#2-6

The needlessly over complicated double elimination playoff format means we're still not done but at this point I'm personally feeling unsure if that's good or bad.

On the plus side the team converted on the chances we created to score, both of them. And personally my performance improved to mediocre, which was a sizable improvement over the previous game.

Still, the first goal was a good example of issues overall. I saw our left defencemen needlessly wonder to the right side of the ice when the puck was in the offensive zone, there was no discernable reason for him to have done this. However when their right winger got the puck it meant he was now free to skate all the way in toward our goal completely unopposed, which he did. I was forced to challenge him on the play when he was getting close to the goal, as neither defencemen had yet come back to that side of the ice to do so. I got a poke check in, not as good as I'd have liked but enough to get the puck away from him and not toward the goal. Instead it went toward the far side of the ice. That shouldn't have been a problem, as you recall our defence mysteriously had both defencemen on that side, however somehow neither one of them were able to get to the loose puck before the other team's player who simply shot into the empty net, just out of my reach as I dove back that direction to try to stop it. And while none of that was very great, the kicker to the play was after the goal was scored I was given the advice, by our left defencemen who started the whole thing, that I should keep my stick on the ice, which wouldn't have helped anyway!

That was probably the most glaring issue, that involved a goal anyway. There was also the guy who skated out of the play to come yell at me a second time about not stopping and trying to settle the puck for him to pick it up after he overskated a puck I'd stopped for him.

I know I make plenty of mistakes and I'm harder on myself than I probably deserve so I don't mind in general my own teammates getting upset at me from time to time, I just much prefer it being over the things I actually do wrong instead of over their mistakes.

In the end I'd estimate I bailed the team out of about half the mistakes that provided good scoring chances for the other guys, but that still equaled 6 goals against us for a pretty lopsided loss.

Some of these guys simply take this too seriously and suck some of the fun out of it and, I've said it before and will say it again, I really do believe the team not having even one female just allows for the aggression to feed on itself on the bench and leads to bad things happening.