Me crashing the net (and being defended against).

Fighting to keep the puck in the zone.

8 September 2000
Last night we played the last game of the first round of playoffs. I got knocked in the head and sent sprawling by one of my own teammates on my first shift, which proved to be a metaphor for the rest of the game.

Physically, I was doing great—despite the head blow and having taken a puck in the ankle at Sunday's pickup game. I was skating hard and playing hard. Mentally, however, I was completely addled. On one line change, G skated out and told me that next time I'd be going in on right wing. When the time came, I skated over to right wing... only to find K already there, as he had been on the last shift. I went back to left.

The next time I went out, I tried to ask J and G where I should be going in, got no answer, and so skated to the faceoff circle in left wing position. I hadn't even stopped yet when the puck was dropped. Our center shoved it back into the corner, so I went after it, looked for a red jersey, and passed up—right into the slot. The other team scored a goal against us two seconds later. R was furious with me. As soon as I passed he started screaming, "NO, UP THE BOARDS!!!" That made perfect sense, of course. Between my inexperience with faceoffs and my confusion about what the hell was happening with our line changes, I didn't stop to think about what I should (and shouldn't) do with the puck when facing off in my own zone. <sigh>

A couple shifts later, I came off the ice shouting for J or G to go in (I still hadn't figured out what they'd done to their line, and who was going in for me). Neither of them moved. I didn't see anyone else go in, either. I looked from one to the other, and then back out on the ice. G yelled "GET IN!" I started to make a move to get back in the game, since apparently I wasn't supposed to be coming out. As soon as I did that, EVERYONE on the bench started screaming at me to GET IN. Finally, someone yelled "GET IN THE BOX!!", which made the meaning of "GET IN" clear but didn't do much for my growing irritation. Who the hell went in for me? What the hell happened to the lines? Why couldn't we decide on the meaning of IN? I lost it and screamed back at everyone to be a little clearer with the instructions.

I finally figured out that G was no longer playing offense, but I never did figure out what their forward line looked like... partly becase of the penalties. At one point one of the really aggressive skaters on the other team skated into our goalie, and M, thinking that the refs wouldn't call it, got in the guy's face. Two players from the other team stepped in to yell back at M, resulting in two unsportsmanlikes on M and two on the other team for retaliating. We'd already had opposing penalties before that play, so now there were three players in each penalty box.

I was told that I would be going in at right wing on the same line with T, who'd moved up from defense. Only problem: He went in at right wing the next time we went on. I went in at left. Next shift, he went on at left, so I went on at right. All the switching confused me even more. I kept staying up at the blueline when we were on offense instead of crashing the net because usually when I'm on that side of the ice, we're on defense. I couldn't keep track of which position I was in—left wing or right wing—beyond the faceoff.

We ended up losing 3-2, but we kept the other team from making the Stanley Keg game because of all the penalties. (Three teams win in the first round, but only two can go to the Keg game, so the tiebreakers are goal differential first and penalty minutes second. One of the other teams had also won by one goal, but they only had two penalties, and the yellow team had three.)

In the locker room after the game, R says to me, "Lori, you weren't 100% tonight. You must've been feeling bad or something." Just goes to show ya, you can play physically hard enough to sweat through all of your gear (and even keep A from saying "you've got to go in harder!"), but if you're mentally scattered, your team hardly notices you're in the game.