Last night served as a reality check to my budding self belief and resultant ambitions, resulting from my off season training and conditioning program, as we were soundly beaten by the Bumpers in the late game of inline hockey at Gawler.
We had a new Goalie, Nichole, who is returning to the game after a break of several years and only being asked if she was keen to do so the night before. She's IS pretty keen, and she looks like she'll be a pretty good goalie when she gets the right muscles woking again, so we might have a good backstop by the time finals come around. The Bumpers are now two games clear of us at the top of the table while the Rockers are two games below. There are three regular season games remaining.
The game is fairly simple to describe. The play was pretty even for the first eight minutes, then Jana scored their first goal singlehanded after deking her way in and behind our 'second' line. I answered back with a sweet shot from the slot after Crystal drew the defence towards herself in the corner and then passed the puck in. We went into half time tied at 1. We'd had six shots on goal while the Bumpers had managed only three.
The second half had more work for the officials. The Bumpers scored four goals and took two penalties, we were penalised once and didn't score. One of their goals was on the power play. We repeated our first half efforts for six more shots on goal, they more than doubled their production for eight. The end result was eleven exhausted skaters and two even more exhausted goalies. Bumpers won 5-1.
As a team we didn't play at our best despite good individual efforts. We most noticeably let ourselves down by a lack of communication and lack of pressure on the puck. Lack of talk led to passes going into space (effectively becoming dumps for them to collect and take possession), lack of decision making time (good communications allows for more 'processing capacity' to be freed from sensory interpretation and instead used for game play), 'clustering' and a greater element of confusion when there needn't have been. Lack of pressure on the puck allowed them to make good decisions with possession. Our failure to rush the net and push forward on the break meant we had fewer shots, and the shots we did take were from further out and less dangerous than they have been of recent times. The above factors are all able to be improved so all is not lost.
There were some good aspects to our game as well. Josh appeared much fitter, was still powering strong on his last frantic shift in the attacking zone. We kept steady line combinations for much of the game, both seemed to function pretty well for most of that time (I felt particularly comfortable with Brenton). We held noticeably more possession in the first half (though less so in the second - probably about even). We all played a two way game as individuals. These are all good things.
Next week we play the Shufflers. Might be a chance to try out different line combination (ie.
'Old line' with Merrilyn, Brenton and me, and 'Young line' with Crystal, Josh and Natasha)?
Next post will cover my own game.
GP 9 G 9 A 11 Pts 20 +16 6/3/0
Inline 44
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