Fairly Symmetrical

My hockey team had its first game last night. It was a good, competetive game that ended up tied, 2-2. Here's a quick recap. (The stats haven't been posted yet; they should be up today or tomorrow.)

The game started off kind of confused. Our team hadn't gotten together before, though we had discussed some on e-mail, and we were missing 2 people, so our lines were completely messed up; we had people hopping on and off more or less willy-nilly, which didn't contribute to any kind of smooth flow whatsoever. I started on the third line at left wing, a position I haven't played a whole lot. We took an early tripping (IIRC) penalty; on the resulting power play, the referee called our team for icing (if you're short handed, you can't be called for icing); I guess the refs were kind of getting their feet under them, too. :) The ref did realize his mistake and put the resulting faceoff in the other team's zone; our center won the faceoff to the right wing, who promptly put the puck in the back of the net--short handed goal for us, off a referee mistake. Hey, even the ugly ones count. :)

Much of the rest of the first period was back-and-forth play with no advantage to either side. At the period break, we took some time to discuss line changes and make sure everyone knew what position they should be playing. We went out in the second period and played much better; the other team did score a tying goal, but we scored another ourselves to make it 2-1. Halfway through the period, the captain asked for two people to drop back and play defense as our D was getting pretty tired; I volunteered and ended up at left D for the rest of the game (a position I'm much more comfortable at).

The third period was a good one for us. We outplayed the other team for the first 11 minutes; I personally drew two penalties (a crosscheck and a tripping call) through hard work in the corners, so we spent about a third of the period on the power play. Unfortunately we couldn't convert. Later in the period, with both teams at the end of their shifts, our right wing broke into their zone with the puck and only a single defender on him (and noone else back in their zone). Our other forwards were heading off, so I skated into the zone and yelled for the puck. He passed it right to me, but one of their forwards managed to backcheck just enough to make me hurry the shot, and it ended up going wide right--I guess I need more practice with one-timers. ;)

With about 3 minutes left to go the other team really started pressing. We spent most of the next 90 seconds in our zone, trying to keep them pushed to the outside and clearing whenever possible; we didn't have much luck getting the puck deep in their zone to be able to change. With about 1:30 left to go, there was a pileup and scramble for the puck in front of our net, and a trailer from the the other team backhanded it just over our goalie and in to tie it. That goal was pretty heartbreaking; we had played hard and had a lot of chances that just didn't go in, and we'd very nearly sealed the game. We played out the last 90 seconds with noone on either team really getting any scoring chances.

Interestingly, all 8 teams in the C league have now played (4 games total), and all but one of the games ended in a tie. It seems like this will be a pretty competetive league. I had lots of fun, I can't wait for our next game on Thursday.

Edit: The stats are (finally) up. It turns out the game-tying goal was with 1.5 seconds left, not minutes; not sure how I confused that. (Note that the periods are 13 minutes long.)