All of those expectations...

On Monday night we played the Advanced Embroidery Eagles team, and it was a fucking great game.  The best game that we have played this season.  

The Eagles lived up to my expectation of what kind of team I though that they were.  They were fast, they moved the puck well, and have solid defense and goaltending.  Their forwards were smart and screened me well and often.  They used their points often and seemed to have a solid power play unit (they managed to go 1 for 1 on the PP).

We managed to put a pretty damn good game together ourselves though, we had our full compliment of players (for a change) and as long as we continue to have everyone show up consistently, we (in my opinion) can only continue to get better.  Our lines have changed up a little bit as we moved one of our forwards (who had always played defense up until three years ago) back to help shore up our defense.  He's been back there for the last two games, and its helping, a lot.  Danny has speed (he can rush the puck when he has to), good hands, quick feet (an import attribute for a defense man) and an extremely high hockey I.Q.  Seldom does he ever do something foolish, and he never makes panicked reactions in our zone.  He is the kind of player that, from my stand point, puts me at ease, and allows me to truly focus on the puck/play in front of me because I never feel like I have to cheat to make up for a defense man that I don't completely trust.  For our first few games we only really had three true defense man, meaning that were were always throwing someone into the fire on D who wasn't totally comfortable with the position.  Moving Danny back on D makes us a very solid team defensively, giving us two very good defensive pairings.  

Our offensive players have always been very talented, so moving Danny back doesn't really hurt us up front, and now, he becomes a threat from the blue line, where I think he is much more comfortable.  Our first line is, in my opinion, as good as any other line in the league, and our second line is no joke either.  We have a team who understands how to grind out a win, we don't have guys who are prima donnas that won't go into the corners and muck it up for the puck.  They will, and they do, and when they go in the corners, they usually come out with the puck, and because of that kind of play we managed to score the first two goals (well, sort of, the first two goals were lasers that found there way just under the crossbar on glove side).

Like I said before, the Eagles scored on the power play, although it was kind of a bullshit/lucky goal.  With about thirty seconds left in the PP, one of their forwards fired a shot from the left wing boards that barely missed the net, but managed to ricochet off the end boards behind the net out front on the opposite side to the other winger who fired the puck, I managed to get a piece of it, but not enough, and that made it  2-1.  We picked up another goal off of some solid work in front of the net, and with about six minutes left in the game they scored again off of some of their own solid work in front of me.    

I felt good though about my play overall, despite the two goals, because as I said from the start, those guys lived up to my expectations as to just how good they are.  They were definitely relentless, they took a lot of shots, several of which came through screens.  I started using my height to my advantage in the last couple of weeks though, so instead of trying to look through the screens by getting down in the butterfly and looking through a tangle of legs for the puck, I have been looking over them, allowing me to maintain my focus on the puck, and it also allows me to see what other aspects of the play are developing... 

The game ended with us on top 3-2, getting us a game over .500, putting our record at 3-2-1 in 6 games, and putting my GAA 2.50.  We play Shepley's next week at 10 PM Monday night...

Supremacy...

On Wednesday night in Orleans we played Top Gun, and before the game I would be willing to bet that on both teams (because I know that we were) guys were looking at this game as the game that would establish who the best team in the league was at this very early part of the season. 

On the first shift of the night, a little less than thirty seconds into the game we struck first.  Jake busted over the blue line and rifled a shot toward the net that their goalie got a piece of, but somehow dropped at his feet where Jake, who was following his own play, tucked the puck past in for the first tally of the night.  Here's the funny thing about that, I had no idea that we scored, I actually thought that the opposing goaltender had actually caught the puck initially, so I had turned around to grab a drink from my water bottle.  I missed the face off following the goal as well...  I have to say, that is the first time that I have ever missed my team scoring a goal during a game.  

Jake had an unbelievable night, he scored all of our goals, back checked his ass off and all he got to show for his hustle was a black eye.  While cutting through the middle of the ice in the defensive zone, and putting move after move on just about every one of Top Guns players that were on the ice at the time, one of them decided to throw a hip check at Jake, which threw him for a loop, literally.  He ended up landing on his head, which dazed the fuck out of him.  After the game he kept asking us what happened, that he couldn't remember anything about the incident...  He needed help getting back to the bench because he couldn't keep his legs under him...  

Now here is the thing about throwing a check like that in a league like ours.  It's bullshit.  Plain and simple, you just don't do it.  Most of the guys don't wear shoulder pads because it is a no checking league, a little contact yes, but a check like the one that Jake took, no.  A guy doesn't expect to be hit like that for obvious reasons, so when it does happen, the results are usually devastating...  Jake missed roughly the next ten minutes of the game, and by the time that we all managed to get ourselves out of the locker room he had a black eye.  Now, don't get me wrong, I like a physical game, but that hit crossed a line.  I can guarantee that the next time that we play them, the guy that threw the hit better have his head on a swivel, because payback is a bitch.

I know that I have said it before about this years Summit team, but shit, we are a complete team.  There are no holes, no weak links.  The guys played a complete game again Wednesday night, though I did see a few more shots than I did the previous game.  That Top Gun team can play, and overall, they are a pretty young team, so they have the legs to keep coming at you...  They did manage to score one on a two on one, it was actually a nice goal, a bang-bang play, firing the puck high on my stick side...  At the time, that goal closed the gap to 2-1, but the boys came right back to put us ahead by two a few minutes later off of a scrum in front of the net...

When the dust settled, it was 4-1 good guys, running our record up to 3-0-0.  My GAA in the OMHL is 1.33, with 1 SO.  Overall this winter, 5-2-1 with a 2.25 GAA and 1 SO.

Our next game in the OMHL is against the Land Ho at 8PM...  Should be a good one.

Doggin' It...

We played our second game of the season against the Black Dog monday night, and shit, that is one hell of a fucking team.  They do everything right, everything.

Anyway, we not only had our full compliment of players, we actually had 13 guys monday night, which works, but almost everyone bitches about it.  (Now honestly, that irritated the shit out of me and here's why;  The guys that bitch the loudest about it are the guys that are the least reliable in terms of showing up, on game night, so seriously, shut the fuck up or show up consistently)  I will say this bout having 13 guys monday night, at the end of the night, the guys that were tired, (and most of them were) were grateful that there was an extra line on the bench to pick up the slack and a few shifts.  And it's not like that extra line was made up of guys grabbed off the street to fill sweaters, it was a line of guys who can play.  If it wasn't for that extra line, we would have run out of gas with ten to fifteen minutes to go in that game and would have gotten ourselves laughed out of the rink. They would have slaughtered us.

That being said however, we still lost, and it wasn't a pretty game overall, but we hung with them the entire game.  We just, as a team, line by line, didn't have it together.  Guys were missing passes where there were clear passing lanes, passing up opportunities to shoot (you don't shoot, you don't score, you don't score, you can't win...  It's a simple fundamental principal).  And honestly, I think that the extra bodies screwed everyone up just a bit...  It seemed to both help us, and hurt us.  

Two of those extra bodies the the brothers from the team that I play with in Orleans.  They were a little surprised with the speed and tempo of the game, but of course for their first game in the DMHL, we happened to be playing (who I happen to believe, and who most people consider) the best team in the league.  There really isn't another team in the league that is on the same level with the Black Dog, a distant second would more than likely be Advance Embroidery... (who we have the pleasure of playing next Monday night), I would say, that from what I have seen so far, that a lot of the teams are relatively close in terms of overall skill level.

I seem to be straying from the topic at hand, the actual game.

Like I said before, we didn't have it, we made bad choices in our defensive zone, and even worse choices in our offensive zone.  Bad pass after bad pass, after passing up a good shooting opportunity to make yet another bad pass which would create a turnover that would give the opposition a clean scoring chance.  We did a terrible job of getting the puck out of our end, a terrible job of clearing the front of the net and taking (it's a no check league, not a no contact league) the body on their forwards as we spent all night letting them walk right in uncontested for a clean scoring opportunity.  I had a lot of work monday night, saw a lot of shots...  Games like that are both good and bad.  Good because I love all of that action, and it's easier to get into the zone when you are playing in a game where you are getting shelled, but bad because it means that we are doing a lot of things wrong at both ends of the ice.

They scored first in a screen shot that I never got to see, and then again on a broken play in front of the net off a rebound (the fourth or fifth rebound from a barrage of shots, none of which I could manage to get a glove on to get a whistle...)  We managed to get one back, shortly after their second goal, but they managed to pick up their third goal on yet another perfectly placed screen shot that just ticked off the inside of the right post and into the net...  The good news is that we scored the next two (and also had one called back) to tie the game, but on another poor defensive zone play where we did not manage to clear our own zone, move the puck forward and make some sort of transition into something that resembled an offensive threat, which ultimately resulted in a goal for the bad guys.

The final was 4-3, and even though I spent this entire blog bitching about what a bad game it was on our part, overall, it was a good, fast, hard game, we gave everything that we had to give.  Whatever the guys had in the tank, they gave it, and left it all out there on the ice.  I was happy with the effort, but unhappy with our end result.  I'm usually a very sore loser, but because I feel like I played one of my better games, the loss was a little easier to swallow.

We play Advanced Embroidery next monday night at 10.  The loss last night runs our record to 2-2-1 in the DMHL, and my overall record to 4-2-1, with a 2.41 GAA with 1 SO.

Perfection

So we played our second game of the very young season in the OMHL against the Chiefs, a perennial powerhouse.  Now, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I REALLY like how we look after our first two games.  Our first game was a grudge match, plain and simple, we wanted to kick the shit out of those bastards after the bullshit from the summer, we wanted to remind them that they won't have the same success over this season that they had over the summer season. (The Jailhouse lost again last night just in case anyone was wondering...)  Every single player in our locker room, to a man, before the puck dropped last week wanted to crush them, give them a lesson in humility...  And we did.

Enough about last week.

This week, against the Chiefs, we were perfect.  Absolutely perfect.  The guys played their hearts out in front of me, they forechecked, back-checked, they were tenacious, they dug in the corners, they blocked shots, and made all of the right plays.  Smart, heads-up hockey, from buzzer to buzzer.  I think that I may have seen ten shots, maybe less.  Our defense was absolutely flawless, impenetrable.  The guys were amazing last night out there on the ice in the defensive end.

As for our offense, it is fucking clicking.  The line of Jake, Rob, and Josh dominated.  They were relentless, they cycled well down low, threading passes to each other with amazing precision.  Even our defense got in on the act with a nice goal, and some very nice assists.  One goal in particular stands out to me, Jeff, playing D on the right side was about ten feet inside the blue line when he received a pass, and with pressure from the opposition mounting, threaded an amazing pass to Josh, who one-timed a quick little snap shot past the Chiefs goaltender, everything about that play was perfect microcosm of how the game went for us last night.  We were short a man last night, and had to move one of our regular D up front, and he scored twice, right now, everything is clicking for us.

Like I said before, it's early in the season, incredibly early, but I like the look of our team very much, and we are basically the same team, minus two players, that played all summer together.  The guys are comfortable with each other, they play off of each other perfectly, and they are getting to the point where they know where everyone is going to be on the ice.  The D knows when they can slide down from the point and take a chance on potting one, and the guys up front recognize those situations, and are able to get the puck to the right place at the right time for our defense men.  

You can feel the excitement among the guys, everyone seems to know their role, and everyone, so far, has excelled at his respective roll.  The mood in the locker room pre-game is always light, and we're always joking around, staying loose before we head out to the bench.  But the guys clearly know when to bear down and get serious, and in the first two games, they've been very "details" oriented.  We have depth at every position, in fact, we haven't even seen a few of the guys that are on our roster play yet, a 23 year old defense man, and a 40 year old veteran forward, who are expected to be regular players for us.

Right now I am full of optimism and excitement, I like how things are shaping up for us, and I love how the guys are playing right now, but how could I not, we're 2-0-0, and have scored 14 goals, with only 3 goals scored against us... 

Like I said though, it's early.