dirtystylus

Tally it up

Scrimmaged with some of my team and some D7 players on Wednesday. That was a lot of fun – up and down the ice, playing with guys who could skate and stickhandle pretty well. I managed to eke out a goal and an assist, but I missed two clear chances on net.

Last night was my first game in a long while, and I was still recovering from being sick most of Friday. Most of us finally got our jerseys, so we look more like a real team rather than a collection of ringers. I now wear number 30 (the Sled Dogs have a D7 team as well, so the numbers are scattered through the divisions). Added bonus: my name is actually spelled correctly on my jersey.

We played the Hotshots, who are currently atop the D8 league standings. I guess everyone was feeling a lot of New Year cheer, because it was probably the chippiest game I’ve every played in. Bryan got tossed midway through the 2nd period (in his defense he was just retaliating after being hacked and slashed the entire first period). Darrell got his skates spat upon by a charming gentleman after a little bit of yapping back-and-forth. I think we were on the penalty kill three times during the game. Still, it was 1-1 at the end and after a scoreless overtime Andy won it for us in the shootout.

No points for me (I had a clean breakaway chance in the third that the goalie stopped) but I did rack up quite a few other stats: I took a puck off my inside thigh (where there’s minimal padding) while stepping in front of a shot. My right ankle got crunched when someone sat on it in a scrum. I caught the follow-through on a guy’s clearing attempt right on the cage (the world on mute for about 2 seconds). And, finally, a bruised knee after I swiped a puck off a guy’s stick and then fell awkwardly to the ice. Thankfully we won, otherwise getting up this morning would’ve been a lot harder.

Sled Dogs 3, Hotshots 4 (OT)

Tough loss two weekends ago to the Hotshots. We were down 3-1 and tied it up, only to lose in OT. We face the Rockets this weekend, which should be a nice way to get back in sync.

I have to work on faceoffs if I’m going to continue playing center – I think I won only two draws cleanly against the Hotshots. Luckily one of those faceoff wins went right to Bryan on D, who scored one of his two goals by rushing the puck in himself.

The Lost Art of the Backhand

Saturday was all about hockey, hockey, and more hockey. Jordan goes out of town for Caroline’s bridal shower, and look what happens. First Evan dropped by for a Stanley-cup series between the Kings and Rangers on NHL 08, before heading out to attend a baby shower somewhere in the bowels of Brooklyn. Then, much later on (11:30 pm start times are killer) the Sled Dogs notched a 6-0 win over the Rockets. I picked up my first two goals of the season, along with two assists. I was on LW this time, skating with Harry on RW and a rotation of centers (we had 4 instead of the usual 3). Joseph had been giving me advice over the phone during the last month, telling me to go to the backhand more often, since goalies at all levels have trouble reading it, and it paid off with my first-ever goal. We were up 1-0 when Kris (who was one of my classmates at the Wednesday instructional) made a nice hold at left point and sent it back down to the corner, where I made one move to get around a defenseman before throwing it to the net on the backhand. I actually thought that the goalie had stopped it and the ref’s whistle was just for a faceoff, so I was already skating off for a shift change when harry looked at me and said, “Hey – that actually went in!”.
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Sled Dogs 3, Tigers 1

We won our second game in a row, a 3-1 tilt against the Tigers (to whom we lost in our opener). Thanks to Jordan and Evan for coming out to watch the graceful ballet of D8 hockey. I’m trying to get Evan back into hockey, hopefully it’ll take and we can wreak havoc next season. I didn’t get on the scoreboard, but my line had some decent opportunities. I was back on RW for the game, essentially switching places with Harry who moved to center. Not too many highlights – I had a few rushes down the wing where I centered the puck, but there was no finish at the end. My best play was probably the neutral zone pass I made to send Stiff (our 1st line center) in on a clean breakaway that their goalie stopped.
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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.