This week in ice sports

I had another busy week, just the way I like it!

• Saturday: Figure skating practice, including skills lesson. I had a decent skate and my bracket turns might be getting a teensy bit better. They are seriously hard. And I haven't even learned the backward ones yet! Otherwise my test routines have not really improved all that much. Why? Uhm, lack of practice. You bet.
• Saturday: Hockey game! We played a team with a lot of beginners so I tried to focus on taking my time to make a smart decision with the puck instead of panicking and throwing it away.
• Sunday: Another hockey game, usually I don't play 2 days in a row but they moved one of our games that would have overlapped with the Stanley Cup (how nice!). This time we played a much better team and as usual we were short-handed so this game was a little more ugly. One good moment for me was when I got a half-decent backhand shot on goal from the high slot. Another one was when I did a cool stop-and-turn-around move to lose a check and got away a nice pass.
• Monday: More hockey! Usually I figure skate on Mondays but there was no ice this week, and my team is always shorthanded so I played for the 3rd time in a little over 2 days. These 3 games were like a 'Goldilocks Series'. The first opponent was 'too easy'. The second opponent was 'too hard'. But the third opponent on Monday was 'just right'. We lost 1-0 because I screened my own goalie. Oops!
• Tuesday: Personal training. Sweat was rolling down my nose. Also, my husband has a sudden interest in hockey so we went to public skating and looked in on some games to see if there is a beginner's division for men. I wore my hockey skates and tried to do some backspins. On the first one I fell on my butt because I apparently rely on my toepicks waaay too much. After that I tried to balance more on the ball of my foot the whole time, but the best I could manage was to not fall down. On the bright side, I have pretty decent twizzles in my hockey skates, which I attribute to the lack of toepick. Then I tried a forward spin and fell again. Crap! Kurt Browning can do an Axel in hockey skates.
• Thursday: I found a store that was open late today and ran out there after work to pick up a couple of street hockey pucks. I bought the 'Green Biscuit' puck and the 'Proshot' puck. I also grabbed another stick for home use only. I wanted to try them outside on the road but it started pouring rain as soon as I got home (!). I found a piece of cardboard and put it down on the carpet in the spare room and practiced a little stickhandling, probably for 30 or 40 minutes. I definitely need a bigger piece of something slippery to practice on indoors. My forearms are already sore and that was just a couple of hours ago!
  

It's Deja Vu all over again

Well, the Stanley Cup final is all done and it ended in similar fashion to the one in 1994 - a Game 7 loss followed by a riot. Blech! In fact the Canucks came closer in 1994 when the game was a 3-2 nailbiter (including 2 goals from Captain Trevor Linden) instead of a 4-0 groanfest. Other than that observation, I don't feel too much need to comment on it because you can find plenty of that elsewhere on the internet. However for me there were some personal differences between the 1994 loss and the 2011 loss.

• In 1994 I was only 13, this time I am 30 so I was able to handle it a bit better
• Probably for the same reason, while it was exciting, I don't think I got as emotionally drawn into it except in those Game 7's.
  
• This time I live in the area, so I made the most of it by attending one game, watching one game outside in the sunshine downtown, and attending one of the away game viewing 'parties'. I now have 2 towels sporting '2011 Playoffs Final'.
  

In terms of the fans, I thought expectations were higher this time. In 1994 the Canucks were never supposed to make it to the final and while they won the first game they dropped the next three games rather decisively. Their come-from-behind wins in Games 5 and 6 were downright sensational. When they won Game 6 at home it was euphoric. The crowd went absolutely bananas and there were fireworks. One guy jumped the boards and slid across the ice on his knees, arm outstretched. The party went into the streets. In my opinion, it is still the best moment in Canuck history.

When the Canucks won Game 5 at home this year, it was also wonderful, but somehow less exhilarating and I didn't get that same feeling that everyone was going bananas now that they were only 1 win away. Instead there seemed more of a feeling of relief, like why did that take so long? Haven't they won yet? And the sense of dread, that going back to Boston would mean another bad loss (which it did).

The Canucks gave us an incredible season this year and it was both fun and stressful at the same time. Until the end, it seemed as though they could pull out a dramatic game-tying or game-winning goal when they needed it most, and it was wonderfully entertaining.

The fact that they have come so close and lost twice is of course a disappointment for me, but I feel a new motivation now. When it was all said and done and Zdeno Chara was hoisting the Cup instead of Henrik Sedin, I turned to my husband and said, "If the Canucks can't win the Stanley Cup, I am just going to have to win the damn thing myself!"

Go Canucks Go!

Ok so they are not as snazzy as some of the ones I have found on the web, but I made some Stanley Cupcakes today to cheer on my Vancouver Canucks, who are going to Game 7 tomorrow. They are certainly good enough to win it, and when you think of how many players are due to score by now, I hope they can all get their games back at once tomorrow!

Was it really 17 years ago?

This past Tuesday, May 24, the Vancouver Canucks advanced to the Stanley Cup final for the first time in seventeen years, exact to the very day. I remember it like it was only yesterday. The Canucks came only 1 goal short of sending Game 7 of the Final into overtime. After weeks of thrills and excitement, I was devastated when they lost. But, the whole experience sparked a love of hockey I never knew I had, and was one of the catalysts that convinced me to hang up my figure skates and pick up a hockey stick instead.

My family was not a hockey family. My sister and I dabbled in various sports and as a family we liked activities but weren't into pro sports. Contrary to the Molson Canadian commercials, not every Canadian family is glued to Hockey Night in Canada. But as I got older it was probably inevitable. Strangely, the way I remember getting interested in hockey was that one of my eighth-grade teachers loved the Calgary Flames, and my girlfriends and I hated this teacher. It turned out that year that the Vancouver Canucks found themselves down 3 games to 1 in their series against the Flames, and we found ourselves with a new interest in hockey somehow, so we could stick it to this teacher if the Flames lost (we were 13). From that moment on I followed the playoffs with a sudden excitement, discovering just how fast and thrilling a game hockey is. We were amazed as the Canucks pulled out three overtime victories in a row to beat the Flames and then only lose 2 of their next 10 games to win the Western Conference. It was bedlam. The announcer shouting 'Greg Adams! Greg Adams!' as the goal-scorer skated into the glass, arms overhead. Trevor Linden picking up the trophy and the lid falling off behind him. Then the fear of having to face the New York Rangers, yeah the guys from the Big City.



After they Canucks won Game 6 of the Final decisively, this iconic photo was taken. Yep, that's blood on his jersey.



Many of the games I actually listened to on the radio while I was doing my homework (I was a weird kid). I would keep my own little boxscore going on a scrap of paper. As the Canucks continued to surprise with win after win, the players started appearing in corny radio commercials and clever musical montages were put together. I would eagerly search for good photos in the paper hunting especially for good shots of Cliff Ronning and Jyrki Lumme.


It was a different time, before you could watch the archived game on CBC.ca and download pictures from the web immediately after the game. I knew all the names and numbers of all the players, men whom I had never heard of only a few weeks earlier.

As they continued to win there was no way to ignore it and I would have gotten into the excitement at some point or another. A sort of fever took over the province, even other parts of the country. It was the sort of experience that does not come along very often when you are one of those cities that's never had a 'hockey dynasty'. And now 17 years later they are going to the final again! There are a lot of differences this time of course. The Canucks had the best record in the regular season and expectations are much higher. The uniforms are different and not a one player is the same from 1994 since Trevor Linden retired. In fact many of them were just little babies in 1994. But the fever is still powerful, and this time since I live in the city, I'm hoping to get a chance to go watch one of the games with the crowd downtown. Yes, all the games start at 5pm so it might be tricky. But I may never get this chance again, and I'm going to follow the action as much as I can!

It's at times like this, I just can't play enough hockey.

The A-word

It's been a busy week in ice sports again. On Sunday I had another great hockey game. We actually won it! First game in quite a while. I had one cool rush where I came around my net, swooshed around a forechecker, managed to hang on to the puck through the neutral zone, and get a weak shot somewhere in the vicinity of the net. I don't remember if it was on goal or not...funny how it's always a blur.

On Monday I had another dreaded jump lesson! I really hate doing 2 in a row. That is what I get for not having any ideas for what to work on, my coach will always pick jumps! My coach was really not pleased with any of my jumps, some days she is like that. She had me try toe-toe and loop-loop combinations; the second jump is always the better one. Not sure if this is typical. Otherwise the rest of the hour was pretty routine, nothing remarkable happened just more good practice. It always feels so lame to skate for only an hour.

This morning coach surprised me by talking about stroking. We haven't done a stroking lesson in ages, and I don't know if that is because I've improved so much or because she is obsessed with jumps, haha. She wants to teach me all the stroking patterns that are on the freeskate tests! This is great and will help me be a better overall skater. It was just surprising because she didn't want to teach skating skills but it's optional for freestyle skaters and stroking isn't so maybe that's why. We started in on some of the Jr. Bronze patterns which involve edges down the long sides of the rink and crossovers around the ends. For someone who did patch I thought it would be a breeze but it's a different beast going fast! My forward outside edges are fine but we did forward and backward inside and they need a LOT of work. But this is exactly the type of thing I'm happy to practice.

Because we were talking about freeskating tests we got on to the dreaded 4-letter word: AXEL. Dum dum dum. She asked if I want to learn it and I admitted that I want to be able to do the Axel but without all that hard work and falling. She pointed out that with her technique most of her kids don't fall that much. As if on cue, a girl beside us wiped out on a wonky Axel attempt. She wasn't helping! Strangely, Coach says that I'm ready to try it, this is weird because she seemed so displeased with my jumps this week. I'm sure that my waltz jumps need to be 1000 times better first. Who knows?

I filled out the rest of the hour practicing my Skills patterns and just a few of all my spins and jumps. One hour is just not enough time to skate!

Channeling Bobby Orr

I was so tired on Sunday that I didn't blog after my hockey game! We lost our game and were quite badly outplayed, but it was very memorable for me because I scored a goal! When I played back in the day I might have had a garbage goal or two, but this one was pretty. My teammate sent me a nice pass as we were breaking out of our zone and somehow there were only two defenders between me and the goal. They didn't challenge me at all. Somehow I managed to hang on to the puck and fire off a wrist shot from the slot. I wasn't aiming for any place in particular just generally toward the goal on an angle, but it beat the goalie on the opposite side. Whee! Good thing those defenders just stood and watched :) I hope to practice this type of thing more frequently.

Recruited!

Alright, not really. But I've been asked to play on a hockey team! Last night we had a hockey game and afterwards one of the women from the opposing team tracked me down and asked if I had time to play with her other team that plays in a higher division. Clearly she didn't notice the seventeen times that the puck came toward me and I missed it! I'm not sure if I'll have the time to play for two teams but it is still cool to be wanted on a team. If I can find the time to fill in when they are short handed a couple of times it would be fun to get some experience with a higher-calibre team. This woman also told me about some of the programs that the rink offers to develop skills and strategy. It would be great to get in some skills practice, I'll have to see if I have the time and money to sign up for a session. There's also the logistical issue of getting my gear to the rink on days when I can't drive (most of them).....hmmm. There need to be more days in the week!!

As for the game, it was not very good. The other team was substantially better than us, which begs the question, 'why are we in the same division?' We were scrambling just to keep up. I had another mixed evening; in addition to missing/fanning on the puck, there were two goals against us that I really should have been able to prevent and just didn't try hard enough or something. But on the bright side I had a couple of rushes and even got to carry the puck around the opposing team's net (ok big deal for a defenceman). Then I lost my balance and almost fell down, lol! Sometimes the rockered hockey blades throw me off. I also kept the puck inside the blue line a few times and had one wrist shot (was intercepted, too weak). I had a couple of incidents that almost cost me penalties but the refs seemed to be pretty lenient. Although they showed no mercy giving the other team a too-many-men penalty, which they fully deserved. Ha. Needless to say we lost the game having been fully outmatched for the whole game and if it wasn't for our amazing goalie the damage would have been much worse. I get sort of bummed out when we lose and then I have to remind myself that I'm doing this for FUN.

When I was on the bus home tonight I had my nose buried in my book. I was shocked to look up at my stop and see snow on the ground and more of it coming down in thick and furious flakes! It's early for snow and to have such a decisive first snowfall is surprising. Usually the first one is basically slush. That's what I get for living on a hill! To make matters worse I was completely unprepared and wasn't dressed warmly enough so I had an uncomfortable walk home. Time to get some winter boots! I've somehow managed to get to the age of thirty without owning any winter boots. Well, because it usually snows about twice all winter.


Tomorrow morning I have my early skate so I hope the buses can make it up the hill to pick me up....!

Catching up on the Weekend

I just can't seem to blog on the days I actually skate....need to do something about that! Another post covering multiple skates, here we go:

Friday

On Fridays I have to get up early which can be a bit of a struggle. I was a bit behind schedule when I left the house and I started running to catch the bus. As I jogged through the foggy darkness and drizzle I realized that I must really LOVE skating!

• Edges: worked on these going down the hockey lines. Had some real wobbliness going on but started to get the feel for them after about four lines. Forward insides were especially wobbly and noticed that I need to put the weight slightly further back on the blade as the free leg comes through. Also focusing helps a lot.. :S
• Figures: skipped them! :O Was a bit late getting on the ice and finding the half-lobes of edges enough of a challenge.
• Crossovers: I really need to work on these every time I skate. I practiced them going around the circles and worked up a good sweat. They always feel clumsy at first and then feel better as I get used to the movement.
• Perimeter stroking: did sort of a bare minimum of this in the interest of time but it's always fun to skate really fast on a nearly-empty rink.
• Spins: I didn't have a great spin day but practiced them nonetheless. I wanted to work on my combination spin but was falling out of the camel again >:( Good practice though. I noticed that some of the kids look outside the circle on their 'windup' glide so I decided to try it and it produced a couple of well-centred spins. It also produced some real wild ones too so I'm not sure if it's any better, so I will keep trying it for a while.
  
• Skating skills: my coach and I worked on the three patterns that I will be tested on next month. She thinks that in general they are decent but could use a lot of cleaning up. We focused on getting proper coverage of the ice and really checking those FO3's like crazy. She wasn't too happy with my circles though and tried to contort me into the gliding position that she would like to see. The forward position is much more painful than the backward one so my backward circles are actual better than my forward ones which is apparently unusual. I am looking forward to testing these patterns and moving on to something more interesting!
• Jumps: didn't get to them, no tears shed over that.

Saturday

• Skating skills: as usual I got to practice these to the music during the first time slot. Also some Dutch Waltz, whee! Practiced a bunch of the circles especially backward inside (blech). Trying to make each stroke smooth and deliberate because I get a bit sloppy/awkward on the forward crossovers from a standstill. This 1/2 hour of skills always gets my temperature up! Good thing because CanSkate is right after that.
• Group lesson: We got to practice some fun things like those quick turns where you go forward-backward-forward really fast. I guess it would be a bracket followed by a 3-turn if it was on a curve. I did them two-footed :) Another new thing for me was to forward crossovers interspersed with changes of edge. Fun! And the group lesson coach seems to think I am a "Senior" level skater (i.e. passed the first freeskating test). Ha!
• Spin lesson (small group): This lesson can be a mixed bag because the kids in the group are so much better than me, but this time I had a lot of fun. We reviewed the basic spins and then we even worked on some fun variations like the broken-leg sit-spin. I had never learned this one before and my first attempts were sad but after the lesson I worked on it for a while and had a few good ones. I don't know how my position looks but I was able to keep my balance at least.
• Freeskate: I always enjoy this freeskate session because I have already warmed up and done a ton of skills practice so I have lots of time to practice jumps, spins, footwork, and stuff like spirals. I didn't make any big breakthroughs or anything but it was some good solid practice.
  
• Private lesson: We covered spins in more depth because it had been a while. The biggest change that coach suggested is to swing the free leg around sort of bigger and higher going into the sit spin. I tried this and it seemed to help a lot! Sometimes I just feel my inner thighs screaming though so obviously I need more power in those muscles to get the leg around quicker. Coach wants me to squat down lower, but I know that it will take time. She also noticed that my knee is falling inwards which is making me lose my balance. My physiotherapist noticed this too! OH and I had one fabulous backspin. We both wished that it had been captured on tape >:(
  
• Field moves competition: I'm not registered in this but because I missed skating last Monday I decided to stay and nobody seemed to mind. We did leg-pulls, where you grab the blade and pull your leg up and out to the side. I hate these things but I really tried to stretch out and "sell" them with good presentation. A cute little girl won the competition but they told me I was a close second! The others are all better but the coaches have higher expectations from them, so ha :P Maybe I should actually practice these things since I'm apparently not as terrible at them as I thought. But there is no way one of those is going into my program! :O

Sunday

Sunday was a hockey day! I actually had a great game and our team played well too. We were very even for the first half of the game and the score was also tied 1-1. Then one of our players went out with a knee injury and we had only 3 defence for the rest of the game :( I was totally sucking wind! THEN another woman got thrown out of the game (!) for apparently having some words with the ref so even the forwards had a short bench. We only had three players on the bench at a time after that. So, for the rest of the game I was just concentrating on surviving rather than channeling Bobby Orr but I did still get 2 shots on goal! When the final buzzer rang I was stoked to go home until I realized that we would have a 3-on-3 overtime period for 5 minutes. I was lucky enough to get the first shift and discovered that 3-on-3 sucks! Constant sprinting! But because it was so open I had a chance to go on the attack and had another shot on goal and had another sequence of trying to pass the puck but it somehow kept hitting a skate or something and coming back to me so I had quite a few chances to make some moves. We were playing so well in the overtime I was really hoping we could win it, and in fact our captain/star player managed to end the torture with a nice goal with about a minute left. That was exciting and it was fun to win again. Also no goals were scored against us while I was on the ice!

Monday

After the long ice time I have on Saturday it feels like such a rip-off to skate for only an hour on Mondays :P I only get 25-30 minutes to practice before private and group lesson. So I scrimped on quantity but tried to practice as many things as possible.

• Perimeter stroking: Again did sort of a requisite 3-4 laps going forward and backward (but not both CW and CCW, for shame) and then some laps doing 2-foot slalom and 1-foot power pulls. For a while I thought I was decent at the power pulls but lately I have been really sucking at them, especially backwards.
• Crossovers: on the circle, all 4 varieties. A bit tough with so many skaters on the ice though. Same thing with stroking.
• Spins: Wow I had an amazing day for spins! I had a couple of centred one-foot upright spins but I don't know what I did differently. Some of them also traveled ridiculously. Eh. Also practiced making a higher swing-around on the sit spin with some success. Backspins mediocre but camels were amazing! Combination spins were also coming easily to me today and I practiced camel-sit-change-sit, and camel-sit-broken leg sit. Worked on just the sit-broken leg too, it's fun and a nice challenge that's not outrageously frustrating.
• Private lesson: I started by showing off my combination spin to my coach and she was suitably impressed. BUT she had to point out that my camel position is still not perfect, haha. Then we moved on to jumps.
  

1. Waltz: need more knee bend just before the jump and kick the free leg straight through and not across the midline of the body. Timing still needs work.
   
2. Salchow: need more "pressing down" with the arms and check/control after the 3-turn. Otherwise pretty good, my best jump.
3. Toe loop: need more pressing down with the arms, standing up straight, and pulling the right foot in close to the left. Why does she have to tell me this stuff EVERY time? This jump just makes no sense to me. Was relegated to practicing the nasty do-them-from-a-standstill exercise. We moved on to the loop probably because my coach was going to gouge her eyes out rather than any actual progress :S
4. Loop: more blechiness here, this one is in a contest with toe loop for worst technique. It's all about getting a timing and confidence. A snap of the hips and a deep knee bend initiates the jump, arms only move after leaving the ice. I want to initiate the jump with my arms though. Not long ago my coach said this jump looked "natural", not sure what happened??

Well working on jumps always brings me back to the reality that I have a long way to go before I can create a program for testing and competition etc. but it usually seems that while some days they regress, other days they improve greatly and over time there is a net improvement. I'm feeling less impatient than I used to and have a little more confidence that I will eventually be able to do all the preliminary elements with consistency and decent technique.

Losers

We lost our hockey game tonight >:( 3-1. I had some moments of playing well and some moments of playing fantastically badly. I sure got winded too! Need to do some more cardio conditioning. Good fun anyhow, super good time to be back at hockey. My confidence grows with each game! Oh, this was the first team that could actually outskate me. Need to figure out which teams I can be lazy with, and which teams I can't slack off against!

One woman saw me doing a three-turn during the warmup and asked (as a joke) if I could do a triple toe loop. I told her that if I could, she would already know my name!

I had about two seconds to watch the synchro team practicing on my way out. They were doing some snazzy turns and skating in a circle holding hands. Also wearing very long skirts, almost knee-length. Strange.

OW!

Yesterday, I had my first session with a personal trainer. I had never had a personal trainer before, but I have always wanted to get one. I am hoping that she can help me with my skating while working around some problems I have with my knees and lower back. I wasn't really sure what to expect but she definitely kicked my ass! She had me do shuttle runs across the floor, walking lunges, jumping lunges, and isometric squats. That part alone had my legs burning like crazy! Then I did more squats with the Olympic bar, and some upper body exercises. Then she had me do one legged squats in my sit-spin position. She had a clever idea which was to put a wobble board under my heel. This simulated the heel of my skating boot and made the exercise a little easier. I also did lots of one-legged hops moving forward, backward, and side-to-side. I hope that that all this will help me jump higher and squat lower over time. I am going to meet with her every Sunday for a while. Today I was ridiculously sore so I hope it will not be quite so bad next week.

Additionally I had a hockey game yesterday! It was a busy day! I did not play super great and did not meet my goal of not screwing up too much, but I did try a couple of new things. I tried carrying the puck up the boards by barreling through everybody instead of just chopping at it. I also tried making a cool Bobby-Orr like move in the offensive zone but it didn't really pan out. No matter, I had fun, and we won 4-3! My next game is on Halloween. Spooky!

Whirlwind Weekend

Wow, I had a busy three days!

Friday

Got up early to skate at 7am and skate at the foggy arena with the stalactites. Actually they were not too bad this time, but still not quite ideal. I got to work on my figures again. They are still atrocious. I had these dreams of trying some of the advanced figures involving brackets and loops and such but my basic circle eights have a long way to go before I am ready for that. But I am lucky to have so much ice to myself to practice them! If I spend 15 minutes on them every Friday morning, they make be back to some kind of testable condition by the end of the season (not that you can test them anymore).

After my figures I spent some time warming up and going through some skills. My coach worked on some jumps with me, we have finally moved on to salchow and toe loop jumps. I was swinging my free leg wildly in my salchow, which my coach is trying to fix. Apparently it should stay close as it comes around and cross in front before bending both knees and driving the free knee up. Also the free foot is supposed to bend awkardly at the ankle so that the toes point toward the midline of the body and the heel pointing outward. Good times!

Saturday

I woke up with a sore throat but I dragged myself out of bed for an epic 3 hour morning at yet another arena. This one is the best one yet so far! Really good ice and even seating for spectators. The first half hours was called 'skating skills' which is what has replaced school figures here in Canada. Also dance can be practiced at this time. We spent the time working on stroking, crossovers, a mohawk drill and three-turns. Mostly we focused on fixing my bad posture. I enjoyed this session because good skating skills and poise between elements can really lift an average skater to someone that stands out.

After the lesson there was skating lessons for little children, due to a strange ordering of the schedule. They told me I could help out so I stuck around; I ended up teaching groups of kids all by myself :O Fortunately they were not learning anything too complicated. Since I don't really know how to teach I just adopted a 'watch me' type of instruction but it seemed to go alright.

Once the little kids went off the ice we had another group lesson like the one on Monday. We practiced edges down the ice, three turns, mohawks, etc. After that was a smaller group lesson on spins. I thought we would be working on our spins individually, but I saw my coach teaching a group of girls and asked if I can join them. I suppose she will charge me some kind of group lesson rate for that one. Anyway we worked on laybacks (something I have been wanting to learn!) and back sit spins out of a pivot on the toepick. I was not able to do the back sit at all in front of the group, I just immediately fell out of it. My coach says that on Friday nights there is a spin competition, and next week it is sit-change-sit. Even though I am not in this competition, I practiced the back sit and then the whole sit-change-sit combination until I was able to pull a few off! Too bad my coach didn't see them :P

The rest of the time was open freeskate so I worked on all my jumps trying to incorporate all the new things I learned this week. I finally feel a joy in pulling off a good waltz jump, a jump I used to find very uninteresting. I even experimented with split jumps in each direction and the half loop. I experimented with camel-change-camel, which did not get far because I cannot get into the back camel position. I experimented with coming into a back spin from a long RBO edge, which is seriously harder than it looks. I tried a bunch of consecutive three-turns as some kind of precursor to twizzles, but so far I can only do them on one foot in one direction. We capped off the morning by practicing spirals as the coaches contorted me into painful positions at the boards. Practicing these awful things makes my outer hips really sore! They were sore for three days after Monday's practice and they are still sore this evening from yesterday morning.

Sunday

Today I was still not feeling well and slept most of the day but I was foolish enough to play hockey anyway! Our game did not start well and we were down 4-2 before long. But somehow we got a fire lit under us after that and bounced back for an 8-4 win! I made a few good plays. I even managed to fire off a wrist shot from the point. My new goal is to try not to make any bad mistakes that directly lead to a goal against us. It's not as easy as it sounds!

Well it's been a busy weekend, I can't wait to have some tea and go to bed.

First Game!

Yesterday I played my first hockey game in over 12 years! It was so much fun, afterwards I asked myself, 'Why did it take me so long to go back to this?' We lost the game 2-1 but it was pretty close and we didn't play too badly. I did not play too well but not so bad considering my long absence from the game. One thing that I am trying to do differently is to take my time with the puck and look around, rather than panic and fire it up the boards regardless of who is there. Unfortunately my stickhandling skills leave a lot to be desired so I'm not able to do too much with the puck when I get it.

Another thing I am very pleased with is that most of the players on the other team were slower than me so after a while I stopped hanging back so much in the neutral zone and started pinching in at the point. Toward the end of the game though I started to lose my legs so I will need to work on my endurance. Anywhoo, overall a good time and some of us went upstairs for dinner and a drink afterwards which was good to get to know some of them (I have a lot of names and faces to memorize!) My husband watched the game from the bleachers but he couldn't tell which player I was for half of the game :)

Start of Season, Part 2

Today my sister and I had our first practice with our new hockey team! She had never played before, and this was my first practice in over 12 years so it was a bit of a trial by fire but overall it went well. We got to meet the other players and start to get the feel for the game. The league we are in is very recreational and practice ice is not common, so we were lucky to get in a practice before games begin. Fortunately the arena has drop-in ice that we should be able to make it to occasionally. The two of us also went to public skate last night which was good for getting more comfortable in our hockey skates ahead of time. I am amazed at how comfortable my hockey skates are compared to my figures skates! The hockey skates are like slippers but the figure skates are like bear traps. I had a funny moment when I forgot that my hockey skates don't have toe picks and almost bailed. They should be good for teaching me not to toe-push! Tomorrow I play my first game since 1998 and I'm nervous and excited. Hopefully my husband and my sister are going to come watch. We are splitting a position on the team, I will play on Sundays and she on Wednesdays. It's a good way to play without committing too much time or money.
I can't wait for the NHL season to start.

My gear: the good, the bad, and the ugly

The Good:

My figure skates. These were decent quality skates in their day. We bought them only a few months before I quit, because my old ones were completely shot. I wore them fore a while and did a competition and a couple of tests in them before they sat in storage for 16 years. But, I wouldn't get rid of them. I'm glad I didn't! They are beautiful. Apparently my feet have not grown since I was thirteen.

My hockey pants. One of the things we bought new for me after my first season of using used gear.


Shoulder pads designed for women! Comfy and more functional than the previous ones I had. Also bought new, I was surprised to see how much sweat staining is present on them now.

Helmet, was new at the time, not something to scrimp on.

I forgot to get a photo of my old team jersey, which is also in good shape and even has my name on it!

The Bad:

Shin guards. Get the job done. Nuff said.



Same with these elbow pads. In this picture you can't see how stained they are.



These holey gloves are really comfortable. Except for the holes. I put my hand in one of them so you can see how there is no palm left.


The Ugly:



You can't really tell in this picture, but my trusty hockey skates are actually pretty scuffed up and faded. I was shocked when I saw the condition they are in! But I categorize them as ugly rather than bad, because it's just cosmetic. They are still comfortable and have plenty of life left in them.




Something weird happened to this roll of shin guard tape over the years. Kind of cool.