New Hockey Season, New Hockey Team

It’s a new hockey season and with that, Amy and I have found ourselves on a new team.

Last year, we played our second season with the Black Ice, a fantastic D-level team in the South Shore Women’s Hockey League. The team overall had a much better year than we did our first season, ending up at almost .500. But over the course of the spring and summer, Amy and I both did a lot of thinking about where we wanted to go with hockey, and ended up deciding to try to find a more competitive environment on a C-level team. Luckily, one of the C-level teams in our “parent” organization (Storm Women’s Ice Hockey) was holding tryouts, so we both went to see how we compared to everyone else there. And lo and behold, they asked us (and our friend Libby!) to join the team!

It’s definitely been an adjustment in terms of both the social aspects and the skill level… But so far it’s going quite well in both those areas. I do miss my Black Ice teammates a ton but am working hard to try to maintain those friendships as much as possible (i.e. have gone to a game and will go whenever schedules align, am going to go to their monthly full-ice practices, etc.)

And so on to the Storm! I’m still playing defense, and Amy’s moved to wing since there are already several centers. Sometimes she plays defense too, depending on our numbers. Nice of her to be flexible that way. Our first game of the SSWHL season was against the NH Monarchs, and we ended up winning a goalie’s battle 1-0. Quite fun to start out strong like that. The next week saw us with a bye in the SSWHL, convenient since we were playing/hosting the Darcy Tournament in Gloucester. We won our first game at Darcy against the Ravens, also 1-0. The next two games we didn’t play quite as strongly, and lost against both MIT and the Westchester Wildcats C by the same score of 1-2. Still, we had a lot of fun doing general team-bonding things. Apparently the motel room where Amy, Libby, and I were staying (with teammate Niki) was the social center for the team. I don’t think any of us told the coaches or rest of the team that we’re generally early-to-bed types! Alas, we had to give up sleep in order to have fun, which is a trade-off I’ll take 9 times out of 10. But yeah, we had a 3-and-out sort of tournament, which is always a little disappointing. Then this Sunday we played Randolph, a team that’s been together for many years, and trust me when I say that it showed! They pass so well, they know where their teammates are on the ice, and they’re generally calm, cool, and collected. The Storm? Well, let’s just say that we have a few years’ work ahead of us to get that connected! We ended up losing 1-5 which was a total bummer. Next week should be another tough game - it’s one of our crossover games with a B-level team. Eeek! I hope we’ve got 2 full lines or my lungs might give out…

So yeah, so far it’s been going well. The skill level change is the biggest adjustment thus far. I’m trying to get as much ice time as possible and can’t wait until the Wellesley club team starts up again. I don’t think they’re going to practice at the rink that’s 5 minutes from my house any longer, but I think I’m going to bite the bullet and make a longer drive because god knows I need the practice!

Wish us luck and know that I’ll try to keep up with posts about games, practices, and my general observations about my game and what I need to work on in order to improve. The short list right now includes: develop a power turn, make better choices on breakout passes, and make better decisions on defending during the transition and on odd-man rushes. Easy as pie, huh?

Cape Cod Canal Challenge Hockey Tournament

This past weekend, Amy and I headed to Bourne, MA for the second annual Cape Cod Canal Challenge women’s hockey tournament. We entered with a team called the Subzeros, which had many of the same people who were on the team from last year’s tournament.

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….)