| Tonight's songs stuck in my head:
First period - "The Price Is Right" theme song. Honestly. And actually, that was my best period.
Second period - "Against the Wind" by Bob Seger. My god, I hate this song. I don't like anything by Bob Seger. Why and how this got into my head, I have no idea. I was actually pleased late in the second when, out of nowhere, "Pressure" by Billy Joel suddenly took over. And that's saying something, because I really don't like Billy Joel at all.
Third period - "Bittersweet Me" by R.E.M. Big fan of R.E.M., seen them in concert eight times. But I haven't heard this song in about two years, no idea how that got in there.
The game itself sucked. The regular season ended last week, and the first and second place teams got a bye into the semi-finals. Instead of having us sit at home, the league decided they'd have #1 and #2 play each-other one more time to determine seeding, so the winner becomes the #1 seed and gets the worst remaining team in the semis. Umm, I thought that's why we played the whole regular season. We finished in first, we had a record of 2-1 against the second place team, why do we have to play them again? We've been playing since September to determine who is the #1 seed. Silly. But they had a time slot on the calendar and they had two idle teams, so we played. They showed up. We didn't. Well, we showed up physically, but not mentally. There was way too much "this game doesn't count", "this game doesn't matter" type talk in the locker room, and they decided to spend the first period screwing with line combinations and stuff. We showed up for a scrimmage, the other team showed up for a game. They showed up angry because they were running away with the league midway thru the season, then they stumbled and we surged and we took first place away from them on the last night of the season. They showed up wanting to beat our brains in and take back that #1 seeding. And indeed they did. So we spent the first period screwing around and screwing with lines and consequently they got about 54,454 shots on me (rough estimate). How we got out of the first only down 1-0, I have no idea. Mr Glove was working well. But I was dead on my feet, I pretty much used up everything I had in the first period. Down 6-0 after two. In the third, my team finally went back to the usual lines, and started playing a bit, and we ended up with a final of 6-2. Woo. So all that work to get up to the #1 spot goes away. Brilliant. In the locker room afterwards, one of my forwards said "you still had a really good save percentage tonight, even with the 6 goals." Yes, I probably would have (no shots on goal stat). And thank you so much for your support. I really enjoy getting the crap kicked out of me for 90 minutes on a Sunday night. The rest of my skaters had enough common sense to realize it was a "don't talk to Ricardo right now" sort of locker room after the game.
I never call out my teammates. If they make a crap play, I don't yell "what the hell was that, what were you thinking?!" Maybe I should more. I've been told that. Generally, if my team screws up and it hangs me out to dry, I don't say anything, I won't even make eye contact with them. They might say something to me, but I don't say anything to them (unless they ask an obvious question like "did I screen you?", in which case I'll give the appropriate one word response). I've been known to let out a frustrated "what the f***" after a goal, but that might just as easily be one where I think I screwed up vs one where they screwed up. But after the initial outburst, that's it. I guess my mindset is "I sure as hell don't want some forward telling me how to play goal, so I they probably don't want me telling them how to play D." I know that's not true, most D I've played with want to be told where to go and how to handle situations, but I need to learn how to give that feedback in a calm, constructive manner. I don't say anything after goals because I know that if I did tried to give some advice, it wouldn't come out in the most constructive manner. It would more likely be something along the lines of "Christ, an orange traffic cone would be more effective than you! Next time they have a 2 on 1, how about taking away the f***ing passing lane and leaving me the shooter like you're supposed to, instead of trying to play the shooter and just screening the hell out of me and leaving the backdoor pass wide open? Every mite over the age of 6 knows that, jackass!" So I say nothing. I'm all the way down the other end of the ice, so I can't hear it, but I gather that Kate (the other goalie in my Monday night pick-up group) is far less restrained about giving "advice". Maybe I should try that method.
On a completely different note, after canvassing the local rinks, the weekend "public skate" at Essex, Leddy, Cairns 1, and Cairns 2 are all on Sundays, no Saturdays. No public skate at Gutterson, the ice is reserved for game-day skates by BC and UVM. So nowhere to skate on Saturday...
-Ricardo
"2 minutes by yourself and...you feel shame, you know...and then you get free" |
