Day One wrap-up

A day that began with a mercy-kill shellacking ended with the Rangers clinching a playoff berth with a marvelous overtime goal by none other than Captain Cally. That dude is clutch. Since NBC was broadcasting a completely meaningless game in the "road to the playoffs", we Ranger fans resorted to finding a live stream online to watch a game that actually mattered. Two or three people were clustered around Spitfire's laptop, and with cheering that erupted with that overtime goal, you'd have thought it was an actual playoff game. But since we were all pretty much certain the Rangers' playoff chances would come down to the very last game - against the Devils - we were elated to have that monkey off our backs.

I know.... I'm not here to write about the Rangers. But that game, even the 10 minutes of it that we saw, was much more interesting to write about than our own.  We are in the unfortunate position of having been bumped up to a tier I'm not entirely sure we belong in, after last year's win. One would think you'd at least be allowed the chance to defend your title before being moved up a division,  but when you look at the fact that there are only 3 other teams in Tier 1, I suppose they had to move us in order to get four teams in the tier. I don't think the rest of the games are going to be this bad (God, I hope not), but yesterday was pretty painful. They were just everywhere. We were down 6-1 at the end of the first period, and managed to stop the bleeding for the most part in the 2nd and 3rd, but by then it was too late. They scored another goal in the 2nd (two, actually, but one was waved off because the net had come off), so with a 6 goal differential going into the 3rd, we went to running time. That, for me, was a blessing. I'm not sure how many shots I had. And with that many goals you can imagine how I feel about my game. All I know is by the time we got off the ice I could barely stand and was weak with low blood sugar. Poutine's husband told me "you played triple the game you usually play". Still, it didn't feel too good to lose like that. We did manage to get one more in the 3rd, but they came right back with a few of their own. The official score was 8-2. The actual score was 10-2. Ouch.

After the game, Flipper was in the rink bar and a guy walked up to her and said "You're #29, right? You have an A on your jersey?" Besides being slightly creeped out by this complete stranger's ability to recognize her out of her gear, she stayed long enough to hear him tell her that the other team had one former Olympian, a couple Division 1 players, and a couple UNH players. I'm not sure how much stock I'd put in that information from some random creeper at the bar, but it sure does make us feel better about the beating we took.

Right now it's slug-ville at our condo. Pretty soon I have to get my butt in gear and work on my stretching/mobility though. I've been keeping right on schedule with my training, but this vacation has thrown a bit of a monkey wrench into it. I had it all planned out; even though I was going to be away, I'd do some body-weight workouts to keep myself going. Except then I looked at the schedule and realized all our games are at 2pm (ish). I asked Maria if I should be doing workouts in the morning with a game that early in the day and she said no, probably not. I said I didn't want to get behind on my training, and she said "don't forget we train to win- so go and win some games". Duh. I had to laugh at myself. As dedicated as I am to this training program I completely forgot the whole purpose. So I guess I can give myself a few days off if it means I'll be better prepared for the games. Certainly don't need to deplete my energy stores, if the games are going to be like they were yesterday.

Today's opponent: Mass Attack. Yeah. All the teams in this tier are from MA. We're gonna need all the help we can get.