Six weeks later, I'm still that green novice, so maybe my version of Squanto never showed up.
Week Six saw a return to drills and skills, as this session served as a practice sandwiched between the previous week's scrimmage and next week's actual game.
After warming up a bit, we were told to make a few laps around the rink. On the whistle, we had to change direction and go the other way. I was feeling pretty good about myself, admiring my mastery of slowing down enough that I could drag my back foot to stop. Compromise!
Next up was some backwards skating, an area I'm better at than I thought. I'm still not a smooth skater by any stretch of the imagination, but "line up, backwards!" doesn't strike the same fear into my heart as "stop on the line!"
As I was making one of my trips (backwards) up the ice, one of the coaches (the one who coaches my blue team in the scrimmages) said "hey, you got new skates!"
Feeling like a wife who got her haircut, only to have no one notice, I replied, "yeah, three weeks ago. They were two sizes too big."
"Good, those ones look a lot better. But still too big," he said.
Seeing another trip down 128 to Play It Again Sports in my future, I just lied.
"Nah, they're OK, I just didn't tie them tightly enough," I said, patting myself on the back for my smooth answer. "I was rushing to get down here."
As I finished that sentence, I was reminded that I was, in fact, going backwards on ice, as I stumbled and did one of those log-roller arm flaps to keep my balance.
Me, trying to stay on my feet while skating backwards.
Perhaps sensing that multitasking was just a bit too advanced for me, my coach finished the exchange with, "good, they look like they're a lot better," and skated away. Thanks for noticing, coach.
We took a few more laps, including some with the puck, and I was feeling like a regular Gretzky (the hockey one, not the Instagram one): two drills in, no falls, no embarrassments. Is this it?
"Alright, line up on the end, we're going to be pushing and pulling."
Uh oh.
We had done this drill before (it looks something like this, but instead of a gray block, there's another human), where I skated with nice guy/teammate Bobby. He went easy on me, but was nowhere to be found this time. Instead, I got paired up with member of the yellow team who is somewhat unsteady on his skates, so I figured we could fail together.
I was instructed to push first, meaning he had to offer resistance while skating backwards. I didn't push too hard, because I didn't want to send this guy tumbling backwards. However, a few strides in, I was, ahem, "implored" by one of the coaches to go faster.
"You gotta move your legs, skate, SKATE, don't just glide!"
My manhood challenged, I took off like a rocket, dragging my partner along in my wake. By that, I mean that I went a little faster, we managed to stay standing, and reached the end successfully. No falls, no bruised egos.
Except now it was my turn to BE pushed, which isn't my strong suit. Yellow guy began skating, and I dug in as best as I could. Fortunately, he wasn't exactly a power skater, and I managed to stay standing up. Aside from one or two log roll flails (see above), I hung in there. Same for the pulling drills that followed, so I was doing alright.
Any good feelings I had about my skating quickly evaporated with the next drill: turning around. We had to skate to the blue line, turn around in-stride and skate backwards to the next blue line, then turn around again and skate forward to the end line.
You know how those action movies make spinning a car around at full speed look really easy? It was like that, only on skates. And a Lamborghini on skates, I am not.
First time: fall.
Second time: spin around a full-360 degrees, then just keep going.
Third time: go slow enough to actually turn around OK, only to then lose an edge and fall.
GREAT SUCCESS.
The ensuing drill was crossovers, the figure-8 type skating drill we had done before. It was during this drill that we saw the first injury of the clinic, as Yellow Guy partner went down hard while coming around a corner. You could hear the "thump" from halfway up the ice, and he stayed down for a bit. He ended up catching his wrist between the ice and his stick, jamming it a bit. He eventually skated off and took a breather, but came back later on.
For the crossover drills, the coaches wanted us to stay on the circles as best we could, not skate inside of them or too far outside. Then, just for fun, they had us do the crossover drills with a puck. So it wasn't enough to have us skate on a tightrope; no, we also had to carry a puck on the tightrope.
The final drill of the night was a 2-on-1, in which two forwards, using only one half of the ice, had to get by one of the brave, kind souls who had volunteered to learn to be defensemen. Bless them.
My first trip up the ice was pretty much an unmitigated disaster, as my partner passed me the puck, I passed it back, and he then sent a pass four feet ahead of me. Rush = over. The next time through I did better, carrying the puck for a bit until we got near the defenseman, then flipping a pass to my partner, who rushed by him. I kept going towards the net, just to finish the drill, but wasn't really skating, so it was a good thing my partner decided to shoot on his own.
With the session winding down, we were told to put the pucks in the net for a scrimmage: three on three, no goalies. Since we had no goalies, the nets were put face-down on the ice, and a "goal" could only be scored by hitting the netting on the top (the part where the goalie's water bottle rests); hitting the pipe around that netting wouldn't be good enough.
Three on three hockey is pretty fun, as there's really no defense: it's just attack and counterattack, and even more so when there are no goalies. On my line's first shift, we controlled the puck the entire time. I started off the shift by collecting a loose puck in our zone (both teams were ordered to change on the whistle) and passing it up ice to a teammate. Hey, I didn't turn it over this time!
He then took off, creating a 2-on-1, and rung a shot off the post. After some more pressure in their zone, I found a rebound in the slot. My eyes probably got as big as the moon, with visions of my first career goal filling my head. I took the shot:
Clank.
Right off the crossbar.
One of my teammates eventually corralled the puck and managed to score, so the shift wasn't a total loss; however, I headed back to the bench dejected. I must have been in a hurry, because I (along with one other teammate) went in the wrong door on the bench.
I realized this when it came time to take the next shift, and the three people at the end of our bench looked at us, waiting for us to go.
"No, no, we just came off," I said. The look of derision they shot us was worse than the looks a shopper gets when he brings 13 items to the "12 items or less" line. What we did, essentially, was similar to getting to the front of the line at a checkout counter, then step back and let the three people behind us go through first. Not the best system.
"Guys, let's try to keep the order on the bench, we don't wanna be gettin' mixed up," a blue teammate said.
Gee, I wonder who he was talking too?
My next shift saw me attack the puck carrier at our blue line, only to have him dump it in further. We were under siege, unable to fill the passing lanes due to only having three bodies on the ice. The yellow team got a few shots off, but both hit the side of the net. The puck came back to a defenseman, and I charged at him, hoping he'd either A) miss it or B) be so intimidated by me that he'd skate away and I'd have a breakaway.
I ended up lifting his stick and taking off with the puck, with the man on my tail. Like the previous scrimmage, I got to the attacking blue line, going full speed, before I realized it was time to start thinking about stopping. I didn't think I'd be able to backhand it in, so I threw a blind drop pass, hoping my teammate would be there.
He was, and he rung one off the post too. Later in the shift, that same teammate had a breakaway. I followed him up ice, creating what was essentially a 2-on-0. He hit the post again, and the puck bounced right to my stick.
From there, everything went in slow motion: the puck was on my stick. I was all alone, cruising in. I flexed the stick, and took the shot. As it flew through the air, I heard the "Chariots of Fire" music playing. It was headed towards that rectangle of netting...
Goal.
I threw my stick and gloves up in the air, and jumped into the boards, Ovechkin-style. Players from both benches streamed onto the ice to congratulate me, then carried me off the ice like Rudy...
...either that, or I was so excited and confused about actually scoring that I kind of just turned around and headed back up ice. "No big deal, I score all the time," is what my body language said, while inside I felt like this kid:
The scrimmaged finished up a short time later, and the only remarkable thing I did was get praised for my effort on the forecheck. Our blue squad ended up winning 4-0, meaning we still haven't lost a scrimmage.
After that, we were told to line up and do one set of Herbies. Using my new found roller blade-style stop, I managed to half-ass them just enough to look convincing.
I walked off the ice and up the stairs to get changed, looking for the goalscorers locker room. I heard it had couches and beer on tap and models to massage the skate pains away. Turns out such a place doesn't exist, and us goalscorers just dress with everyone else.
Weird.
Up next? An actual game, as my blue team will play a team from the D League.
This should be interesting.
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