Down with the sickness

I spent most of the day lolling around in bed as the beginning of some unfortunate illness has begun to sweep over me. Fever, sore throat, tired as hell.

It really ramped up in the afternoon and I was not feeling like strapping 40 lbs of gear on and getting peppered for an hour+ at 9:15 tonight. But I'm glad I did. It was a fun game and I played well most of the time.

Something about not feeling good, you just relax and play a simple game without any pressure. Almost always ends up in a good game. I was counting on that phenomenon for sure.

I even played the puck twice. One actually worked out really well. The other, no goal, but only because the shooter missed the completely vacated net.

Got a whopper of a bruise-lump on my inner thigh. I just don't know how the puck finds a way through all that padding to leave a mark like this. But I stopped it so it was all good.

One of the really good guys wasn't there, so that spared me some of my usual goals against by that guy just being a beast. I was getting tired the last 10 minutes or so though, and let a couple of dumb ones in. NBD. I was happy with my game overall.

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I was pretty disappointed to get in my car and see the 0-3 score in the Minnesota v Calgary game though. I'm watching the game now and honestly, it's not such a bad showing. Just a few bad minutes but still lots of quality chances for the Wild. If this game weren't on top of all the other bad games, I wouldn't think much of it. Kipper was absolutely phenomenal, too. Also nice to see Havlat looking more like a hockey player than like a Pouliot.

That said, I'm so impressed with how quietly effective Jose Theodore has been. It's a relief to just say, "Okay, we can give any game to our back-up and he'll do as well as (or lately, better than) our starter." Wild are luckier than they deserve in that respect. Or maybe Theo is unluckier than he deserves. Ha.

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Tomorrow night is the women's league championship. Looking forward to the game. Kinda hoping I still feel a little bit crummy, but not awful. I'm playing for the green team. They can usually put the points up pretty well, so if I can just keep the puck out of the net, I feel good about our chances.

Either way, I have no complaints about my first season of women's league. It's been unique, fun, and an interesting new challenge. I was worried when I started that it was going to make me worse with the slower and lower level of play, but I actually think this league has improved my ability to stay focused (or re-focus quickly) because the play is so erratic and unpredictable.

Anyway, just gonna keep doing what I've been doing there. In spite of being the championship, nothing really changes. $2000 saves, puck focus, stick on the ice, battle hard, free beer if we're lucky. ;)