Today I... (part 4)

Summer Rose

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Old one's over 1000 posts now. Time for a new one.


I'll start this thread on a pretty sad note... I lined 3 games today and for the first time I actually lost control of my emotions. One of the teams in the third game had a player pass away last week. They had his jerseys hanging up on the bench and held a moment of silence in his memory before the game. I managed to stop myself having a full on emotional breakdown but I did rather quietly shed several tears. I was still trying to stop crying when the opening faceoff's puck dropped. One of the coaches patted me on the shoulder to try to comfort me. It didn't help :(
 

JoeCanuk

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Feb 26, 2014
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Sorry to hear that. :(

Today I went skating for the first time in like 20 years. Was stumbling around for a few minutes and then it came back. I was never a real good skater to begin with.
 

Startel

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...Cellied harder than I ever have over have over an empty netter (WE won 4-0). To give perspective, this team was in my ear all game, and 2 guys (10 and 12) were being pretty chippy to me.

So I scored the first 2, kept pretty quiet and they just going at it towards me, hooking me yaddah yaddah. To finish I score my hat trick goal as an EN and celly it hard, Im curious what you guys think because obviously it was over top and kind of being a dick, but with how they were acting to me thats the best way to shut em up. Is to score

tldr; I cellied really hard on an EN because other team was cheap and chirpy, am I in the right?
 

Summer Rose

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Also got my first penalty of the year...sigh

My first ever penalty as a player was during a 3 on 3 half ice tournament for high sticking.

My first "real" penalty during a full-ice game was not one I was actually guilty of. Officials wanted to call a third man in game misconduct on our #8. We didn't have a #8. I was wearing #2 at the time, and found out after the fact that our #9 should have been given the penalty. However, it was my high school varsity team, I knew I was one of the worst players on the team (the other arguably "worst player" didn't wear a number that could be remotely confused with 8), so when they were trying to send off number 8, I piped up to the linesman that it was me, and got ejected as a result. #9 was actually a decent player so escaped punishment over my sacrifice.

I think the first ever penalty I got assessed in a full-ice game that I was actually guilty of was a hooking penalty in an attempt to protect a late lead. I don't really remember. As we all know, especially seeing it from the opposite side reffing beer league rather frequently, what you're guilty of and what you get called for are often not the same thing.
 

Ozz

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Oct 25, 2009
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...Cellied harder than I ever have over have over an empty netter (WE won 4-0). To give perspective, this team was in my ear all game, and 2 guys (10 and 12) were being pretty chippy to me.

So I scored the first 2, kept pretty quiet and they just going at it towards me, hooking me yaddah yaddah. To finish I score my hat trick goal as an EN and celly it hard, Im curious what you guys think because obviously it was over top and kind of being a dick, but with how they were acting to me thats the best way to shut em up. Is to score

tldr; I cellied really hard on an EN because other team was cheap and chirpy, am I in the right?



Not my style, but I've seen people do it. I prefer to give them a simple "How do you like that?" kinda look and let their facial reaction say it all.
 

Goonzilla

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Feb 18, 2014
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The rink ..too often
...Cellied harder than I ever have over have over an empty netter (WE won 4-0). To give perspective, this team was in my ear all game, and 2 guys (10 and 12) were being pretty chippy to me.

So I scored the first 2, kept pretty quiet and they just going at it towards me, hooking me yaddah yaddah. To finish I score my hat trick goal as an EN and celly it hard, Im curious what you guys think because obviously it was over top and kind of being a dick, but with how they were acting to me thats the best way to shut em up. Is to score

tldr; I cellied really hard on an EN because other team was cheap and chirpy, am I in the right?

I'm not a fan of getting too dramatic or animated, especially to rub it in someone's face, but there is a place for a little 'in your face' when it's warranted or someone's asking for it. I don't think you can go past wit to cut people down to size or make them feel stupid; 'guess you guys need to work on your hooking a little more'; .maybe skate by them clapping yourself or something.

'Tonight's first, second and third stars are..none of you guys'.
 

JoeCanuk

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Feb 26, 2014
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Indiana
...Cellied harder than I ever have over have over an empty netter (WE won 4-0). To give perspective, this team was in my ear all game, and 2 guys (10 and 12) were being pretty chippy to me.

So I scored the first 2, kept pretty quiet and they just going at it towards me, hooking me yaddah yaddah. To finish I score my hat trick goal as an EN and celly it hard, Im curious what you guys think because obviously it was over top and kind of being a dick, but with how they were acting to me thats the best way to shut em up. Is to score

tldr; I cellied really hard on an EN because other team was cheap and chirpy, am I in the right?

Yep. Best way to shut them up is to score.
 

theotis77

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Jul 25, 2005
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Today I apparently have back-to-back games with a 10 minute break inbetween. Oy.
 

Summer Rose

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Today I apparently have back-to-back games with a 10 minute break inbetween. Oy.

That's rough. I do consecutive games all the time as a ref, but you skate so much harder and wear out a lot faster as a player than an official. I mean about half the game I'm just standing on a blue line or something.
 

Ozz

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Oct 25, 2009
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UGH my team keeps finding ways to get embarrassed. Between nobody being able to score, people calling out right before game time, defense not defending, and the goalie letting in 3 bad goals per game, it's getting ridiculous. Defenders try to deke the forecheck as last man back, which led to 3 goals against tonight (and 3 or 4 last game), then blame the forwards. We may not have given them a great outlet, but I don't see how the only idea they can come up with is that. Chip it up and skate? Send it around the back of the net to the other D? Dump it all the way up and let us forecheck? Give it to the goalie and break around the forecheck for a pass on the other side of the ice? ANYTHING but deke someone when you get stuffed at least 50% of the time to begin with? :shakehead


For me, I've got 3g1a which accounts for factoring into 100% of our goals in the past 2 games :dunno: Most of our goals against come when I am on the bench :help:
 

Fremitus Borealis

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UGH my team keeps finding ways to get embarrassed. Between nobody being able to score, people calling out right before game time, defense not defending, and the goalie letting in 3 bad goals per game, it's getting ridiculous. Defenders try to deke the forecheck as last man back, which led to 3 goals against tonight (and 3 or 4 last game), then blame the forwards. We may not have given them a great outlet, but I don't see how the only idea they can come up with is that. Chip it up and skate? Send it around the back of the net to the other D? Dump it all the way up and let us forecheck? Give it to the goalie and break around the forecheck for a pass on the other side of the ice? ANYTHING but deke someone when you get stuffed at least 50% of the time to begin with? :shakehead


For me, I've got 3g1a which accounts for factoring into 100% of our goals in the past 2 games :dunno: Most of our goals against come when I am on the bench :help:

I feel ya, man. Our first "official" game was two weeks ago, and we got blown out, largely because it appears most guys on my team are more concerned about "conserving energy" than playing hard. I just don't get why you'd pay all the money to play in a league, but when it comes to game time you're just gliding around at shinny speed :help: The worst is when the other team has the puck, half of my guys just kind of sit back and don't pressure them, like they're hoping to intercept passes or something instead of forcing them into making mistakes.

Anyway, we're hoping to have fixed some of this now. We'll see what happens this week! I admit I was guilty of not going 100% myself, because I didn't want to seem like a puck hog; this week though I'm just going to give my best Ovechkin impression and hope the energy rubs off on others :nod:
 

Ozz

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Oct 25, 2009
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I feel ya, man. Our first "official" game was two weeks ago, and we got blown out, largely because it appears most guys on my team are more concerned about "conserving energy" than playing hard. I just don't get why you'd pay all the money to play in a league, but when it comes to game time you're just gliding around at shinny speed :help: The worst is when the other team has the puck, half of my guys just kind of sit back and don't pressure them, like they're hoping to intercept passes or something instead of forcing them into making mistakes.

Anyway, we're hoping to have fixed some of this now. We'll see what happens this week! I admit I was guilty of not going 100% myself, because I didn't want to seem like a puck hog; this week though I'm just going to give my best Ovechkin impression and hope the energy rubs off on others :nod:

That's kind of funny, our guys tend to try too hard when they should conserve energy! Especially our best defenseman, he's too offensive minded but for no real reason. The worst is when we're down a guy we all agree to skate one less defenseman. He tries to overcompensate rather than make better passes and control puck movement, thus leading to becoming overtired. Try telling him that, though. I have no problem moving back, but no one replaces my offensive effort so it doesn't end up helping. Good luck moving past that, we both sound like we're due!
 

STC

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Oct 29, 2012
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Last night we got our ass kicked 15-6, but I couldn't care less. League is crap. We were formed as an over-35 team to compete in the over-35 division which is technically the 3rd division out of 4. This year several teams from the top 2 divisions left the league so the league formed 2 divisions instead of 4 and put us in the top division.

So now we're in a division with a hodgepodge of A, B, us and one other over-35 team and the results are what you would expect. We actually have a good enough team to compete in terms of skaters, but our goalie (who runs the team) is awful. It was fine in the over-35 because we had more talent than all the other teams and we used that to make up for our disadvantage in goal every night. But, now that isn't the case as we are going up against teams loaded with players half our age.

Our last 2 games have been 15-12 and 15-6 losses.

Like I said though, I don't even care. It is what it is. The good thing about those games is the younger teams are recognizing our age difference and the games have been extremely clean as a result. A couple of the guys are getting worked up about the losing, but that seems like a waste of energy and emotion. We could've played that team the other night 100 times and we would've lost 100. But, the game was at 7:10pm so we were all home with a work out under our belt by 9:30 and what's not to like about that?

I'm just glad I play on 6 teams so I can afford to look at this team as simply a chance to get a workout in.
 

AIREAYE

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Jun 7, 2009
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Old one's over 1000 posts now. Time for a new one.


I'll start this thread on a pretty sad note... I lined 3 games today and for the first time I actually lost control of my emotions. One of the teams in the third game had a player pass away last week. They had his jerseys hanging up on the bench and held a moment of silence in his memory before the game. I managed to stop myself having a full on emotional breakdown but I did rather quietly shed several tears. I was still trying to stop crying when the opening faceoff's puck dropped. One of the coaches patted me on the shoulder to try to comfort me. It didn't help :(

I'm sorry to hear that. Good of you guys to do that.

I had a similar experience when I was younger. One of my good friends posted some disturbing self-harming/suicidal stuff online so I drove over to his place to check up on him. He was fine, thankfully and still is, but I was pretty rattled. Played my game that night with a lot of charge.
 

Fremitus Borealis

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That's kind of funny, our guys tend to try too hard when they should conserve energy! Especially our best defenseman, he's too offensive minded but for no real reason. The worst is when we're down a guy we all agree to skate one less defenseman. He tries to overcompensate rather than make better passes and control puck movement, thus leading to becoming overtired. Try telling him that, though. I have no problem moving back, but no one replaces my offensive effort so it doesn't end up helping. Good luck moving past that, we both sound like we're due!

Guess it's always something :D I think a big part of the problem is that some of the guys are conserving energy for their five minute shifts. Seriously some of them have no concept of skating hard for 50 seconds (or whatever), resting a couple minutes, doing it again, etc. They just kind of glide around and hope the puck comes to them so they can take a shot. Or something.
 

542365

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Yesterday we got destroyed by a ringer. Guy was clearly better than everyone else we've faced this season. The ****** thing is that he didn't care, he ran up the score. I hate guys like that. I wouldn't feel proud of myself dangling around a bunch of 7 year olds. That's the equivalent of what this guy was doing all game. So much better than everyone else, and a total puckhog with no sense of sportsmanship. So frustrating.
 

Ozz

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Oct 25, 2009
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Guess it's always something :D I think a big part of the problem is that some of the guys are conserving energy for their five minute shifts. Seriously some of them have no concept of skating hard for 50 seconds (or whatever), resting a couple minutes, doing it again, etc. They just kind of glide around and hope the puck comes to them so they can take a shot. Or something.

Yea, that's ridiculous. Do you try to reason with them? I try to with my troublesome players, but they somehow think their ideas (which rarely if ever work) are better to stick to. The WORST is when we play short a defenseman and guys have to double shift. Instead of doing like yours do, conserving energy to use it WHEN NEEDED, they always try to start a rush :banghead: Naturally they get gassed quickly and start slipping, falling, and giving up the puck. To me, it makes sense when I tell him to skate w/the puck less and move it more. Stay in our zone and make them chase the puck around rather than get into a 1 on 1 (which he usually loses). If I didn't know any better I'd think I didn't know what I was talking about :p I feel your pain!!

Only a couple of us on the team can effectively double shift, but we can't too often do that and get all our goals.
 

Goonzilla

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That's gotta be the most annoying thing ever in recreational hockey, guys coasting around either oblivious to or not caring about either effort or intensity and hogging the ice.

What compounds it is that it's invariably the more unproductive and weaker players too. I don't find it nearly as big a problem in league play though as it is at pick up.

I get caught out there a little too long occasionally, but never because I haven't had my share of the play or any of that BS, rather you're stuck out there at the wrong end or can't do it safely, because the second most annoying thing is bad changes.
 

Fremitus Borealis

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Yea, that's ridiculous. Do you try to reason with them? I try to with my troublesome players, but they somehow think their ideas (which rarely if ever work) are better to stick to. The WORST is when we play short a defenseman and guys have to double shift. Instead of doing like yours do, conserving energy to use it WHEN NEEDED, they always try to start a rush :banghead: Naturally they get gassed quickly and start slipping, falling, and giving up the puck. To me, it makes sense when I tell him to skate w/the puck less and move it more. Stay in our zone and make them chase the puck around rather than get into a 1 on 1 (which he usually loses). If I didn't know any better I'd think I didn't know what I was talking about :p I feel your pain!!

Only a couple of us on the team can effectively double shift, but we can't too often do that and get all our goals.

Yeah, we try to get guys to stop doing it, explain strategy to everyone, and show how you'll get just as much ice time if everyone has 30 second shifts, but it's like herding cats for the most part. Usually what ends up happening is at the end of their 1:45 shift, they get stuck down low and the other team gets an advantageous breakout going the other way (i.e. towards our goal). I'd say their legs are dead at the end of their triple-shift, except the guys that do this don't really skate noticeably slower when they're tired, per se, and that's part of the whole problem.

Tomorrow we're putting a couple of the better guys back on defense, and me and the other fast guy together on a line.... so we'll see what happens! Half the time the lines get all discombobulated anyway, but it's worth a shot. I'll honestly be happy if we just get on the scoreboard, since we got shut out (badly) last time. Part of me worries that half the guys are just gonna quit after this season if things don't start getting better.... though in my darker moments I am kinda okay with that, in the hopes that next year we can get some guys who are a little more dedicated :( Then again, we just spent a good chunk of cash on new jerseys this year, so I'd hate for the league to end up disbanding us or something for falling below a certain number of players. Not really sure how they handle that.
 

Goonzilla

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Yeah, we try to get guys to stop doing it, explain strategy to everyone, and show how you'll get just as much ice time if everyone has 30 second shifts, but it's like herding cats for the most part. Usually what ends up happening is at the end of their 1:45 shift, they get stuck down low and the other team gets an advantageous breakout going the other way (i.e. towards our goal). I'd say their legs are dead at the end of their triple-shift, except the guys that do this don't really skate noticeably slower when they're tired, per se, and that's part of the whole problem.

Tomorrow we're putting a couple of the better guys back on defense, and me and the other fast guy together on a line.... so we'll see what happens! Half the time the lines get all discombobulated anyway, but it's worth a shot. I'll honestly be happy if we just get on the scoreboard, since we got shut out (badly) last time. Part of me worries that half the guys are just gonna quit after this season if things don't start getting better.... though in my darker moments I am kinda okay with that, in the hopes that next year we can get some guys who are a little more dedicated :( Then again, we just spent a good chunk of cash on new jerseys this year, so I'd hate for the league to end up disbanding us or something for falling below a certain number of players. Not really sure how they handle that.

'Discombobulated'; I haven't heard that one for a while. If you're not captain, you ought to be.
 

Fremitus Borealis

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'Discombobulated'; I haven't heard that one for a while. If you're not captain, you ought to be.

Well, I could've said "****ed up", but that gets censored ;)

For the record though, I'm an assistant captain. And educator by trade, though the advantages of that are yet to be determined :sarcasm:
 

Fremitus Borealis

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Today I...... barely got the ****ing puck at all. I hate it when that happens. We lost (though by a lot less than last time), but what really stinks is feeling that I had almost nothing to do with anything positive that happened.

After being blown out last time, we were all making a conscious effort to be better in our own end, which we absolutely were; mistakes were kept at a minimum this time. The thing is, we were having a hell of a time (in a bad way) trying to actually exit our own zone. All the forwards tended to get stuck down low, leaving the "best" play in most instances to be icing the puck (which I hate, but it works).

It doesn't help that one or two of the other team's players were absolutely ringers (in the novice league!), which honestly I don't understand how that even happens. Like I know we all started with varying degrees of "beginnerhood", but there is no way this one guy got THIS good in two months or whatever. But they put these guys back on D, so clearing the zone along the boards was quite difficult, and they pinched like crazy, but knew exactly when to do it so I (winger) couldn't just deke past them out of the zone either.

ALSO, they were really chippy. Like... I get that you want to win and go tell your pals at Burger King how you kicked ass and took names last night, but come on... we all have to work in the morning. Is it really "worth it" to have NHL-style puck battles, *******? :shakehead:

Anyway, rant over. :rant:
 

KyleJRM

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Jun 6, 2007
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Finished my eight-week learn to skate class last night. I'm a much better skater than I was two months ago, which was the first time I'd ever been on ice.

Also been going to a "learn to play hockey" clinic sponsored by the local nhl team on Monday nights.

The coaches at the clinic are always trying to encourage everyone to join the rookie league. The skating class coach is always telling us to wait until our skating is better, basically "you don't even need to pick up a stick until you can stop and crossover without thinking about it."

I think I'm gonna listen to him. They'll take my money and give me a jersey and send me out there, and I'd be better than a lot of the other rookies, but it wouldn't feel like we were really playing hockey to me.
 

STC

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Oct 29, 2012
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My game last night ended with 5 cop cars in the parking lot, a cop in our locker room and several cops in the lobby.:yo:

Playing in an over 30 league vs chippy team. Game was fine till very late. They got this one guy who is constantly getting into it with people. He's one of these guys who headbutts you on face offs, sticks you when he can etc., but he doesn't skate well so the second you retaliate against him he goes flying and you get the penalty. So about 4 minutes left we get tangled up in the O-zone and then he starts yelling at me accusing me of slew footing him (i bumped him from behind along the boards and my leg hit his leg, but I was able to stop the momentum before it took out his leg..so he never even went down). So play still going on, my line is cycling and this guy is chasing me around trying to slash or cross check me the whole time. I'm better than him by a wide margin so I'm able to avoid him for the most part, but then after the 2nd cross check to the small of the back I lose it and turn around and deliver a vicious two hander with surgical precision to the back of his leg. Of course this causes him to nearly do a full flip before landing on the ice and sending half his equipment flying. Ref gives me 4 for slashing. Guy gets up and continues to yell at me, I offer to fight and he refuses.

Rest of the game and he still won't shut up about it. Even comes over to the penalty box in between whistles to yell at me some more. Finally I'm out of the box with a minute left, back on the ice trying to score and tie the game. Meanwhile, the other even more dangerous lunatic on their team is having issues with my running mate at center ice. My guy takes him down in the corner and the guy gets up and charges at him full speed across the ice to attack him. My buddy, not a guy you want to mess with, holds his ground and strikes first with a really hard cross check to the head as the other guy was raising up for his own cross check to the head.

So for some reason that incident causes my heckler to come up to me for another round of yelling. At that point the guy who just got cross checked in the head gets up, turns around and cross checks me in the head since I was the closest person from our team. Then he grabs me and as he does I get a massive cramp in my calf so can't fight at all, basically just held the guy and played defense till I could pull him down on the ground and end the fight with no punches thrown. i was successful in that and was laying on the ground with the other guy on top of me when my original nemesis decides to take this opportunity to yell at me some more and then he comes over and starts spearing me in the facemask. Guy I was even fighting with told him to knock it off.

Meanwhile, 3 other fights break out at the same time.

They call the game, we get back to the locker room and 10 minutes later a cop comes in while we're all having beers. he says he's just there to make sure there are no more fights. Get out in the lobby and there are 4 more cops, basically all laughing about the situation. Then the idiot I had issues with goes up to the cops and says that if no one is pressing charges he would gladly press charges. Cop just started laughing at him and told him to go home.

All in all 7 people suspended for a total of 13 games. I got one for fighting although I'm arguing to get it lifted since I didn't throw a punch.
 

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