OK, We're Back (Or At Least Al Is)
Last week we drove out to Oaks, PA (about 30 minutes away, out past King of Prussia) so Al could attend one of the "evaluation skates" for the local Hockey North America league. I just watched, enviously, from the stands, thinking all the while the drills were going on, "I could do that!" (Of course, once the scrimmage started and there was much squishing against the boards and tripping over bluelines—not to mention other fallen players—I was glad to have the belly out of play.)
Al didn't have his strongest showing ever, which is not surprising given that it's been months since he's been on the ice. He was squarely middle of the pack skillwise, however, and he looked like he was having fun out there. The league director called him over after a couple scrimmage shifts and said, "I've got a team for you," so that was that.
The team is called the Philadelphia Galaxy, and apparently they're at the C1 level, whatever that means. (It's something Al has been agonizing over ad nauseum for the past week, however; he's extremely worried that he'll be placed incorrectly on an Ice Oasis Tuesday night-level team, and that he'll hate it. I think it's unlikely, since it seemed pretty clear to the evaluators last week what level everyone was at.) My only opinion on the matter is that I think he'd be happier on a team where the players know what it means to get open, how to make passes, and how to play position, even if the level was a bit higher. I know I would.
Posted by Lori at 03:09 PM | TrackBack | Link to This Entry
First Practice
Last Friday night I somehow managed to stay awake (and on my feet!) long enough to drive out to Oaks, PA with Al for his first practice with his new team, the Philadelphia Galaxy, at 10:15pm. He'd been pretty paranoid about being placed in the wrong level and not being able to keep up, but the league officials really did seem to know what they were doing at the evaluation skate a couple weeks ago, and the Galaxy look like a good fit. (They reminded me of the Gang Green squad we played with last summer.) The Galaxy shared the ice time with a team several levels up called the Cobras, I think.
After about 15-20 minutes of warmup, during which the skaters from the Galaxy got their ice legs and practiced their shots, the captain called the team over to the bench and outlined their first team drill: a standard horseshoe. Not very interesting, but it gave everyone a chance to skate, pass and receive passes, and shoot on the goalie. In short, it served as a warmup for the remaining drills, which were more interesting—and more complicated.
I think the next drill involved two skaters going from opposite sides of the horseshoe at one time, taking a pass, passing to each other as they entered the zone, and then hopefully passing once more before taking a shot on goal. After a few runs, a third line, made up of defensemen, was added, with the defenseman passing to one of the wingers, who then skated in on him as before. This drill seemed even more valuable as a learning-about-your-teammates tool than as a learning-the-game tool. I imagine the wingers observed, as I did, which direction people tended to skate, whether they were slow or fast, whether they skated with their heads up, whether they gave any indication that they were ready and waiting for a pass, etc. (I imagine the defensemen noticed these signals, too, as they became more effective at breaking up plays as the drill went on.)
Last among the drills was the one (well, two—one was a variation on the other) I found most fascinating. It started with two lines of players up at the blue line, and one guy back behind the goal line, to one side of the net. One of the mid-ice players passed to the guy behind the goal line as a player from the opposite side of the blueline skated in. The guy behind the goal line took the puck and skated with it behind the net as the other player set up in the slot. The behind-the-net guy then passed to the slot guy, who took a shot. After taking a shot, the guy who skated in would become the guy behind the goal line, and the drill would repeat. (I'm realizing just now that I didn't get any photos of this drill, probably because I was so aborbed in watching it.)
I noticed that in general, the passing was terrible—more panicked than planned. (The captain noticed it too, because he stopped the drill at one point to remind everyone to "aim for the stick, NOT THE MAN!") Before I mention the other two things I noticed, I should say right now to anyone from the Galaxy who might be reading: I can't say I would have done anything differently or better myself, given my skill level, or that I'm an expert in any way. I just had the benefit of being able to watch from the sidelines and notice patterns. OK, with that caveat... I was kinda shocked by how many of the guys charged with crashing the net followed the puck carrier as he skated behind it. In other words, both players ended up on the same side of the net, with only a couple feet between them. That limited the momentum as well as the skating and passing options of the behind-the-net guy, who would often look up from the puck to find his teammate right in front of him.
Many of the players who didn't follow the puck carrier still limited his options by coming in too close, camping out at the edge of the crease instead of at the faceoff hash marks. (I made this mistake myself for several seasons in a row, until one of my more-experienced teammates told me I'd be more effective if I backed up a little—I'd be a better passing target and remain more mobile, thus giving myself and the puck carrier more options.) The captain noticed this, too, and reminded those skating in to stay up at the hash marks. Al turned out to be pretty good at this from the get-go; he stopped at the hash marks each time with his stick on the ice (if anything, he probably wasn't mobile enough). He was also fairly accurate with his passes (not surprising, since we've worked on passing every time we've been on the ice together for like two years).
I think some of the panicked passing happened because the drill was done mostly at game speed, and the guys behind the net felt some pressure to get rid of the puck. Running it at game speed was exactly the right thing to do, however, since IMHO it's exactly the kind of situation that's likely to come up in games. I hope they have a chance to practice it some more. I won't describe the variation of this drill—which involved adding a defenseman, if I remember correctly—because it went much like the original, only with an added component of chaos.
Following the drills was a rather lengthy (to me, anyway—I was getting really tired) scrimmage against the Cobras. As expected, given the disparity in levels, it wasn't exactly competitive, but it was probably useful as practice. Well, maybe more for the wingers than the D, who I imagine were more likely to be demoralized by the experience; the Cobras D tended to give the Galaxy O some space in which to work, but the Cobras O showed little or no mercy on the Galaxy D. The following four photos in this post feature three of the best offensive skaters for the Cobras; the guy in the red socks could have played Jason Figone (from East West Hockey in San Carlos, CA) in the movie, his skating style was so similar. The last two photos are particularly telling, I think; they show basically the entire Galaxy team watching as the Galaxy captain tries to single-handedly defend against a guy who obviously played in college, and the result. Little help, guys?
One thing that popped into my head as I watched the scrimmage (aside from "my feet hurt, and I want to go home!") was "aim for the stick, not the man." I realized that this advice applies as much to defending as it does to passing when I saw how easily the Cobras defended against the Galaxy players simply by lifting or covering their sticks. In the Galaxy zone, on the other hand, defensemen often took the bodies of the Cobras skaters, leaving their sticks wide open. Playing the body is probably a totally appropriate strategy against players of similar skill level, but as I found when I tried to defend against Eva once in a women's league game, stronger players can take passes, make passes, and shoot around you if you don't tie up their sticks. (Eva, who's two inches taller, about 30 pounds heavier, and about 20 times better than I am, actually scored despite the fact that I had her entire body covered.)
Posted by Lori at 10:23 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Link to This Entry
About Al
As I write this, Al is getting dressed for his hockey game tonight at the Class of 1923 Ice Arena on the Penn Campus. I'm not there mainly because (a) I'm extremely pregnant, and therefore extremely tired of lugging this belly around, and (b) I learned last Saturday night that the Penn ice rink is COLD COLD COLD, and I have no coats that cover enough of my swollen body to keep me warm. This will be the first Galaxy game that Al has played in that I've missed; at all of the others I not only watched, but took notes. So, why haven't I written anything about the games here?
Basically, I'm finding that writing about Al's games (for public consumption, anyway) is not the same as writing about my own. I feel judgemental, and as anyone who's been following this chronicle since the beginning knows, I'm in no position to judge. I've improved over three years, but I'm barely an advanced beginner. I know Al finds my observations about his games useful, but I'm afraid that his teammates would just think they're bitchy or rude (not that all—or even most—of the notes I make are negative, but sometimes the exasperation comes out in an excess of exclamation points :).
It's easier to talk about other players when I'm also talking about myself, when it's clear from the context that I don't consider myself any better (and sometimes considerably worse) than my linemates and teammates. That isn't possible now because I'm not playing at all, sadly. I've spent virtually every non-notetaking moment of Al's games wishing I could be on the ice, and I spent much of last week's warm-up time thinking about how soon after giving birth I could go to a public skate to get my ice legs back. I also regretted not taking advantage of the lunchtime public skates last winter, when I didn't have a baby. I wonder if my mom will watch the baby for an hour during the two weeks she's here after the birth so I can go skating?
Anyway, back to Al and his team. I think at first he was happy to find that he hadn't been placed at too high a level, but after watching/playing with this team for a few weeks, it's clear that they're not as strong either individually or as a team (especially as a team) as the Gang Green squad we played with in San Jose last summer (2003). Al kind of likes that when he dogs it he doesn't stand out as a total lazybones, but personally I'd rather play with people who were better (and a bit faster) than I was. I feel like it makes me better, makes me try harder and improve faster. I know it does that for Al, too, whether he realizes it or not; when he played on a line with Jim Lund, who was excellent at both making and receiving passes (not to mention shooting), Al was a faster, more confident player, and he certainly scored more goals.
One other observation I feel comfortable making in this post: Al's been playing Right Wing for several seasons now, but in a recent Galaxy game he played D, and I thought it really gave him a chance to shine. Al switched to forward when he started playing on better teams and felt like he couldn't defend effectively against faster players anymore, but his D skills are still pretty good, and they were certainly effective against the opponents his team played a couple weeks ago. I would have liked to see him continue to play D, but apparently it was only a temporary thing while the team was a bit short. He was back at RW the next week.
Posted by Lori at 09:24 PM | TrackBack | Link to This Entry