The Knights got trounced in our most recent Sunday night game against the Flyers. We had nine skaters, they had ten. We had Tommy in goal and they had Matt. Justine managed our bench. The Flyers seized second spot on the ladder from us as mid season approaches, we dropped down to fourth.
The first box score event in the game was an interference penalty against myself. This was the second game in a row I've been penalised. Hopefully I won't make a habit of it, as this one resulted in their first goal on the subsequent power play. I had taken Justine's edict to 'keep our house clean' quite literally had been quite savage in my netfront push and shove. Sadly, I also 'tended the garden' (was pushing a player out of the high slot away from the play) and my opponent ended up on his arse after losing his balance. Fair call. And this player didn't try and crowd our goalie for the rest of the night when I was on the ice, so who knows if it was worth the goal?
In any event, I think I stirred up the guy I'd been pushing around because he got pinged for tripping on the very next shift after their goal. My impression at the time was that he was trying to do to one of our guys what I'd been doing to him earlier (using body press to ease him out of the way) and somehow lost control of his stick. Gave me a nice warm feeling!
Be that as it may, they scored on the resultant power play and we were behind 1-0. We responded with a goal fairly shortly afterwards on a play after we had managed to keep it in the zone after a bit of a battle in centre ice. The Flyers closed out the period with a further goal and went into the break 2-1 up.
The second period was a bit of a disaster for us, with them scoring two goals in the first minute. The first came from a play that started at the centre face off and into our zone in my corner. I was too slow getting to it with a weak stick as one of their guns stormed in and proceeded to carry it around towards the back of our net. I was in pursuit, sorting trajectories in my mind and thus missed my opportunity to cut him off (which I probably could have done if I hadn't hesitated). Thus he emerged around the other end with my close behind. He spread a bit wider as I drew up covering the post. End result, he had a passing lane open up to open player in slot who in turn had an open goal as Tommy scrambled back from covering the wrap around attempt. Their fourth goal came less than a minute later, this time from a defensive zone faceoff in which their centre seized the puck and stormed the goal with a simple tap in to take them to 4-1.
Justine called a time out and told us to get into gear and inject a bit of passion into our play. As speeches go it was pretty good and you could see the difference on the next faceoff, with our guys now looking like we wanted to win the race and get the puck. Sadly, our renewed effort didn't prevent them scoring twice more in the period (albeit, we scored once on a coast to coast soire by Cam who somehow turned their whole team into pylons and their goalie into a straw man). There were also a couple of penalties.
I was on ice for both of their goals, though didn't then and don't now think I could or should have done anything different myself. On the first, I was covering my man as the puck crossed the blue line along the opposite boards. Their forward put in a long range softish shot onto net (hoping for rebounds etc) and I watched it fly into the net from a distance as I applied the brakes to my own player. It was a catch Tommy would ordinarily have made.
Their fourth goal of the quarter was one where again I was pressing back against my own player as I applied the brakes weakside, saw out of the corner of my eye the puck carrier on opposite side sidle around Mike and drop it in with a soft poke.
I was on for our power play, involved a sequence where I was on point and retreived the puck six times in one shift, once passing it deep to the corner, once to the boards behind the net, and four times into the scrum on the catcher's mit. I pinched only the once, but did have to scramble once to keep it on the line as I got to my feet after a struggle on the board's, found time and space for the shot though!
We got called for a penalty just before the siren, went into the break shorthanded and 6-2 down. In the few seconds of power play that they had, I managed to get on the back of a breakaway and just clip the shooters stick as he swung. He was cursing under his breath at the shot went high and the siren went. I don't think he realised I was his undoing.
The third period was a little less dramatic in terms of the scoreboard (they scored once more with five minutes to go) but I worked my arse off. Highlights for myself included being on the penalty kill and mangling their powerplay effectively, getting involved in a scrap on the boards which resulted in me and my opponent on the ice but the puck leaving the zone, a couple of blocked shots and a nice play beginning with winning the race to seize the puck off the backboards, skating through a light stick, deking around the defender on the point and sprinting up the ice on my own to the halfboards at their end. By which time I realised that I was truly on my own out there with four opponents coming in from all directions, so I put a shot on net and into the goalie's glove. The siren went not long afterwards, we went down 7-2.
If you can't gather from the general tone of this post, I was pretty happy with my game despite going -3 for the night and the team being soundly beaten. I created no great disasters, learned from the failed race to and around the boards at the start of the second period (didn't lose any such battles in future, and tied up that particular forward from then on), created a few chances and made some good plays.
Fitness wise, I was not 100% as was still getting the aftereffects of the previous game, hayfever, etc but still put in a tough game without any real performance drop off in the third period.
Next game, November 12 against the Rangers.
GP 7 G 2 A 1 Pts 3 +1 4/2/1 PIMS 4
Ice 47
No comments:
Post a Comment