Kind of a "blah" week on the hockey end, so I didn't really have much inspiration to write. It started off with a big smack-down from the Hockey Gods, losing 7-4 on Sunday night. We had only 8 skaters vs their full bench, but I wasn't at my best either. So much for all that crowing about how strong and good I feel. Lesson learned there. I'm a little annoyed about the whole 8-skater thing; yeah it's a late night, but that's not exactly a surprise. Whatever. The general apathy is starting to seep back in, and whether we'll have a season after this one is up in the air. I get really grouchy about that, so best to move on.
Wednesday night was Quarry Cat practice, and while it was an excellent one for the team, it wasn't all that challenging for me. At the beginning of practice, Coach was talking about what he wanted to work on, and one of the things was a "firing squad". Rock on! I love that one. About six players line up across the slot in front of me, and two players are down behind the goal line, one on either side of the net. They alternate passing pucks up to the players in the slot, who fire one timers or really quick shots at me. I have to go back and forth really fast and it's exhausting but it's great. Unfortunately, we never did the firing squad drill; I guess we ran out of time or maybe there were too many people. We did work some more on set forechecking plays, and that's really coming together quite well. This time he added some D to D passing, which is really great. If we start doing that in games, it'll help out the offense big time.
Thursday night I got a call to sub for a friend's team, which naturally I jumped at. I knew going in that it was going to be a rout; this team is playing one level above where the Hawks are, and really should be in the same level as us. They get demolished every night. Nevertheless I got pretty rattled when, after the first period, the score was 8-2. It was pretty bad. My friend apologized to me profusely and said that was the worst defense they'd ever played (almost all of the goals were from a wide open guy on the opposite side of where I was squared up to the puck carrier). However, there were a few that I know I would have stopped if I wasn't so rattled. I felt totally shell-shocked. But I pulled it together and played much better in the next two frames, and so did everyone else really. Eight goals in the first period, two in the second and two in the third. Not too bad after that horrendous start. But still pretty traumatic. I felt like there was no way they'd ever call me again if they needed a sub but she assured me that first period was on them. Not sure how much of that is "platitudes to make the goalie feel better", but I'll take it.
Hoping to turn the corner tonight; I have two games on the ticket. Quarry Cats at 5pm, and then Hawks at 10:50. If we lived closer to the rink we'd come home in between, but it doesn't make sense to drive back and forth, especially since there's probably going to be some sort of pizza party thingy after the Quarry Cat game. The team I subbed for on Thursday has a game at 9:20, so I guess that gives us something to do for a while too. I'll have to try to avoid comparing myself to their regular goalie and wondering how he'd have handled Thursday night's game.
Fortunately the Hawks game isn't against the douche-bag team, so we probably have a fighting chance... if we can ice a full bench.
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