It was great being back on the ice this week after a week away for vacation. There was a lot of hockey for the weekend too and the best of it was the scrimmage held to benefit Braking the Cycle. The idea for the scrimmage was hatched at the first of the month and over the three weeks–between the 20 people that skated and the 13 people who donated but couldn’t play Sunday afternoon–just over $1,600 was raised.
It was a tight scrimmage too. At the end of 70 minutes the score was tied up 11-11 so we did a quick shoot out where the light team prevailed by making two shots while the dark team made none. I enjoyed that it was balanced like that. The light team even had a ringer, courtesy of Dave, but the ringer spent most of his time setting up his teammates and working with them and that was very cool (and for me as a defenseman, it was a good challenge to try and shut him down because he had great moves).
Meanwhile, back in the league play, the Blizzard had a great Saturday night shutting out the B17 Bombers with a score of 7-0. This was a fun game where the team clicked very well together. While I had a couple goofs playing D, none were fatal. I even got a few shots on net, either from shooting from the point or making a rush. The Blizzard finish up the regular season this coming weekend with games on Friday and Saturday. Our playoff destiny lies there and I feel reasonably sure we’ll have a post-season.
The Wizards lost both weekend games–against the Moose 5-1 and against the Thundercats 7-0. The Moose game was tough as they only had six players to our 10. I was annoyed that I was on the ice for four of the five goals. They were tough to stop, but I should’ve been able to do better than that. For the Thundercats game, it was more about damage control. Earlier this season, we lost 13-3 to this team so I was expecting a challenge. However, the Wizards took a lot of penalties (rumor was that it was around 20 penalty minutes and maybe more) and as one of the D who didn’t take any, I was often on the ice to take care of the kill. I get the idea of making the other team uncomfortable to throw them off their game, but I think that can be done without quite so many penalty minutes. The Wizards finish out the regular season on Friday, but that is a game I must miss (and unfortunately, no playoff berth is at stake here).