Things that stood out for me in this game:

1. Playing hockey with a sinus infection is challenging due to the whole “breathing”and “snot” issues.
2. I really really REALLY don’t like it when people charge my goalie and slash at her neck with the blades of their sticks. The refs agreed with me and told the girl who did it (on the first shift of the game!) to back off. This, of course, after I got in her face and pushed her.
3. Apparently my impulse control when I have a sinus infection is a little free-wheeling.

I’m really enjoying the composition of our team this year. Some people are playing new-to-them positions and are doing a really good job of it. Some people are settling into different positions than they played last year, even if they played those positions before. And the coaches are moving the rest of us around here and there to see what works. I’ve actually played a few games up at forward and have loved it!

The new folks on the team are fitting in quite nicely. Annie, Danielle, Lexie, Jillian, and Angela are all great additions, each in very different ways. We got solidity, quickness, ice-sense, and scoring ability in them, and in Angela have a goalie with a similar strong personality as our goalie last year (miss you Renee!) Although I’m still not sure which of them swears more…. maybe it’s a goalie thing!

I’m looking forward to the rest of the first half of our season, and to documenting a little bit more about our escapades on the ice.

The goal of the knit-along? Knit three hats in the month of January. Since I’ve made a few hats, I know the amount of work that most of them would take and it seemed like a reasonable commitment. Besides, looking over all the other fantastic hats was pretty inspiring!

So without further ado, here are my three (so far) hats for the month of January.

Goal 1: Not the Carolina Hurricanes Hat, finished between two hockey games at a tournament we played in a couple of weeks ago. I’m a little nervous about taking photos of myself in hockey gear and a knitted hat, in case you can’t tell. AKA the Hurricane Hat.

Me, vaguely thuggish, in my extremely large shoulder pads, before playing a game

Amy and me, at dinner with the team on Saturday night

Goal 2: SCORE! Turn a Square – finished last weekend, knit on needles that were a little too small for the yarn (but the hat is thick, so it did what I wanted it to do). AKA Turn a Square.

Me, modeling the slightly-too-small-for-me hat

Amy, hat recipient, shoveling and not knowing I was taking her photo (aside: we’ve gotten a LOAD of snow this year!)

Goal 3: Kind of an Avs Hat (But Not Quite) – finished today, right before I headed to hockey practice. This yarn was a gift from my mom a few years ago and it’s 95% cashmere/5% lycra. I LOVE it! Of all three hats, this one is my favorite. AKA Robin’s Egg Blue Hat.

Traditional hat modeling self-portraits

Post-practice photo, no longer feeling as awkward about posing in hockey gear with knitting

Why did I do this? Well, given the way I play, combined with the position I play, it’s unlikely that I’ll get a HOCKEY hat trick anytime soon! I’m getting my hat tricks any way I can, and if I’m wearing hockey gear to get some laughs from the knitters when I take photos of the hats, I’m going to do it. It was fun and accomplishable. And it got me knitting again. Who can argue with that?

• Sunday – game (storm)
• Tuesday – practice (storm)
• Wednesday morning – practice (wellesley)
• Wednesday night – scrimmage
• Friday morning – practice (wellesley)
• Friday night – game (not-storm)
• Sunday – game (storm)
• Tuesday – practice (storm)

As it turns out, it was more like this:

• Sunday – game (storm)
• Tuesday – practice (storm)
• Wednesday morning – practice (wellesley)
• Wednesday night – scrimmage
• Friday morning – practice (wellesley)
• Friday night – game (not-storm)
• Sunday – game (storm)
• Tuesday – practice (storm)

Wednesday I felt awful after work, this morning I decided not to do because we were planning on going to the Cape to play tonight, but then tonight got canceled! But the biggest revision is that my gear doesn’t smell quite as bad as it might.

With a free night, I’m going to go to bed before 10 p.m. I live a wild and crazy life, I tell you. Friday night excitement: bed before 10! When I get up there in age, I’m gonna be the talk of the retirement community. Ha!

My gear smells.

Rather than playing with Julia last night, Coach Tim paired me up with Kristine. We haven’t played together in a while but managed pretty well nonetheless. In the second period, the puck came up the ice at me in our offensive zone and it seems that my hand-eye coordination (or perhaps that’s stick-eye coordination) was more than a little off, because the puck sailed right between my feet. Thankfully Kristine saw this happen and totally saved my ass AND a fast-break with her quick corraling of the puck!

Our good friend Tammy was here this weekend and took photos at the game using her incredible new camera. She told me, “I just put on the sports setting and starting taking pictures.” I cannot WAIT to see them and will link you to some of them when she puts them up.

First league was Concord Women’s Summer Hockey League, a mixed-level league. Amy and I played on the purple team this summer, and while we didn’t win a lot of games, it certainly wasn’t for lack of scoring! We went 2-7-1 in the games Amy and I played with them (we ended up missing a couple of games due to vacation) and the combined total scores in those games was 32-42. So on average, the score for each game was about 3-4! I only ended up with one assist in the purple games we played, but did get a goal (against ELAINE!) when we subbed for the pink team. Not bad, for someone who doesn’t really score at all…

Funny story about our last game: we won even though we only had one of our B-level players (and her both hungover and showing up for the second two periods of the game) against a team with a wicked awesome goalie. (Yes, the afore-mentioned ELAINE.) As we were getting ready to play, one of our regular subs, Carol from the maroon team, was talking about how to score on Elaine. The upshot was: we can’t, so get in front of her and block her view. Me, being the alternative theory girl, thought maybe Carol was being a little pessimistic and reframed her statement as: one of the more effective ways to score against her is to block her view.  And wouldn’t you know it, but one of our two goals was because she was screened and couldn’t see where the puck had gone!

And then after the game some woman walked into the locker room wanting to buy a couple of purple jerseys. Not needing purple jerseys any longer, Amy and I practically threw ours at her and used the cash for a quick meal on the way home.

Our second league was the Walpole Adult Women’s Hockey League. We played with Raising Kane this summer and had a total blast! We ended up at 6-7, and had the same number of goals for and goals against (38). I scored a goal against my former goalie Lynn and her team, the Mustang Sallies, and picked up several assists over the course of the summer. We got the chance to sub for a few other teams too, including the team we’re going to play with this coming season.

The best part of playing on Raising Kane wasn’t getting better at hockey (although that was good). No, the best part was playing with a great group of women, most of whom I’d not met before. Shastin, Lynne, Karen, Annie, Maura, Kristen, Libby, Pam, Donna, Fran, Nancy, Joni, AmyN, and AmyB – what fun it was! I’d play with any of them at any point, even if sometimes I try to score goals on some of them (sorry Joni!) and other times I throw some of them to the ice (sorry Pam!) and then on very rare occasions I make a bad decision on the ice (sorry Sarge….)

The league hired a photographer to shoot some of our games, and for some reason he ended up shooting us a few times: 6/25 agains the Raiders, 7/23 against the Mustang Sallies, and 7/30 against the Pumas. The photos are un-downloadable and copyright the photographer, so I’ll just link you to a few of my favorite pics:

• Skating with the puck
• Pam, bowing to Sarge
• Hanging in front of Joni
• Laughing with Shastin
• Making a move past Deroda (while subbing for the Sallies)
• Amy making a strong pass (while subbing for the Sallies)

But the best photos of Raising Kane were taken by our very own Karen Winger, who was sadly injured for the second half of the summer. (Side note one: Karen also played in the Concord league on the pink team. I think she faked her injury so she wouldn’t have to wear the eye-searingly-bright pink jersey.) (Side note two: Karen plays with many of the Pumas during the regular season; that’s the team in black in these photos.) This was a quarterfinal game for the playoffs; we won and ended up losing in the next round to Lugano. (Side note three: Amy, Libby, and I are all going to be playing with most of the players on Lugano during the upcoming regular hockey season.) (Side note four: If you are vaguely social and you hang around CWSHL, WAWHL, and SSWHL long enough, you’ll end up knowing a LOT of hockey players.)

Go check out Karen’s awesome photos of our playoff game against the Pumas! There are a bunch of really funny pictures in that set, mostly of AmyB and LynneM.

AmyB:

• Do we get a goal if I’m in the net?
• Yo! Where’s the puck?
• The Patented Human Zamboni Poke-Check

LynneM:

• It’s hard to make that gesture while wearing hockey gloves. (And yet she can!)
• Get away from my goalie!
• Aaaaaahhhhhh!
• May the force be with you…

And then there is photographic evidence of Joni’s Awesome Game!

• She’s got the post
• Blocking Bridget (she who makes goalies cry)
• And blocking Bridet again
• Ready...
• And ready again…

My favorite of me (and my new Facebook profile photo) is this one, where I swear I’m leaving Pamie in my dust!

Like I said, it was a great summer playing with this team and I’ll miss playing with them. But the regular season is getting underway already – we’ve had two practices with our new team (more on that in the next post) and have a tournament coming up in a couple of weeks. Good times, this playing of hockey.

We again entered in the D division, played two of the same teams, and had different results from last year.

Game one was against the ever-strong Rhode Island Raptors. I’m not sure why they entered the tournament in this division, since they are in the C division in both the Walpole league and the South Shore league. At any rate, they were our first challenge. And a challenge it was! The game was at 8 a.m. on Saturday – not a good time for most of us on the team. Ugh. They beat us 1-5. They scored three in the first and two in the second, which meant that we actually tied them in the third period. Guess we were all waking up!

Game two was later that day against the Cape Cod Women’s Hockey League team. We played a lot better against them; they also weren’t as strong a team as R.I. We ended up winning that game 2-1.

Later that evening we watched our friend Steph’s team play against the Quincy Fighting Squirrels. We were not disappointed at seeing some action – holy bad blood between those teams! The refs tried to wrest control of the game in the third period, but by then it was too late. Needless to say, there were some fireworks on the ice as poor Steph’s team couldn’t put the puck in the net to save their lives.

At the civilized hour of 11 a.m. on Sunday we played our third game against the Ice Breakers. If we won we’d be in the championship game against R.I., and if we lost we’d be out. Well, we couldn’t have lost if we had tried. We spent about 90% of the game in their end of the ice and we ended up winning 4-0.

So that put us in the position of having to a.) stick around until Cape traffic was really bad and b.) play Rhode Island again. Fortunately on both counts, neither were horrible! (Seriously – the traffic coming home from the Cape [mind you, we started at the Bourne Bridge so we missed the traffic ON the Cape] was rather light! That never happens.)

But the game against the Raptors was a ton of fun. Why, you ask, since they’d spanked us hard the morning before? Well, our de facto coach-of-the-day Bridget (bless her!) watched the Raptors play a couple of games and figured out how to frustrate them. She took about 15 minutes before the game explaining the two systems she wanted us to run during the game. In our offensive end no one went in deep after the puck. Instead, our wings simply stuck on their wings and didn’t let them get any breakout passes. Our centers picked up all their errant passes and ooooh they didn’t like that. In our defensive zone we simply ran a box defense and didn’t let them get into the middle of the ice. While we didn’t run it perfectly by any stretch of the imagination, we ran both of the systems well enough to TOTALLY piss them off. They got frustrated and annoyed. I poke-checked their two strongest players on at least 2 rushes each. What a change from the earlier game when I wanted to douse myself in orange paint and call myself a traffic cone! Amy drew a couple of penalties – the best was against a player who had been really physical with her all game. She finally cross-checked Amy into the boards (I think it was a cross-check – at least that’s what it looked like from my vantage point 20 feet away) and was immediately whistled to the box. We didn’t capitalize on it, but we held them to a 0-3 score. And against them, that was a victory!

So we ended the weekend with a 2-2 record, and a second-place finish overall. It was a lot of fun, and a nice way to end our tournament season. Now all we have to look forward to this summer are league games twice a week and the 3-day camp up at Dartmouth. The horrors of that little hockey in the summer!!! (I jest, I jest….)