The twilight of the Cougarhawks

I have to hand it to @hkygrl12 and @eco_panda, they have put together quite an awesome team. It was a ton of fun to play with those guys (and gals) this season, and all of us are bummed that we won't be together again for the Spring session. The Cougars have several (about 5) regulars coming back to the team and so there isn't enough room for all of us to stay.  So last night was our final game together, a consolation game between two losing teams of playoff games. Which is to say, it didn't mean much, and started out as just a ton of fun. I even wore my brand spanking new glove that I'd had for all of about 3 hours, figuring a game that didn't "mean" anything was as good a time as any to try it out.

And it was a smashing success. It needs some more breaking in, but I think it will definitely be ready for Florida. It needs to mold to my hand a little more but once it does it will be perfect. I'm already a little in love with it, because it makes awesome saves all by itself. Seriously. It's got a little goalie-brain of its own in there. I made a wicked save toward the end of the game, one that got lots of cheers from the bench. Cheers, and then jeers. The jeers were for GoalieHusband, who had deflected it perfectly from its trajectory, which I had covered, to one that was going up and over my shoulder. But The Glove flicked out and snatched that sucker out of the air like a frog slurping up an unsuspecting fly. It surprised even me. The puck even nestles perfectly in the pocket, getting a nice little goalie hug. See? I told you I'm in love with it

As for the game, it started out perfect, exactly the kind of game I was expecting and looking forward to; a laid back affair that was fun, yet still competitive. There was even quite a bit of jawing between some of us and one of the refs, a drinking buddy of ours from a few years back. Unfortunately the other team didn't seem to have quite the same expectations. I think they thought our game was the prelude to the Stanley Cup playoff games about to begin. They were chippy, even with each other, and there was no end to their bitching and moaning. More than once, my D and I looked at each other with a "what is WITH these guys?" look on our faces. One guy was particularly consistent with the complaining and yapping, aimed at one of my D for standing up for me. He yapped as he set up for the face off, continued yapping at the drop of the puck, and followed her into the corner, still carrying on. I took that opportunity to inform him that I hadn't heard that much bitching since I was in a women's locker room. I don't think he heard me though. He was too busy chasing eco_panda and trying to insult her by calling her "DUUUUDE".  Because that's so highly offensive.

Though we'd gone up 4-2 at one point, we ended up tied 5-5 at the end, and when the buzzer went off, we were on the penalty kill. There was some discussion as to how to resolve the tie, and though I was praying for a straight shootout (knowing our guys would smoke the other goalie... sorry goalie gods), they gave us a 3 minute OT first. Unfortunately they took advantage of the extra man and scored before the power play was over. Dang. Not how I wanted to end that game, not at all. We made up for it in the parking lot afterwards though, as anyone who saw my tweets can attest. I was the unofficial secretary of MBN that night, chronicling all the new rules we had to create based on the crassness of the conversations (thank you GoalieHusband).

It will be interesting playing against this team next session. As Cap put it, at least we know there's one more team that's not a bunch of complete d-bags now.  I have taken the reins in organizing what will be known as the Silverhawks, a nod to our first ever instructional league team. There aren't enough of us to have a full team, so we'll have a few free agents added to the roster, but hopefully they won't be d-bags either. I'm actually kind of nervous about the whole thing. I've never stepped into this role before, and I'm anxious about the team not doing well, or people not getting along. I guess we'll see - the season starts next week already. Hope that glove is ready for more action.