We played an excellent game of inline hockey against the Bumpers in Gawler on Saturday night. We had five skaters, they had four. They had Matt the Goalie, we had Josh in his first ever time in goalie gear. Considering that the Bumpers have the strongest shot in the Division and we had a totally newb goalie I would consider it a fairly even match, despite the difference in number of skaters. Although the closeness of the match up is reflected in the final scoreline it didn't seem so for much of the game. But, indeed, that's one of the things that made it 'excellent'. Sport is a funny thing!
We scored the first goal about 10 seconds (!) in, with me skating out of the circle with the puck and Matt getting to the corner post in time for my quick pass before putting it into the empty net. I think we caught them on the hop! Not to be outdone, Craig answered back a minute later. Within two minutes, Natasha and I almost repeated the first play of the game, this time with me slotting the puck from a neat pass by Tash. Still hanging in there, the Mel skated the Bumper's second goal in two minutes after that. This was the last time they weren't behind us after Merrilyn and I combined for her to put in our third goal.
Craig was getting a bit feisty, none of his shots were getting through, and subsequently took a roughing penalty. First play off the faceoff resulted in a power play goal. Craig hadn't been back on for a whole shift after that when he took another penalty for tripping Natasha (the 'victim' of the earlier roughing call). They saw their way through that penalty and the half time siren went shortly afterwards. We were 4-2 up.
In the first five minutes of the second half we put on two more goals, 6-2. Craig kept their hopes up a minute later, but Merrilyn shortly afterwards put through what turned out to be the game winning goal when she slotted one on a joint assist from Brenton and myself, 7-3. We were feeling pretty confident at this point, further enforced by another tripping penalty being called on them a minute later.
We didn't score and the powerplay and the game then took a rapid turn as they turned up the intensity and started finding the net. Craig scored at the six minute mark and then again with only two minutes on the clock. We still had a two goal buffer. They called a time out and were able to keep their strongest line out for another shift. This strategy was rewarded with another goal with one minute left on the clock. One goal difference. One minute to go.
I grabbed the puck with aggressive wing play off the centre face off and swooped straight past them all for a one man rush. I could see a gap between the goalie and the left post and snapped a shot off at full speed. It went straight to the back of the net and I looped back to the centre dot with I'd imagine a lot of confident pride in my stance. I'd known that puck was going in from the moment I'd picked it up on my stick. Weird.
So. It was a fun and close game. We outshot them 32-16. Each side hit the pipes square on at least once. We blocked a lot of their shots before they got through to Josh, who was finding the goalie role quite a challenge. As I said to him though, he saved enough shots to win us the game. Which is all that really matters when it comes down to it.
I had another five point night against decent opposition. Alltogether, we have collected 35 individual points in the two games we've played while scoring 18 goals. That's quite amazing. We are quite a force when firing on all cylinders!
I think this procession will come to a crashing halt at some point soon, so I might as well enjoy it while I can! Which is at least until tonight when we take on the Snipers. We'll be short Matt and thus have only four skaters. The last time we met the Snipers they had six skaters. That would be pretty difficult.
GP 2 G 5 A 5 Pts 10 +8 PIMS 2 2/0/0
Inline 58
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