Thank you, Nick!

Remember when you told me that nobody can shoot a puck if it's in front of them? Honest to Roy, it took me until tonight to internalize and act on that bit of knowledge. Sometimes I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree.

Anyway, having that "Ah-ha!" moment (as opposed to an A-ha moment):


Like I was saying, having that "ah-ha!" moment saved a lot of goals in the practice drills and made my life a lot easier.

I was definitely better than last novice game, though I felt like my footwork was crappy at times and I was getting beat by all the deking mother fuckers in close. This is where a little b-fly slide skill would come in handy maybe. Probably could have poke checked more of those, but I wanted folks to be able to get a shot off (though I still poked a few of them if they were trying my patience).

Let in three during the scrimmage. One that I was too deep and it tipped in off my glove. (Wave hello!) Another that I dropped down to stop and thought my right pad was on it, but I guess it wasn't fully and one of them swept it in. One was a screen where I wasn't even thinking "drop" yet and I was out of position and boom it was in (this was Becky, Scott... She was so excited, she let out this shriek when she saw it in the net, and was pressing the rest of the game. Woman can smell blood in the water with the best of them.) I had some new defensemen and was screened a LOT tonight. Fortunately, they were pretty good d-men (other than the screening) so they cleared it most of the time.

Luther decided to do penalty shots instead of throwing anybody in the box, so I got to deal with that, but he had the newest girl, Amanda, take the shot (they were hollering for Peed to do it but Luther showed me some mercy), so it was one of those annoyingly unpredictable novice league type shots where she lost it a couple of times and had to re-set herself. She did good though, trying something other than just a straight shot and got me moving, which was smart because I wasn't getting around as well as I'd have liked.

Coulda just poke checked it away from her a couple of times, but decided to let her shoot. I'd almost rather see a penalty shot than have to kill for 2 minutes. One person shooting is more predictable. Plus, rebounds don't matter. Just get some lumber on it.

Anyway, it was fun, other than the practice drills getting a little old after a while. Need to hit up my stick and puck buddy and see what his week looks like. I should be itching to go again by Wednesday. Get me nice and tired for the Aeros game that night.

At least I'm back in the head space where I'm really happy to be the goalie. But I'm in a comfortable spot which means it's time to learn something new, push myself in a new way. Hopefully at stick and puck this week, I can make some headway in that regard. At the very least, I can hopefully finagle another cougar attack on one of the cute young hockey boys. Speaking of which, this is funny.