Game Four, 06 - 07: Tigers Orange 6, University of Chicago 6

We didn’t lose!!!! We were down by one at the end of the third period, and when there were 13 seconds left, Coach Tim pulled me so we had six skaters out there and immediately tied it up. There were still about five seconds left in the period so I skated back to the net. The buzzer went off and it was 6 - 6. The refs let us play a five-minute OT period, which surprised me. I didn’t think they did that, especially at our level.

We really should have won this game because from what I heard, U of C doesn’t have a goalie–they take turns goaltending. How much must that suck? The goaltender just looked so uncomfortable in the net that I kind of felt bad for her. And she was either my size or just a little bit smaller, because she was the smallest goalie I’ve ever seen! Every other team’s goalie is bigger than me! Actually, our Blue goalie’s about my size, but anyway.

Here’s the other thing–this time around, we had ringers: two players from the Blue team and the Blue team’s head coach who sometimes plays for White, I think. U of C had one ringer: #2, who’s supposedly a Red-level player (see chart below). However, Coach Tim played our “stars” fairly, particularly Coach Anne; he had her covering #2 so that the beginning players on our team would be up against the beginning players on theirs.

Had Anne played at the level of which she’s capable, the score would have been more like 12 - 6 or even more. Anne scored only two goals and created opportunities for our Orange players to play. The rest of our goals were scored by our “real” team members. #2, on the other hand, was a puck hog. Most of her goals were on breakaways and she never passed the puck to her teammates as they skated into our zone. Even though it should have been a 3-on-0, it was a 1-on-0.

According to Henry (Blue team assistant coach), I made some great saves against #2, but Brian was the scorekeeper, so the pictures he was able to take didn’t come out very well, and there aren’t any of me because I was just too far away from where he was. However, Henry has most of the game on video including some of my really good saves. I’m hoping to get a copy of a WAV file or whatever you call it, or even stills. I’ve never seen myself play! Rosie, his wife and one of my teammates, joked that she’d make me a highlight reel. But how cool would that be?

See the game pics on my photo album: Evanston Tigers Orange ’06 - ’07. I know it’s a pain because the photos from all of our games are on there, but the most recent ones are the last ten pictures.

So here’s what I learned today from the Women’s Central Hockey League (WCHL) site in terms of levels of play. Although my team is called Orange (probably because we’re the Tigers?), we’re actually a Green-level team. But all of our games are exhibition; we aren’t playing any league games on the Green level, which is why anyone can play against us, including Red-level players. This is the description that I found on their site:

copyright Women’s Central Hockey League

So I was right about what I said in my last game post:

Since we only play exhibition games, pretty much anyone can play. If they were actual league games, the people on the roster would have to play at their appropriate level.

Well, it’ll make for an interesting season.