What's With The Corner?

Updates of stuff. Let's start with hockey because why not? Specific efforts have been made to improve my goaltending. First, as an Xmas present from my long-suffering wife I took a semi-private lesson with a coach who wasn't a YouTube video. His name was Jim and the rink we were in was about twice the size of the room you're in - go ahead, look around and soak that in and if you're in a library just forget you read that - and to say it was helpful would win an award for understatement of the year.

Basically I, as can be expected, was doing pretty much everything wrong. He changed the way I moved, the way I stood, the way I dropped, the way I filled my water bottle . . . okay, not the last one.I was excited to take what I'd learned and try it out before my next game filling in at goalie for the Scurvy Dogs.

Didn't happen.

In addition, our regular goalie found a pad upgrade for me on some sort of goalie network while at the same time suggesting that the ancient, well-traveled pads I was using now might just be holding me back a bit. So for a ridiculously small amount of money a set of gently used pads/glove/blocker were shipped in from Canada THE HOME OF HOCKEY. They're huge, big puffy white slabs of goodness that make me feel like my previous pads had been railroad ties I'd been strapping to my legs. I looked forward to getting to try them before my next game filling in at goalie for the Scurvy Dogs.

Didn't happen.

No, via a combination of free tickets, kids things, and a blizzard I went into my game having never even had the pads on before, having not tested out my new bounty of knowledge. Which Kit was going to show up? The one who had those glorious two nights in the fall or the one who coughed up 13 during the Mustangs' slow slog as league whipping boys?

Meh. Somewhere in the middle. I did okay, I guess. We lost 3-1, which isn't too bad, and I didn't get beat by any dead-on shots. The first goal was a shot I didn't see that caught me wandering off the post when the shooter came out of the corner in traffic. The second was a rebound after the guy drove out of the corner and then dove or was knocked down. Either way he scored while on his stomach, flicking it in as I dove to cover it with 7.2 seconds left in the 2nd period. DAMMIT. That made it 2-1, and the goal they got in the 3rd was a pass from the corner (again! Ye gods, what the hell was going on with the corner?) that went to someone uncovered coming down the slot. Never had a chance on that one. I don't know how many saves I made, but it was a few. There was still a lot of scrambling and being out of position and not recovering quickly enough because I'm freaking old and lack flexibility but the combination of better equipment and actual training seemed to help. We gave a pretty good team a challenging game and it was fun. I get to be goalie against another top team this week, but at least they kicked their mini-Gretzky out of the league for being too good.

Staying busy otherwise. Still plodding along on my website, but as soon as I get it launched I'll announce availability as a freelance editor/writer. Not that I'm not available now, but it'll seem more professional to have a site to point to. Writing every morning on a possibly silly project that turning out to be both challenging and fun to create, and I can only hope it fits the bill of what they're looking for. The inclement weather has caused work to pick up, which is a good thing. Getting ready to sign the kids up for softball/baseball and will be coaching as well. Looking forward to Rabbitcon. Irked at numerous scheduling conflicts in the future. STILL waiting on an Xmas present for Lola, but sure it'll be worth it. Either a great idea or a total flop. Nursing along a sprained wrist after being slewfooted in the previous week's game. Chalked off all of Friday night for XCom 2 playing. Priorities, gang. Priorities.

Okay. Have to go move things to allow for the delivery of a new washing machine. TRY TO CONTAIN YOUR ENVY

It's In the Playbook. Really. Also the State of the Month

It all went according to plan.

Last night our intrepid Scurvy Dogs were locked in mortal battle against the Blue Devils. With about 3 minutes left we were down 1-0, having hit at least 3 posts and missing about a bazillion should-have-been goals. We were pressing, trying to get the equalizing goal, and suddenly I found myself scrambling back to defend against a two on one (did I mention I was playing defense instead of goalie? Probably not. I played defense last night. Rusty as a screen door at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, but whatchagonnado). I got to my blue line and spun, in good position to force the puck-carrier wide while cutting off his passing lane.

Then I caught an edge and wiped out.

How long, do you figure, does it take a body to go from upright to prone? A second or so, right? Pretty quick. Yet that tumble to the ice took an eternity for me, long enough for the following to flash through my head:
-Shit. This isn't good.
-Losing 2-0 is the same as losing 1-0 in the standings.
- Shit. I was even for the game.
-Are the people of Manitowoc all that blind and clueless? Really?
-Oh hey there's the ice ow

I had an advantage, though - I wasn't playing goalie. Instead it was our much, much better goalie Chaz, who stopped the guy who breezed past my sprawling form. I would like to take a moment to note that Chaz had played a game in goal about 3 hours earlier for one of his 346 other teams. Ah, to be young again. Anyway, one of our forwards picked the puck up on the backcheck, skated the length of the ice, and finally got one past their goalie to tie the game up.

JUST LIKE I PLANNED IT. Some Wile E. Coyote-level sooooopah genius stuff there, my friend. And did we win the ensuing shootout? Of course. Chaz doesn't lose shootouts. So now we find ourselves at 4-5, already with more wins than last year's 3-14 campaign. Is this a contract year for me?

(I better mention that Jeff G. played in the earlier game as well, otherwise he might invert my L6 lumbar or some other spinal thingie)
 In other news, goalies be goalie-ing. I've started my program of hitting clinic for reps and was rewarded by being pelted by eager skaters who hadn't had a puck sponge show up for a month. By the time we got to scrimmaging at the end of clinic I was so exhausted I could barely stand up.Old goalie is old. And because I'm not enough of a glutton for punishment I have a semi-private lesson with a goaltending coach on Saturday. Hopefully I'll be taught how to play, uhm, goal. Seriously. I'm just winging this thing right now.

Other things since I update on a lunar cycle:

The Boy got his blue belt Saturday, but I'm still waiting for the love of karate switch to flick on in his head. He likes it, he has fun, but he's not excited about practicing on his own or pumped up for sparring or whatever. I sat there DYING watching the kids spar for their tests, wanted to be out there SO MUCH. Well, not against the kids. The temptation is huge to start taking classes and thoroughly encouraged by my wife (SILENCE FOUL TEMPTRESS) but I just can't make that sort of time commitment right now. I have hockey 2 nights a week and gaming one night a week. Lola has derby at least one night, sometimes two a week. The kids still enjoy me reading to them, and if I started taking class two nights a week that would almost vanish. Plus if I'm serious about adding more clients on for editing/writing I need to have time to do the work (the websites and cajoling for work will come soon, I promise). So, I think for now I'll have to (regretfully) hold off. I need to take care of far too many things, PLUS I need start actively trying to find a gorram agent for the damn book I wrote, and get more stories out into the world, and keep working on this ridiculously silly writing thing I'm trying to do, and do construction for the play Becky's doing, and coach softball and baseball, and . . . I'm pretty busy.

Plus XCom2 comes out February 5th. I gotta keep my priorities STRAIGHT.

I Thought Elpis Didn't Get Out! - A Season In Goal

My first season* as a hockey goaltender ended this past Tuesday night, and it's not difficult to pinpoint the spot where things went awry. During the last week of October I had my regular gig for the Mustangs on a Tuesday and a fill-in game in goal the following night with the Scurvy Dogs, the team I usually play defense for. Two game in two nights was a recipe for disaster, but instead I lost the Mustangs game in a shootout, 5-4, and then somehow won the next game 3-1. Both sets of teammates were amazed (although none more so than me) but my exploits did a terrible thing - it allowed them to hope.

See, I went in knowing I was going to be terrible. I'm 47 and learning how to play a high-skill position with a marked lack of agility, lousy equipment, and zero formal training. My goal (ha!) was to keep the score against me under double digits each game, which is not as easy as it sounds. So when my goals given up went in successive games from 9 to 7 to 4 to 1 I got a false sense of confidence. Even worse, my teammates on the Mustangs got it too (the Scurvy Dogs were familiar enough with me to know I'd gotten lucky). Their expectations went up even as the law of averages began to exert itself. I had a couple of pretty lousy games in a row before somewhat straightening myself out this week - giving up 7 doesn't sound sexy, I know, but I faced at least 40 shots and the last two goals came at the end when we were shuffling guys around. I had a guy playing D in front of me who had no idea what he was doing and screened me so that I never saw the sixth goal, only felt it as it clanged off my cup on the way in (hurrah for the double cup. Hur-effing-rah). I ended up with a GAA of 8.22, which is  . . . nah, there's no way to spin that. It sucks, even if a few of my teammates have been gracious enough to suggest that our forwards were not exactly obsessed with fulfilling their defensive responsibilities. All I can do is try to make it better next season.

As for when I'll get that shot, I'm not sure. The Mustangs are on hiatus as the captain takes a season (or more) off and the others move to different teams. I was offered a skating spot with some of my teammates but am choosing instead to go to the adult hockey clinic once a week, where I'll be pelted with pucks by skilled players for the better part of an hour with nobody keeping score. It's the kind of no-pressure reps that I need, combined with a couple of semi-private lessons that Santa is rumored to be bringing me. Maybe that'll make me better. Not likely to make me worse.

* speaking of seasons, if you haven't been watching the just-concluded second season of Fargo you should probably do so when it becomes available again in February. Fantastic stuff.

Bells Will Be Ringing . . .

The chill from the ice felt good, even though the bars of my goalie mask kept me from actually touching it with my face. I was sweaty, repulsively so, with the absorbing band against my forehead losing a slow battle of attrition. It would have been nice to stay there for a while to cool off, to just relax for a bit and take a break from the barrage of pucks I'd been pelted with. But there was a game to finish, another ten minutes to play, so I needed to end my brief respite and somehow manage to release from the tight ball I was curled into. There had been a momentous collision between the puck and, well, my junk. My wedding tackle. My doo-dads. My, for fans of Jennifer Roberson, gehittes. Whatever you want to call it, I'd taken one in the chops.

Of course, it couldn't have been anything like a wrist or snap shot. No, this was a full-on slap shot, which for those unfamiliar with hockey is when a player about thirty feet away or so winds up like a spring and shoots the puck as hard as they can. The primary intent is to blast it into the net, but I'm of the opinion that most figure that creaming the goalie is a decent consolation prize. According to Guinness (the record people, not the beer) the fastest/hardest slap shot on record was clocked at 110mph (by Denis Kulyash of Avangard Omsk during the Russian All-Star game in 2011, in case you were curious and you probably were) and while it's safe to say the one that picked my ticket was nowhere near that zippy, it still packed a punch. I didn't drop to my knees. Not because I'm so manly but rather because I was already dropping to my knees to make the save due to being screened (people between me and the shooter - the offensive team does this on purpose) and not knowing exactly where it was coming from. So yes, part of a goalie's job is to just place themselves in a likely position and hope they get hit. There's enough padding to keep you safe - hell, my chest armor is like +2 splint mail - as long as you don't get hit where it ain't. Now I do have a cup - a Shock Doctor rig that fits right into compression shorts - but it still felt like someone had put a telephone book next to my stuff and hit it with a baseball bat. Kids, a telephone book was a big thick thing people used to use to find phone numbers. The hitting-a-phone-book-with-a-baseball-bat analogy was one that was used to describe the force with which Mike Tyson used to punch people. Kids, Mike Tyson is the guy with the mansion in the first Hangover movie. He used to be a frighteningly scary boxer until the crazy took over. Was I actually hit that hard? No. Maybe? I don't know. It hurt.

My wife Lola was at the game to witness all my goaltending grandeur, watching from the warmth of the upstairs viewing gallery. In the rink below her were four or five women who were wearing 'Slot Rocket Hockey Wives' shirts (Slot Rockets being the unfortunate name of the team we were playing) who were filming the game in addition to cheering and, uhm, howling. This is what Lola told me. I lack rabbit ears. Anyway, according to Lola while I was curled up on the ice they started cheering. Now if I'd given up a goal I could understand that but ladies, my giblets made the save. Hold your huzzahs for positive things.

Since there's no such thing as a back-up goalie in beer league hockey I had to soldier on, and unfortunately said giblets couldn't stop a couple of goals over the next few minutes. I should have made the saves but for some reason the whole 'feeling like I had rusty daggers plunged into my lower stomach' cut down on my mobility. I'd already given up a bunch before, although I could argue that none of those were what you'd call bad goals. Evidently the lunatics I have for teammates agree because they actually cheered me when I lumbered into the locker room after the game, saying it would have been 20-5 instead of 9-5 as a final if I hadn't done so well, and one of those nine was an empty-netter. Clearly they were all either already drunk (a possibility, as again there were a number of beers present on the bench during the game) or are just delusional. Either way works for me, as being a goalie with zero pressure other than to show up and, well, be willing to get up off the ice after taking a puck to the boys, is a wonderful opportunity and a great time.

Except for the whole getting hit in the package thing. I'll have to work on that.

Humble Pie a la Mode, Please

Most of my experiences playing goal are able to be sorted into neat little categories. For example, most of my games go into the 'We're outclassed talent-wise and I'm facing a bajillion shots so just use it as a learning experience' bin, wherein I do my best to ignore how many got past me and focus of why they did and how to stop them next time. Then there's 'Well that went better than expected' which is a variant of the previous one but with fewer goals against. Last week debuted two new slots: "Screwed up some but kept it close enough for us to have a shot' and 'Holy crap I didn't screw it up and we won OMG OMG OMG WTF', both of which are welcome additions.

This week? 'Wow, that was ugly and I basically destroyed any chance my team had in a winnable game'. Not as awesome, that one. I'll spare you the (boring and) gory details, but we lost 9-6 and I should have stopped at least 5 of those. I suppose I should have been surprised given my relative successes last week, but there was some sort of weird vibe going on. Not with my team - the Mustangs are so laid back that not only do they drink beers pregame, one of the players brought three cans to the bench for between shifts. Usually I'm filled with giddy excitement to go play, like a can of Coke someone shook up. I never had that this week, although I have no idea why. The stress of shuffling kids around pre-game? Anxiety over deadlines on a freelance job? Impostor's syndrome being a jerkweed? A million other things going on right now causing me to fret? Maybe, but normally when I hit the ice all that stuff gets left behind the boards. Not so much this time, though, and it showed. We should have won. I should have been better.

Still, I try not to beat myself up too much. First, it's a freaking game. Two, I'm a forty-seven year old doofus with zero flexibility trying to play goal with no training beyond watching a few YouTube videos. I've been doing this for like four months with leg pads that cause other goalies to shake their heads with pity at the sight of them. While I hate disappointing my teammates, I have to be realistic - I'm an old, clueless rookie. A noob. A neophyte. First level goalie with zero feats. It's supposed to be a learning experience and dammit, most of all, it's supposed to be fun. And it's going to be, especially if I can ever remember to bring some GF beer so I can drink too.

Post game only, though. Don't drink and goalie.

Wait, What Just Happened?

So I was wondering how I could top last week's 3 games in 4 nights insanity (not really) when the Hockey Gods decided to share their generous bounty with me. My games for Tuesday and Wednesday nights were both late starts - 10:20 and 10:50 respectively - and deadlines on some editing/writing side work were going to necessitate me getting up at my usual 5am wake up time. But where's the challenge in that, asked one of the Hockey Gods - I dunno, let's call her Netula, Lady of the Toe Drag - and so she smote my Scurvy Dogs goalie with too many other demands to allow him to make our game.

So. Back-to-back nights in goal. Well played, Netula. Well played.

My Tuesday game was with the Mustangs, who seemed inordinately pleased with me giving up an average of 8 goals a game. We were playing a team that was also 0-2 and I desperately wanted to put in a strong showing and lead the team to victory. Well, I spit that bit. Ye gods, I spit it over the boards and out of the arena. Of the three goals I coughed up in the 1st period two were just awful. This didn't help with the impostor syndrome I'm suffering from every time I put on the pads (not to be confused with the impostor syndrome I get while writing or the different impostor syndrome I get while editing or the impostor syndrome I get while GMing or . . . well, there's lots of them. Also, 'impostor' and 'imposter' are interchangeable, although my spellchecker prefers the former). In the 2nd period I got into a better rhythm and started making some saves I had no right to, while a new player wearing a dirty white jersey that looked like your disgusting pillow (don't deny it) started skating circles around the other team. 3-1. 3-2. 3-3 at the end of the 2nd. Dare I hope?

I dared. And, lo and behold, we took the lead with ten minutes left, at which point the clock began to run backwards. Okay, it didn't really, but that's what it felt like as the next five minutes crawled by. I made a few more saves but eventually their ringer came in on a breakaway and scored as I got some but not enough of his shot with my glove. DAMMIT. The next few minutes were fraught with tension any time the puck came into my zone, but we made it to the end of regulation tied at 4 and I was rewarded with . . . a shootout. For those who don't know, at rec levels hockey games that end in a tie are settled by a shootout, which consists of each team sending in an unimpeded skater alone against the goalie. This lasts for three rounds and the winner is the team who scores the most (or gives up the fewest, to keep you pedants happy). My team suggested to the other guys that they both leave the ringers out of this, which they agreed to and promptly disregarded. He came in second, after I had miraculously stopped the first guy, cruising in until he was about 15 feet from the net. I'd been drifting back, as I've been taught to do, and maybe I should have been more aggressive because the SOB cranked up from there and let loose a slapshot. At least he was skilled enough to hit the net instead of me. My team missed all three of their chances and thus we lost, but my captain was absolutely exuberant because we'd only lost by one. This team had a rough season in the summer, methinks. Anyway, thank goodness for low expectations.

In the locker room a guy I didn't know (and, if I'm correct about who he was, played with all the speed and skill of a three-legged sofa) said to me, "Yeah, during the 1st period I was watching you and rolling my eyes, thinking 'what the eff is up with him?' But then you buckled down over the rest of the game and man, you really showed me something." Uhm, thanks? So glad to be blessed with your approval. Maybe if you backchecked occasionally I'd be even more impressive. MAYBE.

Wednesday morning at 5am found me tired and cranky. When I was done editing it looked like I'd slit someone's throat next to the monitor. BLOOD FOR MY EXHAUSTION. I hit the ice at 10:50pm against the unknown quantity of the House team. When I was on the House team, we went 0-17. Last summer, they went 5-3 and made the playoffs. No idea what you're going to face. I just wanted to avoid letting up the early goal and putting us in a hole. Of course that meant a minute in one of their guys came in on a partial breakway and ripped a shot destined for the far corner. It should have gone in, but Netula took pity and allowed me to kick my right foot out and deflect the puck away. And so we were off.

Much like last week, we dominated. And also like last week, we couldn't score. Their goalie made some great saves, but we missed a slew of open nets. This made me even more nervous but I just kept turning shots away. We broke through late in the 1st and I knew I had to try to keep them off the board for 30 more minutes.

It almost worked. We absolutely peppered their goalie with shots but he made save after save. Our best player was stymied on numerous breakaways. On my end, Lady Netula continued to smile at me as they missed at least three nice cross-ice passes that should have been goals. I saved a bunch as well, but finally they broke in 3 on 1 and a shot tipped off my glove and went under the crossbar, almost exactly the same as the tying goal from the night before. This happened with 11 seconds left in the 2nd. 11 seconds. Grrr.

The tension continued to build until about 5 minutes into the 3rd period, when we scored on a power play  to take the lead. That increased my anxiety because I didn't want to blow the lead again, but we (like how I use 'we'? Like I'm the one out there scoring) chipped in another to give me some breathing room and then tacked on two more to finish it off. The final was 5-1. By virtue of having the one truly awesome scorekeeper/board operator (he not only blasts a computerized foghorn on goals, he also plays music during breaks in the action. I may or may not have been dancing to One Direction out there. Results are inconclusive at this point) I see that I made 20 of 21 saves on the night for a Lundqvistesque-like save percentage of .952 (I will take this with a grain of salt as he has the other goalie only facing 19 shots, which is probably around 40 short of the actual total). I finished a game having given up one goal. Unthinkable, and largely due to my teammates who did just about everything right all night. Maybe we're getting better or maybe the House team was just terrible. Either way, I'll take the win. My first. Hopefully not my last.

Despite my sparking goals-against-average of 2.50 for the pair of games the position of goalie for the Scurvy Dogs was and remains Chaz's, who is so much better at it than I am that it's almost discouraging. Still, my knees aren't bitching too much today and I've accomplished something I always wanted to do, even if the scoresheet says Chaz did it.

4, 3, Part 3, Whatever

So, third game in four nights. The evening off had helped to lessen some of the creaking from my old bones, and I figured I'd be set anyway as my team has a roster with 17 skaters on it. Hell, just to be safe I told one of the subs to come as well. Now if all 18 showed up that would have made for a crowded bench and there would have been kvetching about playing time.  There's never really enough of it, is there?

Well . . .

I use a service called Teamsnap to keep things semi-organized for the Scurvy Dogs. It lets me send out group emails, tracks our schedule and sends out reminders, and, perhaps most importantly, lets everyone mark their availability (or lack thereof) in one place so we have an idea what kind of numbers we're going to have. I didn't think we'd have a full squad - we almost never do - but my hope was that they're be enough players so that if I needed to skip a shift, it wouldn't be a problem. Because, again, who wouldn't want more playing time?

Well . . .

Little green checkmarks that meant people were coming kept changing to red no-shows. At the drop of the puck we had nine players. Nine. How'd we get there?

out - in Texas
out - unknown
out - in Scotland
out - sick
out - wife had to give lecture, had to watch kids
out - unknown
out - seeing Anthrax (or some other metal band)
out - unknown
out - showed up to play but forgot his pants. I cannot make these things up. He forgot his hockey pants. Of course he was a defenseman. Why does that matter? Read on, my friend. Read on.

So, what does a reduced roster mean? Well, leaving the goalie out of the whole equation, nine skaters breaks up best as two sets of  forward lines (three players each) and the three defensemen sharing the two spots, which means someone is always going to be doubleshifting. To exacerbate the quandary one of my fellow defensemen, a little bit older but the best of us anyway, admitted he was feeling 'a little under the weather' and would appreciate it if we could give him breaks if he needed them. Right. So, our games are 45 minutes long and since you have two defensemen on the ice at all times that means there's 90 total minutes of playing time to be accounted for. Between three players. Including one who wasn't feeling well. Ye gods.

I have no idea how much time I actually played. Kind of a blur, really. I know I started the 3rd period and didn't come off until over six minutes had elapsed, which is regoddamndiculous. Bad things happened during that time as our opponents scored twice - the first two goals of one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played in. It was evenly matched for the most part, but it's with stunned recollection that I say we absolutely dominated the first ten minutes of the game. Crushed it. Made them feel like, well, like we usually do in the first ten minutes of the game, scrambling around as the other team keeps the puck in for what seems like an eternity. We did everything right, everything -  except score. I made the best pass of my life to a wide-open teammate but the ensuing shot hit the post. The goalie made saves on shots he never saw. Chaz was terrific too, and it was 0-0 until the 3rd. We finally bashed one in with 2 minutes left and pulled the goalie, but they tacked on an empty netter and I had the only loss out of the three this week that bothered me (I'm choosing to ignore that my teams were outscored 16-1. Irrelevant. It would be boorish of you to mention it again. Boorish). It was a game we could have won, maybe should have. I'm willing to shoulder a good chunk of the blame. I had a great first periods, methinks, but as the game wore on I started to miss passes, overskate pucks, make lousy passes of my own, and torpedoed a power play chance in the 2nd. Fatigue? Maybe. Getting accidentally slewfooted by a teammate didn't help either, but in the end I still had the familiar joy that always grips me when I take the ice. A win would have been cool, though. Maybe next time.

My legs put up a mild protest when I got up at 5am, but either I'm in shape or the naproxin is keeping them in check for now. I reckon I'll know the answer to that in a few hours when it wears off.