Game 2: Cross Chix

Yes, we played the Cross Chix AGAIN this year. But really, that's not the thing I remember most about this game; in fact, there was hardly anything familiar about playing this Cross Chix squad except for the close score. What I remember most was that this game was ALL ABOUT THE BEAVA. (It's probably what I should have titled this post.) I had noticed that a couple of the girls from Victoria had brought a stuffed beaver with them to the first game and mentioned that it would be our mascot, but as I was busy worrying about my ankle and trying to learn everyone's names, I hadn't paid much attention.

For the first game on Saturday, however, the beaver (I keep wanting to type a capital B on that word for some reason) got a new outfit and a new attitude. That morning Ima had made a trip to the Build-A-Bear Workshop and gotten a Canucks jersey, hockey pants, helmet, skates, and shades for She-Be, whom I thought of as a girl but whom everyone else referred to as "him". Either way, She-Be was stylin', and s/he became the center of attention.

She-Be was the dividing marker between offense and defense on the bench, s/he was the focus of our period-starting cheers ("ONE! MORE! BEAVA!!!"), s/he was a source of inspiration, and s/he was the catalyst for lots of dirty jokes (such as yelling to the ref, "would you like to stroke our beaver?"). At one point Anne put him up on the padded pole at the edge of the glass and shouted to Rocky to look up (I think it was to rally her resolve not to let any goals in). YaYa shouted "BEAVER ON A POLE!"...and that's when I stuck my face cage in my hands.

Photos by YaYa

As to what happend on the ice, as opposed to in the locker room, on the bench, and on a pole, I'm discovering just how inadequate my notes are. What was I thinking, not taking note of who scored and how? What I did make note of was that we played better than on Friday night, and against a team that was more our level. We scored first (anybody remember WHO scored?)YaYa scored the first goal, and at the end of the first period it was 1-0. That's when Lolly gave us this inter-period pep talk. I'm glad I recorded it; it's pretty representative of her personality as a player-who-also-coaches. She's really good at pointing out both what we're doing well, and what we need to work on, while keeping the tone really positive.

Lolly giving us the lowdown.

I think the next thing of significance to happen in this game was me getting out of position in the defensive zone and leaving my point open to score. If I remember correctly, I got sucked in watching the scrabbling in front of the net and let my point get away from me; I noticed the gap at about the same time the puck came out to her. I can't remember if she shot it in herself or passed to someone in front who did, but I remember thumping my chest with my glove as soon as the puck went in and saying, "that one's on me." Duh.

I could be wrong about this, seeing as how I don't have any notes about who scored, but my impression is that Lolly scored a goal in the second period to put us up again, 2-1. The Chix then came back to tie, I believe in the third period. And... yadda yadda yadda (because I have no video or notes on anything until the final minute or so), next thing you know, my line is going out for what will probably be the last shift of the game. I line up along the boards at the far faceoff dot in our zone, and then Marie comes to Center and says something to the ref. (Oh, right, I forgot to mention: We switched up the lines a bit; Lolly moved back to D, I think, Marie became my Center, and Clarice moved up to Center the second line with Joan and Nat.) She said it without much urgency and with a fairly blank expression, so he asked her to repeat herself. "Time out?" she said, and shrugged. I started to wonder whether she was addressing the question to the ref or to me, but in any case the ref blew the whistle, and we skated back to the bench.

We discussed the option of putting a power line on the ice, and all votes were for it (I assume those not voting were at least neutral). I just shrugged and said "sure". Normally I'm not in favor of power lines, but the game *was* tied, and in this case I felt like we had at least 4 or 5 girls we could put out there who could skate well *and* score, so I didn't mind giving up my last shift. I'd had plenty of ice time, and aside from that first goal against, I felt I'd played well enough that I had nothing to prove. We put Mucky, Ima, YaYa, Lolly, and Spammer out there (which, now that I think of it, means that we had four defensemen and one forward).

As everyone lined up at the faceoff circle, it occurred to me that a video of our power line out there might be cool! I managed to grab the camera as the puck dropped and turn it on about two seconds later. Sadly, one second after that, the Chix scored on us. I was busy fidding with the camera and thus have no idea what went wrong to make the goal possible; I was mostly shocked that the second the camera went on, the puck went in.

Needless to say, this wasn't the outcome we were hoping for—nor was it, in my opinion, indicative of how well we played. But! 3-2 is better than 6-0, eh?

Posted by Lori in Vancouver Tournament 2007 | June 4, 2007·12:25 AM