I never noticed this thread here, it's a good read though! While these haven't been recent games, I will quickly relive 3 of my favorite moments of playing ice hockey. First, I just want to say that I'm kind of an average skater in this league. I personally always consider myself as one of the weak links but people across the league always tell me I'm better than I give myself credit for. Not sure if I'm just too hard on myself or if they're trying to be nice.
That being said, I'll go over a couple of recent games/moments.
The first was our team just had no luck all season. I wouldn't say we were a bad team but we ended the regular season 1-11. The one win was with a different goalie too so it didn't boost our confidence going into the playoffs. It's only a 4 team league so everyone makes it to the playoffs. First round of the playoffs we came out strong. It went back and forth all game but we skated our ***** off and ended up winning 7-5, after burying an empty netter. Championship game comes around and we turn on the jets out of nowhere. We went from never being able to win to a powerhouse. We ended up winning the championship game 9-2 after being all over them. Just goes to show that where you finish in the regular season doesn't matter!
Now away from the team and more focused around how well I played myself.
We were having a pretty tough game. They got some lucky bounces for goals and their goalie was standing on their head. We were down 4-1 to start the third period. A few minutes into the third, one of our guys cleared it and another player was going in on a breakaway. The defender ended up tripping him in the neutral zone and the ref's arm went up but the whistle never blew. For some reason in beer leagues, people never seem to play to the whistle. I kept skating hard and blew by the person that tripped our player and sent myself in on a breakaway, took a little fake snap shot and went backhand, through the goalies legs when he was moving side to side. We we're down 4-2 and our team got that extra wind after the goal. We ended up scoring another goal a few minutes later and we're up 4-3 with 30 seconds left, face off in their zone. Face off was on the left circle (left from our team's perspective) and I was RW so I was closest to the goalie. Once the ref dropped the puck, I saw their team won it to the corner. I flew in as hard as I could and the defender was trying to beat me to it. He tried to just clear the puck around the boards but I got a piece of it and stopped it. Quickly turned behind the net and faked a pass before going behind it. Goalie kind of hesitated and went down a little so I kept going around the net. Passed it to someone in the slot through a defender's legs and he put it through the goalie's legs while he was moving post to post, tying it up 4-4. It ended up going to a shootout (we don't do OT in regular season in this league) and we ended up losing (I didn't shoot) but we did have a feeling of pride and accomplishment for being able to battle back. Everyone gave me basically full credit for getting our team the point for bringing us to the Shootout which felt good because I'm never the hero of the game.
In my only other moment being the hero, it was a late game. There was a championship game for some little kid league so we started really late. I guess I benefitted since everybody else was really tired. I usually go to bed late myself so being up that late wasn't new and I felt fine on the ice. On my second shift, I got on the ice when our defender had the puck behind our net. I was already behind the defense so I skated towards the middle and was hanging at their blue line. The defender did a quick move to clear some space and made a nice saucer pass to send me in on a breakaway. I did my fake wrist shot to get the goalie down, fake to the left and go backhand to the right to score a goal. That put us up 1-0. Later on in the first. I was covering for a defenseman, which always makes me nervous because this league is fast and I'm not a good enough skater to skate backwards to play defense at the same time. I was on the left point and the right defenseman took a slapshot and missed the net, wrapped along the boards to me. I was racing to keep it in and just barely kept it in the zone. I had plenty of time and wound up to take a slapshot. Then I quickly thought, "What the hell am I doing? My slapshot is awful!"
I didn't want to shoot because my wrist shot has more power than my slapper. I looked up and saw a forward open at the top of the right face off circle. I just basically took a slap-pass right to him and he had a wide open net and buried it. Period ended 2-0 and I had a goal and an assist. Felt pretty good. Second period was a lot of back and forth hockey but no scoring came of it. Third period came and they scored a goal half way through the period. With about five minutes to go, we were still putting on a lot of pressure because we didn't want to stay in our zone with a one goal lead late in the game. They ended up getting a 2 on 1 break and I was the next closest player. I was skating my ass off trying to back check, even though I knew I wasn't close enough to really do anything. The defender went to attack the player with the puck and they passed it to the wide open man but I was still flying. I dove and just barely got a piece of it to break the pass up. Shoveled the puck into the corner to be safe and broke up what ended up being their only really good scorig opportunity in the last few minutes of the game. The final ended up being 2-1. I felt like such a hero that game having scored or set up both our goals and save what would have likely been the tying goal.
Now it's just my typical skate hard and win loose battles, play well, but just hardly ever have anything to show for it.
edit - Holy crap, didn't realized I typed that much! Hope somebody who actually took the time to read through that enjoyed it.
) right after in a scramble I found the puck and chipped it over him to a player and we tied it. Now my team is pretty bad but we started doing well all of a sudden. Well my next shift was with 32.4 seconds left goalie pulled in their end it was 11-10 btw. We were giving the goalie like a blizzard of shots. With 1 second left in a scramble find the puck and just basically clear the way and knock it in with like .7 seconds left and we tied it. But the next 2 games we lost 7-3 and 5-2 respectively.
we found some chemistry, made the playoffs and lost in the semis. that last game was on a monday. this summer league started thursday. needless to say, i found my comfort zone through the first season, and now im fine. the first game of this season i had 3 goals and 2 assists, but we still lost 10-9. gave up the winner with :26 left. heartbreaker. i missed the last 3 games cos i was out of town, but we have still been winning. next game is saturday.
We ended up losing, and BCH ended up moving on because they ended up beating a different team. We won 8 of 10 games, but BCK ended up winning 8 of 10, and tied 1. So they beat us. After that crazy cinderlla-ish season we fell short thanks to people not showing up.
