Getting after it

It’s March? When did that happen? All of a sudden we only have two more league games before the end of the season, and it’s crunch time. Last season we clinched a playoff spot early, finishing first in the division. This season we struggled a bit more, and are fighting for our playoff lives as we come down the stretch. Saturday night we faced a particularly difficult opponent. The last time we played them, we lost 1-0, and were told that no one else in our division had been able to keep the score so low. That was back in the beginning of the season though, when we didn’t have holes in the roster. For a few weeks we were without our coach (injury), and for various other reasons we seemed to never have our full team for games. Everyone came back just in time though. Having recently been cleared by her doctor (even though she played the week before, shhhh), Hkygrl12 was back in the lineup, and most of the rest of the team was there as well on Saturday. We have a few exuberant young-ins, which adds a whole other layer of amusement to a locker room that's already rife with it. They’re quite taken with the movie “Frozen”, and have been serenading us with its songs lately during practice. They commandeered the iPod player as we got ready for the game and forced us all to listen to … I have no idea. Some song from the movie that sounded like a Broadway musical to me. Not exactly pre-game hockey music. I belly-ached about it good-naturedly, and gionta182 and I kept rolling our eyes at each other, but they were not to be deterred and sang along loudly.  In recompense I requested one of the few popular-music songs I’ve latched onto recently: "Radioactive". I honestly have no idea what most of the words even are, I just really dig that song. In fact it got stuck in my head Saturday night and is still there. This is it, the apocalypse.

Well, now we will be forced to listen to the musical number before every game we have left, because we played probably our best game of the season. Everyone played hard, and just did not give up. They scored first, in the first period, on a play I was handcuffed on. I had to cover the puck carrier, but there was another girl sneaking down behind that no one saw, and with the D drawn to the puck carrier she had an easy goal. I tried to get over in time but didn’t quite get there. That was probably in the first half of the period, but fortunately we evened it up not long after. I think that buoyed everyone’s spirits. And then I spent half a period with  my head up my ass. Ok, not really. But there were two pretty lousy goals in the second period, putting us down 3-1, and I figured that was it. But we didn’t give up. Including me. We just kept fighting and fighting and slowly climbed out of our hole, eventually scoring 4 unanswered goals. Including killing a 6 –on-4 power play (empty net). When we made it 3-2 I shouted and cheered. When it was 3-3, I just bent down and breathed deep, determined to center myself and stay steady and do my part. Then it was 3-4 and again I drew deep on my yoga to stay calm. When the empty-netter sealed it with 3 seconds to go, I nearly dropped to my knees. I couldn’t get to my teammates fast enough after that final buzzer. We were a giant mass of happiness. That win meant A LOT in terms of our confidence and our playoff hopes. One down, two to go. In games I’ve been working on focusing only on the next shot, and that’s what we have to do in a broader sense with these games. One at a time. That’s the only way we can get there. And do we ever want to get there. #GoGoalieGo