Hockey Laundry is Fun

Here's how lame I am: I'm excited to be folding and putting away the hockey laundry that's in my dryer, because that means I'm going to use it again. And I'll be using it again soon; in 5 days as a matter of fact, which is when I make my return to the Hawks' crease. Not that I'm counting or anything.

The plethora of (now clean) t-shirts, sports bras, bandannas, and hockey socks is the result of this weekend's tournament. I'd love to be able to say we kicked ass and brought home some kind of trophy, but the hockey gods had other ideas. The first game was Friday night, and I have to confess it wasn't my best. After two days of not eating much other than ginger ale and pretzels (thank you, stomach flu), I didn't exactly have much in the tank when we got on the ice, and found myself buzzing on adrenaline and not much else. I honestly can't say much about how we played because I don't remember a lot of details. We went down 2-0 in the first, and managed to score a goal, but the final score remained 2-1. That second goal was a screen that even even Superman would have had trouble finding, but I don't even remember how the first one went in. I was upset with myself- I'd played ten times better than that in open hockey earlier in the week, but everyone was very complimentary of my game. I think I was just wound up way too tight.

Since we'd played a 10pm game and our next one was scheduled for 11am the next morning, there wasn't much in the way of post-game hotel room revelry. We gathered for some drinks and snacks, and because I called it a night on the early side, I have no idea how late everyone else stayed up. My goalie routine had gotten all out of whack with that game; not knowing the rink, and getting there much later than I like to kind of rattled me, and I felt all out of sorts. I wanted to be up bright and early the next morning to have time to have a decent breakfast, organize the giant chaotic pile of crap in my hotel room, and get to the rink early enough to claim the perfect spot in the locker room and get dressed at a leisurely pace. And that's exactly what I did. As GoalieHusband and I drove over to the rink that morning, I was grinning and looking forward to the whole day ahead.

Unfortunately, our next game ended up being extremely frustrating. We played a team called the "Black Sheep", but we took to calling them the "Fainting Goats" because of how easily they appeared to fall over and die. And the refs completely bought it. I don't even know how many penalties we took, but there were a LOT. I will admit we deserved some of them. But some of them were pure Coxsackie*.

While the D was good all tournament, there were two lapses in this game that ended up with goals going in off the back door. We didn't do any damage on the other end, either, so ended up with a 3-0 loss. (The other goal was a wacky bounce off a player's stick in front of the net.) There was one pretty awesome part about the game though- we had fans! The Mayor's cousins came out to support us, and I got to meet a twitter buddy face to face. As it turns out, @brutbran doesn't live all that far away, so he stopped by to see a game. It was really cool meeting him, even though we didn't really get much of a chance to chat. If I'd known ahead of time that we were going to find a bar for lunch and the Ranger game afterward, I'd have definitely asked him to stick around. Sorry, bud! (Yes, he is that rare species known as Ranger-Fan-in-Boston).

Our final game was our best, hands down. It was a very physical game, but not chippy. We were extremely well matched against our opponents, and gritted out a mutual shutout by the final buzzer. And here's where Psychic GoalieBrain comes in. I'll have to elaborate more in another post, because this is just getting way too long, but over the last few weeks I've had some creepy experiences of just flat out *knowledge*. There's no other way to describe it. At some point in the 2nd period, I just knew the game was going to end 0-0. It wasn't a hunch, it wasn't a gut feeling, it was a pure, flat "knowing". Very weird. The tournament rules called for a 3-person shootout, and I thought I had it in my back pocket. No sweat. Shootout? I got this. After all, I just stood on my head for three periods, three shooters coming at me with no traffic whatsoever should be easy as pie.

Not so much. We shot first- no goal. I stuffed the first one with my blocker. Right into the corner, biatch. But our next shooter didn't score either. And then their second shooter came in, and I guess I forgot my Lundqvist-like-patience, because I moved first and she put it around my toe. Damn. What a frustrating way to lose such a hard fought game. I know I could have made that save. I wasn't too happy after that game, but one can't stay mopey for long around a team like this one.

The off-ice highlight of the weekend was, hands down, the beer pong game in The Mayor's hotel room. Each room had a nice sensible desk, one that looked like it could *almost* be used for beer pong. So if one was almost good enough... what about two?! GoalieHusband helped one of the girls drag a desk over from her room, and viola- perfect beer pong table. A beer pong table complete with "Zamboni" (a towel from the bathroom) for clearing up the inevitable beer and water spillage. The best part about this particular set of games? About 90% of the people had never played. Add lots of crappy beer and liberal amounts of chocolate whipped cream flavor vodka, and you've got yourself a party. My abs were literally sore the next morning from laughing so hard. It was one of those nights when EVERYTHING is funny, and spawned several memorable phrases that still send us into hysterics when posted on each others' Facebook page or texted randomly to each other during the day. GoalieHusband turned to me at one point, somewhat in awe, and said "Is every tournament like this?" If by "like this", you mean lots of hockey, lots of eating, and lots and lots of drinking, then yes. They are.


*O hai, upstate NY, you have really funny town names. Hehe.