Seasonal Thoughts

The Knights' summer season ended tonight with a 5-1 victory against the Sharks.  I will write the traditional Game Day post in a day or two when I have more time.  Suffice to say that we had twelve skaters show up, ran three lines and three D, I played D all game, it felt nice to win again.  Our game was good, a real team-ness happening with lots of talking, support and crisp passes.  Being the last game of the season it was also very exhausting.  Exhausting and exhilerating.

That sort of stands for the experience of the whole season, exhausting but exhilerating.  At a personal level, the pre-season was my first ever taste of serious preparation (strength, agility, quickness, conditioning).  The results were evident in the first period of the first game.  And then, a PCL injury with only minutes to go, which kept me off skates for a week and set my physique back to pre-pre-season levels.  I limped into the Christmas break, quite literally.

Through the silly season, went for a week without skating, the longest break I've had since September 2013.  The knee was coming good in itself, full motion and mobility and no discomfort, and I had a new set of skates (Bauer 160s).  I was still breaking in the skates when the season got underway in January.  I celebrated by getting a new Easton stick to mark the occasion.

The back end of the season has been very enjoyable.  The team seems to have morphed into something far more organic than it has been since I joined.  We have stuck it out, returned when it would have been easier not to, changed our lives to get as many games in as we could.  Most of the time it meant that we could run nine or ten skaters, which is tough minutes for all.  Tonight we ran twelve, and showed what we are capable of.

And now we say good bye to at least two Knights.  Christian has been drafted by the Blackhawks and Lachy 'traded' to the Kings.  I have a horrible feeling we might lose one or two to Division One.  Which means we need to get some more guys (or gals) in.

Joy.

It's been a great year.  On to the next!