Badgers win it

I almost don't even want to write about tonight's women's league game, because every time I write about good things, I suck for a while.

But we won, I think the final was 5-2. Our captain gave me the MVP prize, which I thought was very nice, but it was such a team win and she acknowledged that she wished she had a whole barrel of MVP prizes. The girls showed up, played their hearts out, won puck battles left and right, and just generally gave me a ton a confidence and played spectacular defense in front of me.

First goal, the stupid VHS would have stopped it, but meh. Second goal was me drifting to the shooter and she beat me inside the far post. Dangit.

But otherwise, I stopped quite a few breakaways from a few girls and some tough close-in shots, too, including the new one on that team, who is very good (and was so frustrated by me stopping her repeatedly, late in the game after a save, she comes up to me and says, "Man, you're pretty good!" Uh. Yeah, you keep thinking that. Haha. Nice to hear from a youngster like that though. I'll take compliments where I can get them.)

Anyway, I was just seeing the puck pretty well and managed to keep the crazy bounces out of the net, but huge credit to my team for clearing out my endless rebounds. I love love love my defensemen.

I always wondered when I'd have to cover the puck wayyyy out of my crease and I finally did that tonight. I didn't know what else to do about this puck that was coming down to my end with moderate speed, but had a gal coming in on it pretty much alone also with moderate speed. I didn't feel like I had time (or skill, frankly) to play the puck, so I just belly flopped and slapped my glove over it. Must have been above the hash marks, at least. Pretty far out there for freezing a puck...

Probably looked stupid but it got the job done and it was better than a breakaway shot.

One of the gals in the league was there and filmed the game for us, so we watched it back while we drank a little beer after. I can't even comprehend how slow it looks from the sidelines vs. how fast it feels when you're playing. It's like, "Really? THAT'S the game we just played?" Doesn't make sense to me. Feels very hopeless when I contemplate playing against faster players because I'm sure my "faster" drop-in on Mondays would still look very slow on video.

Ah well. No thinking. Just puck stopping. Amazing stuff. I love this game.