Week 1: Pink vs. Royal Blue

Pinkeye on the Puck!
(click to enlarge)
(click here to see the game pics)

The Spring Mixer is made up of eight teams, and as Brian mentioned in last week’s game post, each team has two goalies (a beginner/intermediate and an advanced), and each goalie plays on two different teams: I’m on the Pink and Kelly Green (now known as the Turtles) teams. This is to ensure that for each game, both teams have evenly matched goalies. However, when a goaltender plays against her other team, she face a less experienced goalie — or a more experienced one, as was the case in the game for which I was scheduled last Friday: Pink vs. Royal Blue (RB).

It was the first time I met my Pink teammates, most of whom had already played together in the pre-season game, so I was anxious. Ironically, I was supposed to face my Pink goalie teammate who’s our more experienced goalie, which made me even more anxious; but she played in a tournament this past weekend and the woman subbing for her, though a goalie sub for the Mixer but not on any teams, is someone who plays for a super-advanced, elite women’s team. This increased my anxiety even more.

Although we lost 4 – 2, Brian, who keeps track of my stats, says I played well. First Period: The other goalie and I each let in a goal, with that first one going through my five-hole (right between the legs), which is totally embarrassing. Second Period: RB scored two goals in the second, while we scored one. The first goal I gave up was a pass from an RBer in one of the corners to another RBer planted in front of the net for a one timer. The second goal was from a loose puck shortly after a face-off in our zone. The puck was just out of my reach and an RBer shot it in. Third Period: At this point, we were down by one and were always behind by one point throughout the game. Unfortunately, we didn’t score this period, but RB did and again, it was from a pass made to someone parked in front of the net.

My teammates congratulated me for making some really great saves, even though I gave up four goals. I would have liked to discuss the game with them afterwards, but I had a second game to play. And once again, my anxiety flourished, surprise, surprise. The final score was close and I learned one of two valuable lessons: first, it isn’t the other goalie’s skill level I need to worry about — rather, it’s her teammates’ skills I should be concerned with! Second, though I’d consider playing back-to-back games in the future, I won’t if there’s only 15 minutes between games! However, the Turtles game or rather, goalie summary probably won’t be posted until Wednesday or Thursday.

A WORD ABOUT STATS
From now on, Brian is keeping track only of my stats, and not the other goalies’. It’s hard having to juggle this with taking the super pictures that he does. I’m also going to include my overall stats for each team, as well as for both teams.

KEY
GP: (# of) games played
GA: goals against (shots I let in)
GAA: goals against average (GA divided by GP)
S: shots against (how many shots I faced)
Sv %: (S minus GA divided by S)
W: wins
L: losses
T: ties
W %: win percentage (W divided by GP)
SO: shutouts