woah woah woah, your men's league has practices???
Never heard of such a thing. Is it a novice league? I guess that would make sense assuming there's an instructor there. But, if we're talking about a regular men's league team, practice sure seems like a big waste of time that could be spent playing games instead.
Yeah, it's a huge league with a bunch of different divisions, but I hadn't played hockey in a decade and a half so I just decided to come in at the bottom. In the novice division the first half of the season is a bunch of coaches doing their best to teach us how to play hockey, and the second half (roughly) is games. Thing is, about half my team has played before in some capacity, and the other half had never even skated before. Anyway, the point is, the last few weeks are really when we've gone over strategy, puck pressure, etc.... and that latter half never bothered to show up, so when we had a game the other day, the other team just owned us, because we ended up looking like a bunch of children. Quite frustrating.
Aside from that, some of us do get together at othertimes and play informally and work on different drills and stuff in the process. But the same guys that can't be bothered with the above never show up. Which, like I said originally, I get that people have other stuff going on in their lives, but I don't understand just trying to wing it in game situations when you haven't even really learned the game yet. Our league itself is quite organized and is not cheap. I guess I don't understand the point of paying all this money if all you really wanted to do was **** around a bit, you know?