallest adult size. And I'm currently wearing 32 in my other pads. Arghhhh the suspense.

But wow.... its insane how different they are from the low end ones I have. Little things that if I started describing them would put you all into a coma, but just take my word for it, WOW. My knees are already thanking me.

You know you're in bad shape when....

...your husband calls from the rink because he stopped by for something else, and tells you there's a "million" goalies out on the ice, all running through different drills, and you can hear the coaches yelling "GO!" and you get a feeling like a jealous little monster stamping its foot and you think "god DAMN I wish I was out there!" Even though he tells you one group of goalies is running through the dreaded "iron cross" drill... and ten minutes later he says "hey they're starting to look tired". So you know this workshop/camp/whatever is serious business and you'd get your ass kicked to hell and back but still you wish you could be out there, learning, learning, learning... burning the skill into your muscle memory with countless reps. Dammit.

Gal With Awesome Pads

My pads are low quality, beat to hell, and broken down in places that are starting to be dangerous to be broken down in (see the ever-present bruise on the inside of my left knee). And so, although I haven't had a chance to try them on in person, I ordered a set of Awesome Pads today. I contacted the site to find out if there is any difference in size between manufacturers, and told them what I'm wearing now, and they said these should fit just fine.

I do feel a pang of guilt though, because we have a bunch of medical bills to pay off. But Goalie Husband told me a few months ago that he wanted me to get these, and he says he wants me to have them for when I move up to the new league. He said these are bday and Christmas combined, and that's it for a while. Fine with me- everything else I have is new and in good shape. It'll take a while for them to come in, but I'll be patient.

Yeah right. Who am I kidding?!