Where is the positive in a 7-0 shellacking ?
The answer is that its a great lesson in what not to do when you play a hockey game... Oh we didn't get the bounces... and for sure that happened, but remember you have to make your bounces. It helped expose some key weakness in our team at a good time before playoffs so we can make the proper adjustments and not suffer such a crippling failure at a critical time.
One of the problems with non professionals... some people never learn... it's just a game and a chance to go be one of the guys. Of course I don't buy that horse shit for a second, but you need to know what you have and then play accordingly. A group with lesser talent can beat a group of greater talent by working together, and that is one of the great highs of the game. I always remember those times when every player buys into the plan and plays up to their best level within the scope of the team, and the team wins the game. It is really one of the greatest feelings... like a band playing a tight show.
Oddly enough this team i play with has on it a fellow who i knew from way back in my early rock and roll days. He was a Jazz guitar player in a wicked band and i was a maniac in an insane band and we did some 4 track recording in the day and played a few "improv" shows together.
We sat beside each other in the dressing room tonight disecting the game in the same way that we would have disected a live show years ago. A very scientific evaluation of the events. Hockey like music often suffers from peoples unauthentic recolection of what actually went wrong. It's a human problem... obviously i didn't do anything wrong lets find some other fault is the way we work in this century.
The raw fact is we got pushed around... in another game with another referee perhaps there would have been some calls, but there wasn't so you need to push back and put your anger into the game not verbally at the referee. The more we fell behind the more we shot into the opposing goalies breadbasket... the more we tried to catch up the more we fell behind. When you start trying to cheat (for offence) in hockey it's kind of like drilling another hole in the rowboat that is floating above the reef in shark infested waters.
I actually believe we needed a sharp defeat... one of the dudes asked me how it felt not scoring as i seem to be good for about 3 points a night up until this night. I know what i did wrong on all my chances tonight... and that's a good thing. I have always been a prolific point scorer in hockey all my life... I never made pro clearly, but it's a funny thing being a point producer... I"ll make the analogy to music again... the band that does well is shitty and got all the breaks just like the guy who puts up all the points is a puck hog. When I was 14 I won a scoring title in some Toronto league and some of the guys on my street who went to school with other guys I played in the league with started telling me I had the reputation as a "Puck hog" even though I led the league in assists. For the record it was my right winger Nate Lindon that really helped me win the title... he was always open and could always finish... in the end I beat him by a point or two, but it could have easily gone the other way. I'd carry the puck down into the zone and he would put it in the net.
it's just the way it goes.
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