Hockey Season Begins

With the close of my long running and baseball seasons (we lost in the semi finals 20-9, but I had a single and a triple and made some good plays) a new season begins.  Hockey.  I have been dying for hockey to begin for a while now and last night sealed the deal, I’m completely chomping at the bit now.  I went with Amber to watch my brother in law, Greg, play for his army regiment team.  It was a pretty good game that was a bit of a let down in the end as at one point Greg’s them, The Regiment, was up 8-4, but by they end they tied 10-10.  Entertaining at least but not the result we were all hoping for.  To his credit Greg did make a few amazing saves that brought us to our feet.

My hockey kicks off this Friday night at 11pm playing as goalie against Greg in a game that will feature just about as much defense as we saw last night.  I only played five games as goalie last year and three of those were glorified pickup hockey, one was with the group we are playing with Friday and one was for my usual team – versus the best opposition our four team league has to offer.  All the games were high scoring but in the end I had a .500 record as a goalie.

Definitely not something you’d want to have on your NHL job application!

The day after that on October 1st I start my season with the CFL Flyers the team I have been playing with for five years now.  What started as four on four hockey Saturday afternoons in Millbrook became a league and I cannot wait for this season to get going.  Our league is pretty good quality, and pretty much no jerks at all.  I love playing with and against 99% of all the guys in our league.  As you may have read here, last season I was voted the most improved player, a very humbling honour that I hope to live up to again this coming season.  You see this will be the first season where I am at ‘athlete’ condition from start to finish and am actually planning my workout days to compliment my playing hockey as opposed to just cramming workouts in where ever I can get them.  I did have great numbers last season, but I think they will be better this year since I won’t be doing a 1.5-2 hour workout each Saturday at midday before playing hockey at either 8:30 or 9:30.

The first year there looks pretty good, but the league that year was not all that strong and so those numbers are not a fair reflection of the amount of my skill, just an example of how a good player can seem better when the competition is a bit weaker, and I had great linemates.

My hope this coming year is to score 15 goals and 50 points, a reasonable set of milestones I think.  I told Jeff that I was going to outscore him because Boston beat Montreal in the playoffs, but I don’t think that is a very realistic goal, he’s pretty darn good.

Anyways if you live in the area and want to see some awesome free hockey, come on out to Millbrook Friday or Saturday and check it out!