Game 4: Eugene Xtreme

With our 2 wins and 1 loss, we finished second in our division—meaning we'd play the first place team from the other division on Sunday morning. I didn't sleep well on Saturday night because some girls from another team were out in the hall chatting with the security guard until after 3am, and my leg muscles were sore from the previous two games, so I was a bit worried that I'd be slow and useless on the ice for what we hoped would be our second-to-last (instead of our last) game. I was yawning and rubbing my burning eyes right up until I put my helmet on, and I couldn't seem to lift the puck on my first four or five shots in the warmup, but when I accidentally sent a puck over the glass while attempting to get the lift back, I knew I'd be fine for the game.

Indeed, once the game started, I was back on fire again. I felt like I was skating fast, hard, and with high confidence. One of the first things I noticed when I got on the ice was that #64, a defenseman, was GOOD. She could really skate, and her hockey skills also seemed pretty high. I think it was she who started the game with a four-minute penalty for roughing, however, when a scuffle for the puck at the point sent Michele crashing feet first into the boards. Michele's head hit the ice pretty hard, and her stick flew out into the neutral zone. I'm still not sure whether #64 actually did anything wrong—and I was watching the melee the whole time from the opposite point—but it's possible. All I know is that Michele fell *really* hard, and that we ended up with a 4-minute power play because of it.

I don't think I noticed the other ringer on the Xtreme until I was on the bench after my first shift; I think this is when she scored for the first time, but I'm not sure. I do remember that she was super fast and not shy about running circles around us or her own teammates. (Her after goal celebrations seemed a little over the top, given that her skill level was obviously so much higher than most of the rest of ours.) In any case, we started referring to her as Blue Socks on the bench, since she had no number on her jersey, and she was the only player wearing powder-blue socks.

Even though I was playing Wing and Blue Socks was at Center, I had a few opportunities to defend against her, including one where she'd gotten a breakaway just as I jumped on the ice. I think our D must have pinched in a bit, because I didn't see any red jerseys near her as she streaked down the ice, so I went straight for her on an intercept path. I caught her at the far boards just short of the goal line, and just as I got there she overskated the puck. We bumped into each other—not hard, but enough to tangle us up and keep both of us from getting to the puck, which was now behind us. I can't remember whether it was her teammate or mine who dug it out, but I like to think that I was the reason she overskated it in the first place. I know she was well aware of my approach. Another time I also picked her up when our D were busy elsewhere and prevented her from getting a shot on goal before returning to my regular check at the point.

Louise, who had joined us for games 1 and 3, was back out again (her sister is in the hospital), so we went back to two Centers and three sets of Wings, with Shawna and Marie at Center. I hadn't noticed before Marie mentioned in the locker room that faceoffs were her specialty, but now that I was paying attention, I saw that she did indeed win every faceoff for which I was on the ice. Shawna was also very strong at Center, I thought, and there were several times that she, Michele and I had scoring opportunities because of good passing between us down low. I know Michele had a backhand shot from the slot that almost went in, and Shawna and I were whacking away together down near the crease later in the game, trying to get a bouncing puck to slip through a gap in the goalie's gear.

I also had another scoring chance when we were in the defensive zone and one of the Xtreme passed out to the point. I picked the puck off the D's stick and took off in the other direction. It was so neat—I did the pickoff and go in a single motion, as if I knew all along that the puck was mine. One of their D caught me as I crossed through the left faceoff dot in the offensive zone, but I felt like I could get a decent shot off in spite of her, AND I DID. (Sadly, the goalie pinched it between her leg pads.)

There was one kind of funny moment where an Xtreme player tried to take me out as a passing target (I assume with the intention of then stealing the puck from my teammate, who was now skating up because I'd been taken out), and instead of fighting her off, I just hooked my arm under hers, relaxed, and let her momentum carry us into the boards. Surprise! You're now out of the play, too. :) The added benefit was that since I knew the bump into the boards was going to happen, I was able to untagle myself quicker and jump back into the play.

Oh, and speaking of getting tangled up, two other incidents come to mind: one was in the middle of the first period, when we were at a faceoff dot in the offensive zone. I moved to tie up the opposing Wing so she couldn't get the puck, and my stick blade got caught in her skate. I felt it yank forward as she took a step, and I know I should have let go of it—but I didn't, and she went down like a felled tree. I apologized and waited for the whistle, which I knew would be coming. Indeed it did, and I skated to the box to serve a two-minute penalty for tripping.

The other tangle came when I was skating the puck into the offensive zone with a backchecker hard on my right, and she stepped on my skate just as we got to the blueline, sending us both flying forward. I looked back and saw one of my teammates pick up the puck just behind the line, and as I wasn't sure whether the puck was *touching* the line or not, I started screaming "I'm offsides! I'm offsides!" as I scrambled to get up and get clear. Either I got a leg over the line just as Marie came in with the puck, or the puck never completely crossed the blueline, because we weren't whistled for offsides.

I think it was Lolly who scored our only goal in this game, to the Xtreme's three. We were tied at 1-1 for quite a while, but once the Xtreme scored their second goal, it was like they smelled blood in the water—and they really kicked up the intensity. "Nothing we wouldn't have done," said Rachel when I made the blood-in-the-water remark to her on the bench. "I rather think we would have backed up," I replied. She laughed and agreed I was probably right. As we were having this exchange, #64 had control of the puck in our defensive zone. Someone tried to knock her off it and ended up knocking her down instead—and that's when I think *everyone* realized how good she really was. She kept control of the puck while she was on her knees, sprang back up, skated down a bit lower, and took a shot (which was blocked by one of our D, I believe). Oh, to have mad hockey skillz like that!

It wasn't until Michele, Leslie, Shawna, Marcus and I were out at dinner later that night that I realized that I'd had *absolutely nothing to complain about* this year. There were no ugly hits, no trips, no injuries, no uncalled penalties, and—aside from the aforementioned dive into the offensive zone—no falls of any kind. (Which is good, because if anybody had knocked me on my back, the black-and-blue surrounded knob on my butt would have had me screaming in agony. I couldn't even drive without a pillow behind my lower back to keep my butt away from the seat back.) I don't know whether my high confidence and the fact that some as-yet-unseen hockey instincts kicked in had anything to do with the lack of incidents, but I suspect so.

Despite the tournament-ending loss, I felt great about how I played and how the team played. (You'd never have known that we don't usually play together.) Al remarked when I was talking to him on the phone after the game that it was good to hear me talking about hockey with excitement and enthusiasm again. I couldn't agree more; this tournament really brought the joy back for me, and I now want to play hockey hockey hockey all the time again. I'm hoping that I can bring some of these new-found skills and the higher confidence level back to my games with the Admirals, but if not, I'll look forward to playing with the Spitfires again soon. I think the rest of the girls felt the same, because the talk in the locker room after the game was all about which tournaments would be good to go to next.

Posted by Lori in Vancouver Tournament 2006 | May 29, 2006·04:00 PM