Kiss me through the phone

I heard that craptastic song on the way home from hockey tonight and didn't change the station. I figured that's a pretty good sign I'm in a good mood after my game, in spite of letting in a few more goals than I would have liked.

I think I let in 5 or 6. They didn't keep up the score properly in the third period and I have one of those "short memories" that was especially short tonight because one of my objectives for the evening was to stay even-keeled emotionally. Which means, a goal goes in, I think for about 5 seconds about what went wrong, and then I get up and forget it happened.

But like I really forget, though I do try to remember the gist of the post-goal analysis so I can take away what went wrong and think about it later.

I know on a couple of them, I didn't read the trajectory of the puck very well and it went high on me, and I dropped in the fly.

And on another couple of them, I drop in the fly and it whizzes just past my toe and in, which tells me I was a shade deep and, on one of them, just a bit off angle. I turned around to look at the puck in the net and the net wasn't where I thought it was.

That's actually pretty unusual for me because one of the few things I have a pretty good knack for is knowing where my net is. But I chalk that one up to experience.

Another, I overplayed the shooter's deke as I dropped and slid to the right, and showed too much net on my left.

Really, I chalk 'em all up to just skill and experience tonight. Which is a success in my book because none of them were caused by me being lazy or unfocused or low energy. I felt really even across all three periods and could have played another period before my performance would have started to drop.

I had an AWESOME breakaway stop on Jessica though. I was so patient and just stayed with her. Very proud of that one. One of those where once I'm alone again in my crease, I'm all "FUCK YEAH!" to myself. But now I know to give myself the, "Good job, but you still have to stop the rest of the pucks" lecture after patting myself on the back. I am learning to talk to myself more constructively during games.

Anyway, I felt really good tonight. Just really comfortable and focused. Right in the groove where I strive to be when I'm in goal. No panicking but still appropriate urgency and hustle. I did fuck up one situation where red dumped the puck in and I had to go out and stop it, but my player got there at the same time I did and I ended up whacking it right to the stick of an opponent. Oops.

Just a nasty case of tunnel vision and not knowing who was surrounding me. Fortunately no goal came of it. My D played amazing tonight, especially right around the crease and especially Mitch, who has a groin pull and gimped around the ice rather painfully all night. He didn't have his wheels but he played his heart out and I love him for it.

My knee talked to me allllll night. I'm really not looking forward to practice next week because I'm up and down so much doing drills, it really causes that pain to flare up. But I'm kinda looking forward to a practice where I'm just seeing lots of grown-up shots. I miss that from going to stick and pucks during the week. I don't really get that on Saturdays.

Can't tell you the last time I actually had a real shot hit me. I miss it so much. These shots on the ice or these 1 mph skate-ins where it takes 3 days for the shooter to make a move are like foreplay. All well and good, but I'm not wearing 40 lbs of gear to stop 10 mph shots. For shit's sake, someone lay some goddamn rubber on me like you fuckin' mean it! Let's get it on!

Oh, what the hell -- let's stick with a theme...