Hockey Tournament - Game 1

So... if you don't already know, I play women's ice hockey on a team called the Green Chilis. I'm a defenseman. We are a intro team, meaning for all of us this is our first year playing ice hockey. It's been a crazy season. Most of the year we just had practice about once a week. But since January, we've had a few scrimmages and this weekend our season will end with a tournament.

There are 4 teams at our level in the tournament. This means that we played one game last night, will play 2 today, and then the top two teams will play each other in a final game on Sunday. The tournament is set up pretty well, and they even brought in a professional photographer, so I may have some pictures to show you of me in action this weekend.

Last nights game was pretty darn awesome. I mean, how can a game NOT be awesome when your offense scores on the FIRST PLAY OF THE GAME!

The puck dropped at 6:20PM which meant it was a stretch for some of my teammates to get there with traffic and whatnot. As a matter of fact our goalie didn't make it to the rink until the rest of us were already dressed and walking out onto the ice. Consequently we played about the first 5 minutes of the first period without an actual goalie. So that meant that of the 4 of us that play defense, 2 were on the ice as defenseman, 1 was on the bench, and 1 was playing goalie. I got to be part of the pair that swapped between defense and goalie. So I was on the ice the whole first part of the game. I'm very proud of my teammates because the whole time that Jackie and I had to play goalie, our teammates did not let a SINGLE shot be made on goal!! This was huge as neither of us had ever been in the net and neither of us was in goalie gear. I was mighty glad when that goalie finally stepped on the ice, I was exhausted.

The rest of the game went pretty well. I really felt like we were dominating throughout the game. The puck really spent the most its time down in our offensive zone and the other team had very few shots on goal. Actually, I managed to personally block one shot on goal..... off my shin guard. That was a fun moment. I'd never managed to do that before, but I just managed to get in front of that puck about 8 feet in front of the goalie and deflected it. It bounced off my shin guard about half way up and ricocheted off to the right.

I also had a few good moments of intimidating the offense. Not too many players at our level can skate backwards proficiently, but with my background in figure skating its not a challenge for me, so I like to stare down the offense as they come at us instead of turning around and running with my back to them. It's fun stuff.

I also made some pretty good attacks, getting the puck back or just seriously slowing down their offense. I even got my teams first ever penalty. I got to spend two minutes in the box for tripping. When I got back to my bench later all my teammates cheered for me and asked if I had managed to get the obnoxious one with the pink stick *LOL*

The other team was not as skilled as we were, we have some AMAZING offensive players that are small, fast, and have a lot of spunk. But man, that other team sure had attitude. At two points in the game they played so inappropriately that I LITERALLY thought I was gonna see some gloves come off.

But, as we joke, our offensive Protein Pair of PorkChop and Bacon served it to um! We ended up winning the game 6-0

In the last period our coach even decided to mess around with our lines a bunch and make most of our forwards play defense. It caused a lot of confusion on the ice till we figured out what coach was trying to do, but it was interesting to see people attempt different positions and watch our game play adjust to it.

The game was interesting. Usually we start strong and finish exhausted. But last night we started slow and just built all night. I walked out of the rink last night calm but solidly excited. I wasn't even sore, and usually my lower back is pretty sore after a game.

All that said, last night ROCKED and I'm totally stoked for today's games.

Last night my friend and housemate, Melody, was cheering us on from the stands. She plans to come to today's games too. And late last night another housemate, Ruben, asked about my game schedule, so he and his son, Elushka, might come out for the first game this morning as well. It would rock to have them cheering us on as well and for Elushka to get to see me skate.

All right, time for me to get my gear together and start getting my head in the game.