Another time I was feeling pretty empowered (but got called by my brother-in-law for high sticking).

1 May 2001
First things first: I think it's time to face the fact that my hockey bag stinks. I used to be proud of its relatively unhockeylike smell, but several weeks of waiting until the next morning to hang up my gear in my cube at work, combined with harder work on the ice (i.e., more sweating), have led to the current nose-wrinkling situation. I've found that Orange Mate Mist has kept my work colleagues from complaining, but I'm sure it's a downhill slide from here. It can't be long before birds start dropping out of trees when I walk by with my bag.

So I think I've mentioned that I'm going to a women's hockey tournament in VANCOUVER at the end of May, right? The team I'll be playing with has been looking for ice time to practice, and Ice Oasis has started a women's pickup slot on Sunday nights (this past Sunday it was from 5:40 to 8:20), so I told the rest of the team and showed up myself hoping to meet a few of them. I didn't really expect to have that much fun—I *like* playing coed hockey, and I've done things with "just the girls" before that aren't nearly as good an idea as they sound—but I really had a blast. At the beginning it seemed that my worst fears would be realized when everyone started milling around and asking who was running this thing (do you really need to wait for someone to tell you what to do? it's hockey!), but then John suggested that Z, an incredibly good player and professional hockey coach, run a few drills with us before turning us loose at pickup.

The drills were really excellent: I actually got going backwards at speed, and was crossing over without really thinking about it; I was a better tight-turner than I thought I was; and I did sprints—just skating as fast as possible with one hand on the stick and the stick on the ice for the full length of the rink—for the first time ever. We also did sprints where we had to pick up a puck at the far end, skate back, and shoot on the goalie, and I scored on John 3 times in a row (once with a backhander). Now granted, John's no goalie, but it still felt good. :) I was wheezing a bit (even though I took my inhaler beforehand) after all that leg- and lung-pumping, and I wondered how my body was ever going to manage a pickup game after all this.

My spirit was certainly willing; I really hated to admit it, but I felt....well, empowered. I felt like I was *good*, like I could skate fast with the puck and deke around defenders and backhand a shot to the goalie's weak side. Like I could beat a fast forward down the ice and stop a goal. Or race in and steal the puck from a skater with her head down before she even knew the thing was gone.

AND I DID. How cool is that? We played pickup for more than an hour, and for the better part of it I was fast and aggressive. I passed well, got open, and scored goals. It was great. I left a little early (when I noticed I was getting lazy and slow), but I was so jazzed.

That feeling came with me to Monday's game; I was ready to kick some ass. Rob came with his goalie gear, but John had arranged for Jimmy (my Thursday goalie) to sub in, so Rob skated up. He centered my line; I played RW, and Kyle played Left. Maybe it was just that we were playing a weaker team, or that Rob makes a really great Center, but we *did* kick ass. Rob kept trying to set me up, but I was always at the wrong angle for a shot, so I'd end up passing back to him. One of these return passes resulted in a goal. For another, I got a pass from Dave Mercer at the point, then passed to Rob, who scored from the slot. Kyle almost never passed to me on purpose—most of the time I just picked up his bad-angle shots—but I passed to him twice in front of the net for another two goals. Yep, that's four assists in one night. WOO HOO!!!!

In a way, I wish Rob weren't such a good goalie because he's a lot of fun to skate with. For better or worse, though, he's a GREAT goalie, and against the stronger teams (Excite, the Toasters, and Inktomi) we need him in net. Maybe we can get Jimmy again for the next Blue Martini game, though...