03 February 2003
I've been meaning to write for a few weeks now, but I find that if I play another game before I get to write about the last one, I forget what I wanted to say. One game drives out another, as it were.

I figured I'd write about tonight's game right away before I forgot that I scored a goal. Yep, I scored a goal. I think it was my first one in at least three seasons; probably my first since I played in the women's league at Ice Oasis. It was a power play goal, and the even better part is that I also drew the penalty. I was crashing the net, and a Blue Martini player attempted to shove me out of the area. It turned into a check; I went down, Shaun's arm went up, and we were suddenly up a man.

I'd started the game as the third Center, but I moved to Right Wing at Al's request because he and Derek were too tired with just two sets of wings. It worked out OK, because towards the end of the 2nd period, Bill showed up and jumped on at Center. The only short side was Left, which is no problem because Chris and Justin like long shifts anyway. I'd felt pretty useless at Center, sadly, but Right Wing turned out to be a great fit. I'd been scrapping down low, stealing the puck from defensemen who tried to carry behind the net, and passing in front, but nothing had materialized.

One of my Bauer 3000s, with my foot in it

Finally, we had a power play. I did another behind-the-net-scrape-for-the-puck, came up with it, and popped it out to Stu, who was playing Center. He shot, but Mike made a great save, and we headed for the faceoff circle again. On this go round I remember a lot of digging for the puck in the zone, but I can't remember the exact course of events. I just know that Stu tried to shoot again, the puck popped off the goalie's pads to the right, exactly where I was camped out, and I drove it home. With authority, if I do say so myself. I felt so confident about it: there was no chance I was going to miss the puck, or hit the post, or even hit the goalie. I made solid contact with the sweet part of my stick blade, and the puck thunked loudly against the back post. When I heard the sound, I looked up and nodded once, as if to punctuate the event. My teammates then mobbed me, probably more because they were shocked that I'd finally gotten a goal than anything else, though the score did make us down by only 1.

After the goal I had more energy than ever, and I skated faster and more confidently—the way I skate during warmups, actually. I was saying to Al at the beginning of the game how I wished I could skate in games the way I did in warmups; usually in games I go at 1/3 my warmup speed (and with virtually no confidence), and it's supposed to be the other way around. Well, that goal gave me the boost I needed, and I was suddenly flying around the ice with all speed and no fear. I said as much to Derek when I came off my shift, and he said, "Yeah, scoring is great. Your skates become wings."

I think it was Justin who scored our final goal, to move us to a 7-7 tie with about two and a half minutes left. We finished the period short-handed when Anton got called for tripping, and we lost the game in the final minute when Blue Martini's ringer scored his fourth or fifth goal of the night on a slapshot from just inside the blue line. It would have been nice to win (especially against this team), but we played well, so I can't complain.

In other news, Al and I are considering taking a season off. John has made a big deal about how the league fees aren't going up for next season, but there will now be an annual "club fee" of $300, and you must pay the club fee to play in the league. More than the extra money, though, is the year-long commitment that is now required: they're moving to a contract system, where you pay for an entire year of seasons rather than one season at a time. Al is in the process of looking for another job, and we plan to move as soon as we know where he'll be working. It might be here in the Bay Area, and it might not; we want to keep our options open, so I don't want to commit to anything for a year right now. We've investigated a couple other leagues in the area and might try to join a team in one of those, but for now we're leaning toward just taking a season off and playing pickup now and then. Of course, pickup at Ice Oasis would be out, since you have to be a member of the league in order to play. But the Ice Centre in San Mateo and Oakland Ice both have pickups, and we'd probably be willing to try one of those. I also still have my women's traveling team, though we missed participating in the Las Vegas tournament this weekend because it filled up before we got our registration in. I haven't played or practiced with the Spitfire since last May. I hope to go with them to Vancouver this year, and there's talk of doing a different Vegas tournament in April; we'll see how that pans out.