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.