Dick jokes, head shots and good fun hockey

Some goalies get chapped if there are three goalies at an open hockey session. Not me, not if it's a full two hour session and I'm playing with guys who skate as fast as these guys do. Twenty minutes on, ten minutes off, switching sides, works out quite well in those situations. Plus it allows me to catch some of the bench chatter. Which, with these guys, is usually pretty good. During one of my rest periods, the guys had me cracking up, and I even joined in. (I'm usually really quiet and don't say much). There's one poor SOB whose last name is Weiner- or so we assume considering it's on the back of his jersey. Last week as soon as Ringleader saw it he announced that Anthony Weiner had come to play hockey with us, and would probably "twitter" about the game later. The guy was there again this week, and while I was on the bench he was out on the ice and Ringleader & friends were having a good time doing play by play.

"And a nice tip by Weiner..."

"Watch out, Weiner's at the back door..."

Even I piped up: "Weiner's in the slot!"

That got a good laugh out of Ringleader, who repeated it (I'd said it kind of quietly) and then said "Look at Maalivahti jumpin' in. Nice one."


As for the game, I had a bit of a slow start, and found myself thinking at one point "damn I guess I left my balls at home today". I wasn't challenging enough, and with this group, if you don't challenge, you're done. The very first shot I faced was from White Gloves Dude walking in on a breakaway. White Gloves Dude has a sick shot and if I think about it too much, he intimidates the hell out of me. But I've had success against him in the past, by - you guessed it! - being aggressive and challenging. This morning though, he came straight down the middle and flicked it over my shoulder. Oops. We scored about 10 seconds after that though, so I felt a little better.

Still, I wasn't really "on" until my next shift, on the other end, which was the more active end in terms of shots. Just before I went out for that shift, I'd had a conversation with one of the D on the bench about taking shots to the head. Apparently that conversation jinxed both of us, because not only did I go out onto the ice and subsequently take a real hard one right to the grill, I ended up taking two more to the face over the course of the game, and even he got in the way of one. All I can say is, good thing he wears a cage. That would have been ugly. But it was after that shot that I woke up and started playing a lot better. I really don't know why that happens but I'm 'this close' to telling the Hawks to slip a head-hunter in during warm-ups. Senator (who was also there today) even suggested it once. I'm pretty sure he was mostly kidding though. I mentioned this tendency on twitter, and one person said it makes you more aware of what's going on around you, and another said it clears out the cobwebs. While I'm sure the first is really the case, it sure feels more like the second. It's kind of like... *dink!* Blink blink. Ooohhh hey, look how much more focused I am! Look how much sharper my movements are now! Really weird.

When all was said and done and the zamboni chased off the 8 winded skaters who were left and me and the other very tired goalie, I had 90 minutes of actual ice time this morning. No wonder I'm completely wiped, even though I took a nap, and constantly hungry, even though I've been eating all day. All I can say is, I am really glad there were three of us today. It would have been brutal to not have any breaks. I'm going to do it all over again next week though. Three different people asked if I'd be coming out; evidently some of them come from the city and hate to make the trip unless they know there's going to be at least one goalie. Too bad I completely forgot there's a possible Goat Rodeo on Friday night. At midnight. So if that is really going down, I might as well just sleep at the rink. Because there's no way I'm going to miss a Goat Rodeo, and there's no way I'm going to not show up on Saturday when I told a bunch of different people I'd be there. And I think I'm tired today...