College Night

After the highs of the tournament I spent a day or so feeling like the worst goalie on the planet (don't ask, the mind of a goalie is a strange thing) and decided that the cure for this malaise was: more hockey. GoalieHusband is off from work this week so we decided to hit our rink's open hockey session from 11:30pm-1am. We'd never been on a Wednesday night and weren't sure what to expect, but it sure wasn't what we got.

When I hit the ice to warm up I thought I was seeing double. But no, my eyes did not deceive me, there were indeed FOUR other goalies besides myself out there. Five goalies! For an hour and a half time slot! Not to mention the rink has a 4 goalie max rule for open hockey, which is why I always get there really early. I guess they didn't feel like enforcing it tonight. Or maybe it was College Night and no one bothered to make the open hockey session a private one. The entire hockey team from a local college descended on the rink. That alone wouldn't have bothered me, it was more the 5 goalie fiasco that really annoyed the hell out of me. I was actually getting a kick out of the college kids. They were skating like bats out of hell, with hands I didn't have a prayer of stopping, and yet it was obvious that they were goofing off. Like greyhounds let out to run for a while.

I had to literally bite the inside of my cheeks to not start giggling at the bench chatter, too. Classify it under "Things I Don't Expect To Hear From Hockey Players", like laughing over everyone's "fun panties". These guys went on at length about different girls' facebook status messages and who was stealing whose girlfriend and who was writing "your girlfriend's a bitch" on whose facebook wall. I thought I might have been transported to the women's U16 team for a bit there. Good stuff.

Unfortunately the dopey bench chatter didn't make up for the fact that I played for a grand total of 16, yes count 'em, 16 minutes. Two 8 minute shifts and then it was time to pack it in. Total. Waste. Of Time. I'm a big proponent of saying no ice time is ever a waste of time, blah blah blah, but jumpin jesus on a pogo stick, I don't need to be up at 2:20 a.m. for having 16 minutes on the ice. So not worth the zombie-state I'll be in tomorrow at work. Grrrr.