We finished the regular winter season with a nice win in the last game at Gawler tonight. For the first time this season we played with a full bench (six skaters plus a goalie), with our regular five skaters plus a 'reserve' of Nick (from the Bumpers). Matt the Goalie is still recovering from his knee injury, so again we had Dylan Powell as our goalie.
I was in the opening line again, which we kept to a short shift of just over a minute. It was a fairly high speed session, with each side threatening but not getting a shot in. The following seven minutes were like that with some noteable clashes around our goal area. At least once I crashed into my opposition Mark at almost a perpendicular angle near the back board at high speed when he wasn't expecting it, and unintentionally checked him on the boards again in the following shift when I spun to change direction on our end board, consequently blocking him from pushing through to the puck (used my body to hold him there a second or two until reinforcements arrived).
The scoring opened with a rush on goal by Alex and Nick, Alex's rebound collected by himself and passed to Nick who slotted it.
Five minutes later, Alex and I combined in a neat fashion where I passed the puck to him, he shot and collected the rebound on the board while I skated in closer, and then he passed it to me for a one timer (!) that went sweetly off my blade into the top corner of the net above the sprawled goalie. It was perhaps the nicest feeling goal I've yet scored in competition, there was no way it was going to be stopped once I'd connected. We went into half time 2-0 up and our bench was feeling pretty good.
The second half was marked more by a mass assault on our goal than anything else. We did get a nice third goal when Merrilyn and Matt the skater passed off between themselves and then onto Brenton near the goal mouth who pushed the puck home hard through a three inch gap that the goalie had left. Apart from this, though, they got about three times as many shots off as we did in the last half, so we owe a lot to Dylan the goalie and his decisive and sure keeping.
If one counted blocked shots, the disparity in shot attempts would have been even higher in the second half. I collected one full blooded shot from Mark on my right inside ankle (luckily, on the boot and not the bare skin and bone) - skating across the open half of the goal mouth to cover the approaching puck carrier after a cross goal pass, when he got the shot off and I got my foot in its way. It stung a bit, but probably will bruise. It would have been a goal if I hadn't kicked out to block the puck travelling about six inches above the floor. I noticed at least two other solidly blocked shots off of Wheelers legs or boots.
Craig, playing as a reserve in the Shufflers, got their only goal with an opportunist strike from just over the centre line. After he'd done this I noticed that there were maybe three or four more similar shots by his team mates, to no avail. I was on the floor for the final mad minute when again they charged the net and there was a tangle of bodies and extended goal keeper. In the dying seconds I charged at our net to pull the puck away from the goalie and out, taking a hit from the rushing Shuffler and her stick as she swung to hit the puck in before Dylan could fall on it. A very close run thing but I'd put it down as a save.
I was on the floor for about 15 or so minutes, only the one long shift. I think I lost all of the six or so faceoffs I took, but none resulted in significant advantage to them. I again had only the one (this time successful) shot on goal. I was pleased with my goal and some of my passes (particularly a couple long stretch pass to Matt that went tape to tape). They seemed to be either onto my team mate's stick or in front of them (including at least once where it went through their legs onto the forehand side where the stick was).
As a team we played a good balanced game, albeit with a bit too much
dump and chase tactics in the last half which kept returning possession
to the Shufflers. We had quite a bit of communication, though still not enough. Alex was starting to use his backhand and help out more on the backcheck (I think he was pretty happy with his game after the shock of not getting a goal (he had two assists)).
In two weeks, we play them again in the Prelim final.
GP 10 G 8 A 7 TP 15 +14 7/2/1
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