Game Day - Shufflers (5) d Rockers (2)

On Saturday night I played a second game of inline hockey at Gawler as a reserve for the Shufflers against the Rockers in their last regular season game.  Each team had five skaters.  The Shufflers had two 'oiginals' plus Crystal, Josh and myself from the Wheelers with Ethan in goal.  The Rockers had Nicole donning some skates as a reserve to join with Mel and Kylie from the Bumpers and two 'originals'.  They had Andy in goal.

The Shufflers scored three goals before the Rockers scored their first near the end of the opening half.  In the second, the Sufflers put on another two before a late answerer from the Rockers.  End scoreline was 5-2.

Me and Josh rotated pretty often off the bench, feeding minutes to the two Shufflers on the team.  It was, afterall, their team!  (Crystal came off when she remembered to, she admitted to me that she gets hungry for goals when playing and can forget about these things).  I found myself often changing direct with Mike, he played relatively short minutes and let me double shift several times in the second half.  I think his conditioning is down but that is not surprising considering his late start to the season as a skater and his preceding injury (he'd been the original Wheelers goalie until he cracked his wrist, requiring several months of recovery).  I would have been on the rink about 25 minutes.

My game was spent mainly playing the 'reset' option as the defensive point, often to Crystal and Luke as they went deep in the offensive zone.  I think I managed to save a couple goals for our team by backchecking hard against rushes from all three of their hard skaters at different times.  The physicality of the previous game repeated itself in this one, without the penalties, and we all enjoyed it.  As always, me and Pauline had a few clashes that ended up with one or both of us on the floor.  No harm done.

It was the Shufflers only win of the season.  Pity it was the last regular game.  Pity also that their most reliable player, Bec, wasn't there for this of all games.  I had been really looking forward to playing with her.

Inline 50