Ah, but at least getting ice time a few times a week is better than going 2 weeks cold turkey
Pickup is not the same, but often in pickup the goalies get peppered
Played tonight and I'm exhausted ... for the wrong reasons
There's a dude that skates for the Dark team (when he shows up) that's a vulture
He hangs at our blue line, basically waiting for the hard work of others to set him up
I'm always yelling to people to cover him, cuz I HATE seeing him score so many easy goals
Tonight there were a bunch of guys I never saw before, all wearing white, including
the aforementioned vulture ... so I went to the locker room and switched jerseys
When I came back, I noticed someone had given him a dark jersey as well
Turns out we had 10 on the Dark Side, and I end up centering a line with him on wing
As Dirty Harry would say ... "Marvelous"
First shift, I steal the puck in my own zone, and he's standing on the other blue line
so I say "wtf" and pass it up to him anyways ... and instead of getting the puck deep,
he lets the lone guy back swat the puck away from him, burning me and the other winger
and starting a 4 on 2 the other way
This continues for the first 45 minutes ... he doesn't come back, and hangs in neutral ice
Whenever I concede and pass it up to him, he inevitably ignores any teammates nearby
and tries to stickhandle his way in ... which means, one obvious shift, followed by the
puck being swept back out to center ice, and an odd man rush the other way
At that point, I started consciously ignoring him and working solely with the right winger
We'd give and go with 3 foot passes all the way up the ice and set up pretty nice shots
In our own zone, I'd drift over to the left wing boards to give the D a target, since I knew
the LW wasn't even in our zip code
I even made a rush down HIS wing, took it deep , saw him with his stick raised in the slot
(like he thought he was Cam Neely or something) with 2 opponents nearby waiting for the
obvious feed. Instead, I stared him down, then threaded a pass across the front of the crease to the right winger, who had snuck past everyone (goalie made a great save)
I guess he finally figured it out, and started trying to make passes
He actually made a feed to me from behind the goal line, but it was 90mph, so I chipped
it over the net
I actually had more shots tonight than a typical month's worth, but no results
To be fair, on at least one shot, the goalie made a highlight glove save on a top
corner one-time snap shot
Anyways, it made for great exercise, doing most of the work while being essentially shorthanded
A few of the guys playing D thanked me for always being back to help them out
I got quite a workout out of it, and since it's just pickup, its all good
That dude later on the bench said " I figured it out! We just need to keep our heads
up and look before we pass!"
The RW and myself just looked at each other grinning "I think you're right!"
The beers went down fast tonight