That's How We Roll

First game in a few weeks last night as the Hawks took to the ice to defend our basement level league championship. I think everyone needed a little break, and the energy in the room was pretty good. The energy on the ice was even better- we were up 5-2 by the end of the 2nd period.

And.... that's when it all fell apart. I don't know what it is but we have a terrible time holding on to leads in the 3rd period. Lack of focus, probably, on all our parts. We played the 3rd period like we were up by 10, not three. I had a feeling it was going to slip away when at the bench before the 3rd, guys were saying "come on, we have a three goal lead". While I made a lot of what I feel were very good saves, especially the ones through traffic that I *just* got a look at and got to in time, I also didn't help the team out all that much by giving up two goals on what has become my absolute Achilles heel: an angled stick.

I've been racking my brain trying to figure out how to fix this. I was trained to hold the stick blade at an angle to the ice while in my stance. When I drop into the butterfly though, I have a habit of not bringing it flush against my pads (i.e. perpendicular to the ice), and the puck hits the blade or the shaft and goes winging off over my shoulder- sometimes right into the net. I know this frustrates my teammates- it frustrates the hell out of me. The only way I can think of to fix it is to take a zillion shots aimed right at the stick and just keep dropping down correctly over and over until it becomes muscle memory. Unfortunately I don't really think I have the opportunity (ice time) to do that. Maybe GoalieHusband and I can work on it in the basement using cat toys instead of pucks. The only thing that's going to make it better is repetition.

A teammate on the IR was there and took a slew of photos of the game, and looking through them afterwards I only cringed at about 60% of them. In the others I actually saw that I was doing some stuff right. Its really neat to have that perspective, so you know what little adjustments you need to make. So thanks, 44, for the shots.

And on a totally unrelated note, I discovered Practical Application for Yoga #432 today: Chair Pose is fantastic for hovering over public toilets and peeing. Doesn't even phase me to do that anymore. Somehow though, I don't think my instructor would be as excited to hear about that as she was to hear about how one of the breathing techniques got me through the last minute of our championship game. I might just tell her anyway.

Wussing out... sort of

I wanted nothing more than to go back to clinic this morning and show that coach he hadn't gotten the best of me last week. I really wanted to show up and be like "ok here I am, back for more." But I chickened out.

Here's my list of excuses:
#1- I couldn't breathe all day Saturday due to allergies and figured it would be the same on Sunday and didn't want to embarrass myself again by not being able to complete a drill without stopping in the middle. Ugh.
#2- I've had to get up early every day including Saturday and really just wanted to sleep in, dammit.
#3- Uhhh... that's pretty much all I've got. (Ok maybe I was a little scared to get my ass kicked again).

So as not to feel like a complete useless lump of laziness, I did do about 40 minutes of yoga when I got up. Note to self: You are much more flexible at the end of the day than you are when you just get out of bed. Yikes. Still, there are several poses that really open the hips and stretch out all those muscles so I'd like to do them on a more regular basis than once a week. Honestly, I'm surprised Tim Thomas is the only goalie doing yoga. It's such a perfect combination: flexibility, focus, mental discipline. What could be a better match for goaltending?