A little clean-up from last night

Everything is a little shinier in the light of day and maybe it wasn't that bad last night. It's just that right now, the primary feeling when I make a save is just RELIEF. Not that rush of FUCK YEAH that I used to get. I miss the FY. I need the FY back. I lived for the FY.

And I can't even tell you the last time I was in "the zone"... I've been there and it's such a nice place. But now I feel like I've got bees in my head when I've got a play coming at me. I feel jangly in the brain, if that makes sense. Noisy mind. Instead of thinking how to stop them, I'm thinking how I've been beat in this scenario. Clearly, that's nota thought process that leads to success. I'm hoping having an extended break will help clear some of those cobwebs.

But I did have a few nice stops. One was a bouncy puck that I trapped against the top of my pad. This is the main reason I love my new glove... it isn't perma-flattened, so when I need to trap the puck against the ice or my pads or whatever, it's just got that nice round bowl shape that covers it right up. My old one, I'd end up shoving it further away from me or some dumb thing like that.

Had another that I trapped between my skate and the post and covered with my stick. Risky save but I could feel it between my skate and the post and I knew if I moved at all, the risk of it going in was pretty severe. Luckily I got a whistle before anybody was able to poke it free. It was literally just sitting on the line. Phew.

Also, the disastrous 5-hole I had last week was much better. Though we have this one new guy who has probably the fastest release of anybody I face at novice. Man, he can rip 'em off in a blink. He usually shoots instead of passing, so I need to just get lower and get down quicker. He just ripped one 5-hole, and I went down but the puck beat me.

A couple of things I feel like I need to work on in practice because I'm repeatedly getting burned:

1. Shots from the left circle. There's a whole swath of angle there that I just haven't learned to position myself for. I'm ALWAYS too far left and too deep, and they just bang it in just past my toe far side. Never happens from the right, but I think I just see fewer shots from that side due to hand-dominance.
   
2. Keeping focused on the puck when I drop into the fly. Hot Shot burns me on this at least once a week, where he'll blow down to about 3 feet above my crease, winds up a shot, and puts it right over my glove. But I realize, I'm dropping my focus on the puck when I fly so I'm not able to track it and try and catch it. One of these days, I'll get a glove on that move and I don't give a flying fuck what anybody thinks about it, I'm gonna ... tell him it was a GREAT shot with a big grin on my face. (See? I'm figuring it out.)

Anyway, SLICE tonight. This group is pretty much C-level, so it's great experience for me and I'm grateful for it. Wish I'd had time to get my skates sharpened though. Will have to get that done during the break because even at Willowbrook, the back half of my left skate feels so slippery, which means I'll be all over the place on that hard ice at SLICE.