Last night for the first time since i was 18 years old,( i am 34 now so you do the math) , i played goal in an organized league hockey game! Now i have played pick up a few times over the last couple of years, but i have not played in a game with referees and league points at stake. My friend Dan emailed me last week and asked if i could play goal for their team on saturday night as their goalie was unable to make the game. My first thoughts were hell no! I was nervous and afraid that i would suck and we would lose 25 to 0. I responded via email to him saying something like, i would love to but i am terrified of sucking and letting in double digits worth of goals. He replied by saying, but what if you stand on your head and we win the game. I could not argue with that and decided that yeah, i would play saturday night.
So saturday came way to quickly and i went over my gear so i knew i had everything and wasn't about to forget anything. My gear is somewhat old and rather vintage like, but i dig it and am happy i have full gear.
I was the first person on our team to arrive at the rink, we were playing in Richmond at the Forum. I suited up and as my teammates began arriving I informed them that i had not played in quite sometime and they should be prepared to play some serious defense and score some goals for insurance purposes.
I hit the ice for warm up and figured out pretty quickly that i am seriously out of shape and fairly under conditioned. With a water bottle on top of my net , and a few words to the man above i prepared for the opening face off.
I will not go into great detail, but i will say that we never once had the lead, and yet the outcome was respectable. Tied at one goal a piece after the opening period i felt good and that we had a serious chance to win this one. However after the 2nd period we were trailing 3 - 1. Both goals in that period were weak ones that i would like to have back. Here is the best part of the story though. I shut the other team out in the third period and we scored two goals to tie up the game and head into overtime. Nothing was settled in overtime so the game remained a tie and a point was earned for each team. I let in a few weak goals but made some key saves in the third to keep us in the game and eventually tie it up.
I must say that i had an absolute blast and hope the two fans that were in attendance enjoyed the game!
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