It's Shake and Bake, and I helped

What a weekend! Some truly awful hockey. Some truly amazing hockey.

Aeros: Effing awful weekend redeemed by stellar play from--who else?--Brusty (and an Aeros team that finally managed to provide some goal support) in Sunday's game. Everybody finally got it together under the same roof at the same time Sunday, which hadn't otherwise happened all weekend. They were a hot mess Friday and Saturday.

USA USA USA: Okay, call me a traitor but I didn't really care who won that game yesterday. I adore Canada. I know the words to O Canada by heart. I love that sieve Brodeur. Canada gave me hockey, so Canada is tops in my book and always will be. But I admit, I was pretty jacked for the Americans to end up winning it. By the end, I wanted them to win. Mainly because Ryan Getzlaf is a shit. But then Patty Kane is a megadouche, so whatever. It's all a wash.

Ryan Miller was both amazing and lucky. Brodeur was neither. But I still love him. Buck up, Fatso. You're still the cat's pajamas.

Finland: You think they're regretting promising the starter spot to Kipper? Backstrom is better. And any guy who isn't willing to EARN his starting job doesn't belong on an Olympic team, IMO. When you're putting together the Finnish All-Star Game, then sure, make him the starter. But you play your best guy at the Olympics and I think that guy is Nik Backstrom.

Brahmas: They finally ended their win streak with a 1-0 loss in Wichita yesterday. Palmer was in goal though (stopped 39 of 40... Jesus!) so Jaeger's streak could still continue. Yeah yeah, first star again.

Novice: We had a practice last night and Scotty came out to work with Jess and me. Poor Scotty. All proud Canadian surrounded by a bunch of loud-mouthed, hockey-lovin' Americans. He was bitter but didn't take it out on us, apart from requiring push-ups for any goals we let in during one of his drills. Bahhh...

It was good though, as it always is when Scotty comes out. I'm 95% comfortable on my new sharpening (3/4) on my strong side, but I still can hardly shuffle on the right. I wasn't great at it before but now I can only go a few inches. It will come. The thing is, EVERYTHING else apart from shuffling is easier and crisper now. One of the best decisions I've ever made as a goalie was to get that deeper hollow. There. I said it. Of course, keep in mind, I don't make a ton of great decisions as a goalie so the bar was low. :)

Anyway, we did a few drills. One horseshoe drill that probably didn't feel like much to the skaters, but was a lot of work for the goalies. Endless stream of breakaways. I finally just had to leave my net and go get my Gatorade off the other net. I was feeling ookie.

Then we scrimmaged for 40 minutes. I think we must have been on the ice for a good 1:40 or so. Phew. I got a little foggy headed and didn't play the scrimmage very well, but I did have one huge flurry of stops just before the final buzzer. Coach Dan was in the box (because Scott was "officiating" and wanted to call a penalty--ha!) so we were short handed.

Anyway, it was one of those little top of the crease scrambles where you just get low and be big and pray. Probably made 3 pad saves before I finally got a glove on it. OMG my hips were hating me from all that pinball flapping I was doing. It was the highlight of my night though, so it was nice to end on a good note. Got me a nice forearm bruise, too, from one of Scotty's drill shots. Sweeet. :)

Even better is that I'm playing SLICE tonight, so I'm happy about that. But not too happy. I figured out that I'd been trying to hang on to that amped up feeling I get when I'm really excited to play, because I kinda thought that was how I was supposed to feel. But apparently that's just not a productive state of mind for me. So yesterday, when I got that feeling during the day, I just talked myself back down and stayed even keeled about it.

It think that helps a lot. But we'll see tonight, because I am pretty excited to play tonight, but I have to just let that go and get my Zen on. So far so good.

One of my all time favorite songs: