Victory!
We picked up our first win of the season over the weekend, a 12-1 win over the Rockets. I was centering the second line, after playing right wing last game. My line generated five goals, four coming from left winger John K, and one from our right winger Harry. The LW on the top line, Scott, picked up a hat trick.
I ended up with four assists on the night — I only realized after the game that I hadn’t taken a single shot on net, but most of that was due to the fact that my wingers were constantly parked all alone in front of the net. It was nice to have lots of time to take a look around and make a play with the puck, a luxury we didn’t get last week against a much better defensive team. Patience is definitely key at this level, because it seems everyone is rushing to make a play. On Harry’s goal two separate Rockets players were battling me for the puck to the left of the net, and I just waited for both to whack and whiff at the puck before sliding the puck over to Harry at the right post, where he buried it. On the bench he told me, “I wasn’t quite sure what you were waiting for there” because I waited so long to make the pass.
Strangely enough the play that I keep rewinding in my head is one that didn’t result in a goal. In the second period I broke in on a two-on-one on the left side, with JK on the right. I slipped the puck past the defenseman right onto JK’s stick, but their goalie made the save. It was one of the few times where all the stuff they drilled into our heads during the 13-week instructional came together — I had my head up the whole way, and made a tape-to-tape pass. This is something we often couldn’t pull off during two-on-none drills in the instructional session, so I feel like I’m making small bits of progress.
The official Sled Dogs jerseys for new team members haven’t arrived yet, so we look like a patchwork quilt out there with numbers taped on the back of practice jerseys. I’ve been wearing number 17 (Jari Kurri!), because it’s easy to tape onto the back.
