Like A Sieve

Now that was a disaster.  I played goalie last night, in the pickup game that is my usual place for playing net.  I was the only goalie there and when that is the case it makes things difficult.  Players are not as motivated at the other end of the rink because it’s just a cone in net, your own team is not as motivated to defend because their reward is shooting at a cone, I’m not as motivated because I don’t really have someone to beat.  I can’t ‘be better’ than an inanimate object.  That and the water was so deep on the ice I couldn’t go down to make stops in the warm up lest my pads get soaked because the flooding had not frozen yet.

I think in the hour I let in 8 or 9 goals, which for a game of pickup is really not *that* bad.  My issue was that I was letting in shots that I should have been stopping.  Just over my shoulder even after hitting me, off my pad and then in the net.  My angles were off.  Horribly!

It does not make for a fun night.

I’m glad that tomorrow I finally get to play my usual winger spot with my usual CFL team.  Last Saturday in net was actually very good.  I played both games, one for my own team and one for Calvery.  For Calvery it was a 5-4 victory, for my own team a 4-3 Loss.  But in the two games I made probably 75-80 stops even though I let in those goals, but only one of them was soft I thought.

That really is the excitement of being goalie though, either you are the hero, or the scapegoat.  You can be the wall that stops everything, or like a sieve, letting pucks go right past you.