The Quarry Cat Choir

"Jesus this crease is a mess, what the hell was this guy doing down here last period? [scrape scrape scrape]. Ok ready to go, guys are lining up. [tap....tap-tap] Nice, we got the faceoff win. Ah shit nevermind here they come. Over the blue line and..... YEAH haha Grimm got ya buddy. That's my D-man!  Now we'll get some zone time. Huh, wonder who those two in the stands are here for. Never seen them before. The dude is taking lots of pictures too. Weird. Wonder if they're New Guy's friends. Wonder where the hell New Guy came from anyway- ah crap

Man on! Man on!

Follow the puck follow the puck Хвилюватися немає причин, як дають, то бери Якщо б’ють, то біжи, кричи. Технологія проста: ким би ти не став Зранку встав, присідай до ста і читай устав... Oh yeah pad up against the post, seal that shit, HA! How come every time I make a save in VH I think man @TheGoalieGuild would hate that

On you, on you, around around!!!

I mean I get his point but it's not ALWAYS bad  Хвилюватися немає причин, як дають, то бери Якщо б’ють, то біжи, кричи. Технологія проста: ким би ти не став Зранку встав, присідай до ста і читай устав... ack, penalty. Well GoalieHusband hasn't played in a while, he's gotta get those penalty minutes logged, Mark's encroaching on his title bahaha.


[etc etc, fast forward to the end of the period]


C'mon c'mon guys... yeah Senator,  you got it... right... HA! MURPH! WAY TO GO. Wtf? What's with all the yelling? No one in the stands.... OH HEY GIRLS!!! Ha. Nice, they stopped by. Pounding on the glass, cool. Oh shit, that means in a few minutes I'm going to be down there in that net by them. Hope they don't embarrass me too much Хвилюватися немає причин, як дають, то бери Якщо б’ють, то біжи, кричи. Технологія проста: ким би ти не став Зранку встав, присідай до ста і читай устав... Хвилюватися немає причин, як дають, то бери Якщо б’ють, то біжи, кричи. Технологія проста: ким би ти не став Зранку встав, присідай до ста і читай устав...
  
[horn sounds.... between period huffing and puffing and bench pep talk...]

Alright, heading back to the net. What... why are they opening the door???!??


HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!! 

Ahhh hahaha cute. Ok ok,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOOOOO YOU!!!


OMG. They're not going to sing the whole thing are they??? [take off glove and give them the finger]


HAPPY BIIIIIIIIIIIIRTHDAY DEAR MAALIVAHTIIIII....


Alright I'm just going to crouch here in the crease and pretend I don't exist. Holy crap are you kidding me girls? The other team is staring. Ohhhh some of them are tapping their sticks... haha thanks guys. Ref is laughing too. Nice.


HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOOOOOOOOOOO YOOOOUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!


Oh dear lord I can't believe this. Ha. Ok now they're done let's get on with the rest of the game here. Ref's getting ready to call us


GOALIE!!! [other goalie waves]


[pause].... BIRTHDAY GIRL!


Ah fuck, seriously man? [wave] Let's go [tap....tap-tap]


...and so it went. Yes, my girls embarrassed the hell out of me. Yes, GoalieHusband skated back towards me at 12:01 to say "happy birthday" (sending up a giant "AWWWWWWW" from the peanut gallery). And throughout the 3rd period, I'd make a save, get an appreciative tap from the opponent and hear "nice save..." [chuckle] "...happy birthday". And yes, we lost, and it was frustrating as hell and I still don't know what I'm doing in this league, because I made some really good saves last night, overall I had a really good game, but inconsistency still haunts me. I make great saves and then give up shitty goals. But given all that, and all the horrendously awful stress at work, I still found myself thinking of the Quarry Cat Choir from time to time during the day, and grinning like an idiot. I am so, so blessed. I have not just one, but TWO awesome teams. Totally different, but awesome each in their own way. Not a bad birthday, not a bad birthday at all. So thanks, @hkygrl12, @lct29, Scarey D, Mayor, and KK, for making me want to disappear but also making me feel loved. Also, can't forget @gionta182 showing up prior to that and screaming her head off for "Coach Sparkle", ragging him and yelling "I KNOW YOU HEAR ME!!!". That's my girl. 

Ok, enough of this mushy shit. I have to go do some deadlifts or plyo pushups or something to get that tough-guy, don't-fuck-with-me, I'll-rob-you-blind-sucker feeling back.

(And thanks to this guy for the inspiration for the style of this post.)

Conversations from GoalieHousehold

My birthday is coming up. I kind of hate saying it because I've never been one of those people to make a big deal about their birthday, but I just realized that I mentioned it in my last post, and it's central to the story I have no choice but to share here. My husband, bless his oft-concussed head, has the short term memory of a gnat. A few weeks ago he was lamenting that he had no idea what to buy me for my birthday, and I offered a few suggestions, though being money-conscious right now they were all on the inexpensive side. Ok, not all. But most.

Today he started the same line of complaining, realizing that he doesn't have much time left. I reminded him that I'd given him some suggestions, but upon seeing his sheepish look, asked "You forgot, didn't you?" He admitted he had. I started to say that one of the things was a subscription to Goalies' World magazine, which I used to have a while back and loved, but realized there wouldn't be enough time for that now.

Him: What do you mean, not enough time?

Me: Well if you want to give it to me on my actual birthday, you won't have it in time.

Him: Yes I will, I'll just buy a copy at Borders.

Me: Borders closed remember?

Him: Oh... Ok well then I'll get you a Playgirl and just say it's goalies.

Me (laughing but pretending to be insulted): Fuck you!

Him: What! It's got sticks...

It does indeed. He has a point. Now if you'll please excuse me, I need to ponder the possibilities of "Playgirl" and "goalies" in the same sentence....

All Goalies, All the Time

We have a lot of September birthdays in my family, so to make matters simple, we gather on one day to celebrate all of them. This of course includes a massive amount of food and dessert, and laying about on the living room floor after consuming way too much of both. (It's the truth. My Dad was laying on the couch, but my Mom, GoalieHusband, sister and I were all lounging on the floor, which prompted my mom to wonder aloud why they even bothered to have chairs in the room at all). But in addition to feeling like I feel after Thanksgiving dinner, I also have some pretty neat gifts. This one I think will get lots of use. As a matter of fact, it already has. It was a huge hit with my nieces, once I explained what the heck it was and showed them how to use it. They're still at the age where they think everything they see Aunt Maalivahti doing is really cool. I'm sure that'll wear off eventually, but hopefully not before I can get one of them into some goalie gear. Muahaha.

So while I sit here and wait for my food to digest before my game later tonight, I figured I'd share the experiment that is the Goalies-Only Fantasy League. I've always wanted to see if it was possible to have a fantasy league where you only draft goalies, and this season GoalieHusband obliged my curiosity by creating one on Yahoo. Although it would probably be fun to have other people in on it, I sensed that he wanted it to be "our" thing, at least for this inaugural run, so we had to each create two teams (Yahoo's minimum number of teams per league is 4). The categories are: wins, goals against avg, shots against, saves, save %, and of course, shutouts. We decided that each team should draft 10 goalies, for a total of 40 goalies in the league. This forced us to pick a few backups, which I thought would make things interesting.

(At this point, it occurs to me that you all probably think I'm totally nuts).

Here are the goalies I drafted, in the order I drafted them, for each team. I warn you right now that I am supremely awful at drafting for fantasy hockey leagues, so have fun laughing at my selections.

Team 1: The Guardians
Rinne
Quick
Rask (I know, I know... I couldn't help it....plus I have a gut feeling)
Roloson
Ward
Lehtonen
Anderson
Theodore
Smith
Enroth

Team 2: The Charlatans (haha... get it? it's like a fake team??? ha.)
Thomas (see what I did there?)
Price
Crawford
Backstrom
Bryzgalov (we were both really reluctant to pick him, but I ended up caving)
Halak
Dubnyk
Bernier
Neuvirth
Auld

As you can only have 5 goalies playing on any given night, we're going to have to be really diligent about staying on top of our rosters. (edited out dirty thought) Man, this has trainwreck written all over it. I can't wait.

Way to go, Goalie

On the heels of another blowout loss, I'm actually not moping and navel-gazing. Last night was another 6-0 loss for the Hawks and it certainly wasn't the best game I've ever seen us play (myself included). Two goals in particular stick out as ones I definitely should have had (ok, maybe three). From my vantage point, it seemed like we just couldn't get it together offensively. In the second period, with the score 1-0, one of the guys had a great chance on a wide open net but I guess he was going too fast and the shot was just a few inches shy of the mark. I don't usually do this but I let out a "ugggghhh!". No sooner was it out of my mouth when I thought, "Ooops. Probably shouldn't have done that. Now watch I'll get scored on." Ohhhh look, here comes a breakaway. I stayed with him pretty well but I guess I wasn't square because the puck hit the top edge of my pad and bounced in. CRAP. That should have been an easy one to take right in the flaming C logo.

The other one was another breakaway, with one of our guys coming back and almost even up with him, but the gravitational pull of my enormous 5-hole sucked the puck right off his stick and into the net. That one was just plain awful.

I did make some good saves, but overall I feel I could have played much better. Obviously, without anything on the board for us, none of those bad goals were difference-makers. But I can't rest on my laurels on that fact, because there will come a time when a goal will make a difference, and I can't be letting sloppy shit like that past me. (Naturally, I don't want to let anything past me, but really big errors feel worse than when you give it all you've got).

So either I finally have some perspective, or I'm just tired, but I'm kind of filing last night's game under "it is what it is". We have another game Wednesday night, right after QCat practice. It's a notable one for two reasons; we're making it "throwback night" and wearing our fancy blue jerseys, and we'll be playing the team we had that really nasty game against a few weeks ago. Maybe we should have someone film the game and make it pay-per-view. It'll help defray the cost of the jerseys we got one season's wear out of.

Hawks, Cats, and beer - a week in review

First off, let me pat myself on the back for listening to my body. I'm off work today, but instead of going to open hockey this morning, I slept. I know some people will say "I'll sleep when I'm dead" but I've learned that when I ignore my body bad things happen. After a late game Sunday night, another on Monday night, and a hard practice Wednesday night, I was really dragging, so I decided to sleep in. I'm so glad I did. I slept until 11:00, and I feel so refreshed. I guess that's the upside to being forced to take your vacation time.

The week started off with two Hawks games, both of which we lost, but one left me feeling not so bad and the other left me "meh". Sunday night we played with a short bench (again), against a team that brings guys down from their upper level on a regular basis. We lost 6-0, but we all felt like we did damn well against them, considering. At the end of the first it was only 1-0, a personal victory for me since I am prone to giving up early goals, a fact that is frustrating the hell out of me lately. After the second, it was 3-0. Pretty awesome considering our dual handicap. Everyone was really gassed by the third though, and they scored 3 more goals. I'm blaming the last one on our d-man "Grimm". With about 2 minutes to go and the score 5-0, we had a face-off high on the right side after a sustained attack in our zone. Everyone was out of breath, and Grimm said to me as we set up "You're doing great. Let's just keep this at 5, they're all over us right now". I nodded- I'd actually been thinking the same thing. Naturally, they scored right off the face-off. GoalieHusband (who was subbing that night) came back and took the blame for deflecting it, but I placed it solidly on Grimm for jinxing us.

And despite the score, I really did play very well. I was hoping the momentum would follow into the game the next night, but it wasn't to be. I figured I'd be ok, because as I've mentioned here, I seem to play better when I'm exhausted. That wasn't the case on Monday though. I feel I played a pretty average game; a few goals that I definitely should have stopped, but one ridiculous save-gasm of a glove save that stunned even the refs. We'll just ignore the fact that 4 of their goals were scored by one guy, who clearly had no business being on the ice. Even I am sick of hearing myself go on about this issue. We've learned that nothing ever changes at this rink, so I am going to have to just accept that and move on.

After that game I had a much needed day off, and then it was the first practice of the season for the Quarry Cats. I was excited all day, looking forward to it. Yes, we played tons of tournaments this summer, but as most of them were a mixed C/D level, the team was mixed and I only saw a handful of people from our team. It was really great to see the whole team (almost- a few were missing) back on the ice together, and everyone seemed to feel the same. We also have kind of a unique coaching situation this season. When our head coach left, it was pretty unanimous from the team that they wanted GoalieHusband to step into that role. And he would love to be able to. But work combined with him going back to school just won't allow for the time he'd need to commit to the team. As a result we have three other people who are going to fill in the gaps, one of whom is our own @hkygrl12, which I am totally thrilled about. So it'll be an interesting season in that regard, and I'm looking forward to learning from hkygrl12 and the other two guys, who I also know. (One of them plays on one of the other teams in the Hawks' league, which should make for some good trash talking haha).

The practice went very well, but the best part may have been the after-party. Players and coaches from both the D and C teams all hung out in front of the rink, drinking beer and getting caught up. That really gave me a case of warm-fuzzies. We didn't leave until after midnight, and the next day I was a complete zombie after the week I had. But it was completely worth it, and if the after-practice revelry becomes a regular occurrance, I'm totally fine with that. Unfortunately I'll miss it this coming week though, as the Hawks have a game right after QCats practice. It'll be another 2-game, 1-practice week next week. Bring on the OysterGlove.

No Words

How do you write about 43 people dying a horrible death far too soon? What is there that can possibly be said about husbands, sons, fathers, brothers, best friends, all gone in a flash? (I am not leaving out the female members of the crew; I just have no idea if they were mothers/wives/etc. But they were someone's daughters, and someone's dear friends.) Yet how do you not write about it? This is the silent struggle that's been going on in some corner of my brain since the Lokomotiv crash. And I've also been thinking about tragedies like this in general. What makes this more horrifying than any other plane or bus crash where people are killed? Nothing. Nothing but the fact that hockey players (and fans) everywhere are kind of one big, albeit dysfunctional, family. Not being interested in other sports, I don't know if two complete strangers, upon finding out they play (or love) the game, instantly have a bond and can talk forever about it. So, even though I am not and never was a fan of Lokomotiv (that's not to say I disliked the team, I'm just saying I have no connection other than: it's hockey), this tragedy ripped a hole in my heart and I still can't get my head around it. And judging from the reactions I've seen from friends, on Twitter, on Facebook, and from people I don't even know, it affected many people the same way. Some of the guys I play open hockey with are Russian, and it wasn't long after the news broke that the de-facto "GM" of the group sent an email out with condolences. One of the Russian guys (the one I always say is so scary and intimidating) responded with a candid email about how heart-broken they were. I wanted to say something to one of the guys yesterday morning but couldn't imagine what would be appropriate, especially as we sat quietly on the bench watching the play.

The videos and pictures coming out of the memorial service are gut-wrenching. And as a Ranger fan, it's hard not to recall another Russian casket completely covered in a mountain of flowers, just a few short years ago. I have a personal tradition of lighting a candle when someone's death affects me, and letting it burn as long as it can, to light the way for their soul as it makes it's journey to wherever it's going. I guess it's silly and sentimental, but it feels important to me. But lighting 43 candles really isn't feasible, so to:

Vitaly Anikeenko
Yury Bakhvalov
Mikhail Balandin
Alexander Belyayev
Gennady Churilov
Pavol Demitra
Robert Dietrich
Marat Kalimulin
Alexander Kalyanin
Alexander Karpovtsev
Andrei Kiryukhin
Nikita Klyukin
Igor Korolev
Nikolai Krivonosov
Yevgeny Kunnov
VyacheslavKuznetsov
Stefan Liv
Nadezhda Maksumova
Jan Marek
Vladimir Matyushkin
Brad McCrimmon
Sergei Ostapchuk
Vladimir Piskunov
Karel Rachunek
Ruslan Salei
Yelena Sarmatova
Yelena Shavina
Maxim Shuvalov
Yevgeny Sidorov
Karlis Skrastins
Pavel Snurnitsyn
Daniil Sobchenko
Andrei Solontsev
Ivan Tkachenko
Pavel Trakhanov
Yury Urychov
Josef Vasicek
Alexander Vasyunov
Alexander Vyukhin
Artem Yarchuk
Igor Zhevelov
Sergei Zhuravlyov
Andrei Zimin

...safe journey.

I Haven't Showered Yet

Just thought you should know that. Such is my dedication to my blog. (Really, I just wanted to finish my coffee first). Today was the last of the Saturday morning open hockey sessions of the summer. It wasn't my best game ever, that's for sure. I wasn't horrendous- I've certainly played worse- but I just couldn't get into the zone. There were three other goalies, so we were rotating 10 min on and 10 min off, and I'm sure that had something to do with it. Plus, I think I left my balls at home today. I just wasn't being aggressive enough, wasn't challenging. I also desperately need to sharpen my skates. They have no edge whatsoever and my feet went out from under me a few times. Not good.

But, speaking of balls, I've got a great phrase to enter into the hockey lexicon. One of the goalies took a really hard shot to a really bad area. He tried to gut it out but ended up limping off to the bench. When my shift was over I skated by and asked him if he was ok and he replied "Yeah, I'm alright. Just grazed the undercarriage there." This guy's a real pisser, running his mouth (in a non-annoying way) for most of the game. He's also super friendly and supportive of other goalies; it's not unusual for him to yell out "Nice save!" all the way from the other end of the ice. As silly as it sounds, that bolsters my confidence. So hats off to the big guy. He sat on the bench for a bit but decided to call it a day. I hope he went home and sat on a giant block of ice. As the guy on the bench next to me observed "That's a shitty way to end the Saturday season."

Saturday season may be over, but the Hawks season is in full swing. We've had four games so far and our record is... get ready for this... 2-2!!!! And, having won our last two games, we're officially on a winning streak. Both wins were satisfying for reasons other than the W, but the last game was probably the best I've felt about a win (not counting tournament-winning games). We had all of 8 skaters, and were going up against one of the faster teams in the league. We battled and battled and came out with an all-around awesome team win. I think I had a really good game myself, and was even complimented by one of the refs at the end of the game.

That game was on the 25th, and our next game isn't until the 11th. At 11pm. After which we have another 11pm game the next night. Not sure how that kind of scheduling happens but that's the way it goes. That's Sunday and Monday, and then on Wednesday of that week the QCats have their first practice of the season. Which means: hockey season is almost here!! Not much longer now to wait....