I had an enjoyable return to competitive hockey tonight, playing for the first time in about six weeks (and not a lot of skating in between). As the game approached I was a little nervous about how I'd go, lacking match conditioning and having had no skills practice for over a week were bound to have an effect. My strategy was to use my head, and take short shifts wherever possible.
The game got off with a blast as they tried to overwhelm us in the first minute. I seemed to be everywhere, crashing twice to the floor in that time. The first was a full frontal face cage to face cage clash over the puck which floored us both in front of our goal, the second was on the forecheck against the boards stopping them getting the breakout pass. About half a minute later I was playing high in the slot, delayed on a shot and instead passed it with full force to Matt the Skater as he hovered in front of the crease. His shot was more a deflection and went in sweetly. Our second goal of the first half was a gutsy peformance between Marilyn and Matt, picking up rebounds and passing and shooting about three times in the one sequence before sinking it. 2-0 at half time.
The second half saw more of the same, with Alex perhaps holding the puck more than I would have liked, but he featured in all the goals by either scoring or assisting, so who am I to say? Me, I played a much stronger defense role (having told our goalie, Dylan, to tell me what to do because I'd be listening). On several occasions I provided the safe reset option for an attack that bogged down, and certainly derailed several of their counterattacks.
Dylan in his second ever game as goalie didn't let any of their sixteen shots in, was very athletic and has a good eye for the puck. Which, when combined with his courage and decisiveness made for an entertaining performance. I nearly left him high and dry in the last minute with a totally failed pick up of the puck. I did however pick off the rebound and had my only technical shot on goal, from close to our own goal!
I used the boards a lot to chip it up the rink when clearing out of defence, and found my two main opponents were Craig in the first half (mainly played him 'indirectly', by shutting off his passing option and forcing him to try and pass around our forwards) and Rebecca in the second (several times made sure that I interfered with her stick enough with mine to prevent her getting a rhythm up with her skillful deking, allowing in turn for a contest on more even terms where my basic turning and skating ability could prevail). On several occasions I was limited to just tying them up for a few seconds to give our slower attackers time to get back and cover the options. All the time, I played conservative (ie avoided pinching forwards if I was in the defence role) and closed off options as much as possible to allow Dylan a better chance in goal.
I was very happy with my game and with the way the team functioned. I played about 13 minutes, in more shifts than usual (ie shorter and more frequent shifts). I didn't lose any of my six or so faceoffs. I was on the floor for two of our goals.
The Wheelers are now locked into second spot on the ladder for the regular season, of which there is one more game. This is good as it gives us a second chance should we lose the preliminary. Next week we play the Shufflers (top), a prelude to playing them again in the prelim final. If we play like we did tonight, I reckon we can take them down.
GP 9 G 7 A 7 Pts 14 +13 6/2/1
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