Early game meant I left my skates to be sharpened last week without having to search the rink for ten minutes finding someone to get them back.
Sadly that may have been the highlight of the evening.
We were facing the best goalie in our league, who had a rare bad game last week. While our team won last week, when I basically stole the game. So I knew she would play well and we would likely be overconfident. And I was not wrong.
But personally I started out well, stopped a one on zero breakaway for the first shot of the game. Then kept playing well and making the stops I needed to until most of the way through the first period when our defender totally missed the puck and they got a free shot that went off my glove and in.
In the second we had even worse luck, I let in three goals in the period. One was a good shot on a breakaway when the puck bounced over our defender's stick before he fell down. One was a fluttering shot that I had lined up until it bounced on the ice and oddly bounced much higher than I expected, and I wasn't able to close my arm into my body fast enough. And the third was a really nice tip shot right in front of me, which would have been difficult to adjust to even expecting the tip, but I wasn't as the stick was one of my defender's.
The third included two more goals against. The first I knocked in with my own stick when it was passed in front of the goal. The last one of the game was another breakaway that I put my pad down and felt the shot hit it and then have no damn clue what happened or how it got in the net.
On the other end we had a decent number of shots but most of them were from far away from the goal and pretty easy saves. The other goalie stopped them all and got a solid shutout but despite letting in 6 I felt I had higher quality saves that I made than what our team forced her to do.
But the sharpened skates felt good and I felt I was moving well in the crease, so that was good. And it'll be difficult to have a game go worse than that one did, so it's all up from here.
