Gettin' my mean on

I don't really want to dwell on last night's game. I've gone over the goals in my head and I'm satisfied that I know what I'd do differently on the 2 I had a chance on. Yeah... it was another high-scoring game, big ol' 6-2 loss. The screwed up thing is, I felt like I played extremely well. I was in the zone, I had attitude, I was making really good saves, I was even decent playing the puck. Oh and I unleashed my inner Billy Smith too.

I know I need to be meaner and protect my space better. Last night, I did it. Started with one guy who skated a little too close to me and as I was moving to the post my stick blade caught his ankle. Accidentally. But once I felt it I didn't do much about moving it out of the way. He stumbled, but didn't fall. I probably would have been called if he fell. But it was enough to interfere with him getting to the puck behind the net.

There were several ankle whacks to dudes who didn't get the hint from my D and move their asses. There was a good healthy shove to the kidneys. But the best one was the bide-my-time-and-get-you-back cup check on this one dude. Early in the 3rd the puck was frozen on the side of the net, and I was holding the post. As the whistle blew, Punkass took a good whack in the general direction of the side of the net, which meant he hit me square across the chest. I'm not too sure why no one else saw that. But I took his number, got my chance to repay him toward the end of the game. He was just outside the crease, starting to back in, and I could tell from where the puck was that I had a second of time, so as he backed in I got my stick all up in his junk. Oh yeah, he skated away. That *definitely* would have been a penalty if the ref had been able to see it. But hey, you dish it out, you're going to have to take it. I want Pavlov forwards, veering away from the crease because they know it will hurt to skate near it.

Yeah yeah, I know. Only in my imagination am I anywhere near that tough. Truthfully I'm a freakin pansy. But I'm working on it. So this video showing up in my twitter stream this morning was pretty timely. I've seen all of these before but man, they just never get old! (And there's Tuukka.)

[edit]*** My apologies, I forgot to mention where I saw this on my twitter stream. It came from GoalieCrease.