It's Sunday morning and the alarm goes off at the on-Godly hour of 6:30, but that is OK because the first game of the Kanata Atom B Ice Dragons is today!!
Getting the boys up and ready to leave was surprizingly easy so I took that as a promising sign. Unfortunately things went a little down hill after that. I open up the garage door to find the truck covered in a very heavy frost....it's only October 18th, and waaay to early for that!!
It take 5 minutes or so to scrape off the truck and to have the windshield heat up enough to actually see where I'm going so hit the road at about 7:15, aiming to be at the rink for 7:30 which will give us lots of time to get dresssed and get some last minute instructions from the coach. We are playing at the "Jack" today so I take the short-cut through the woods and as luck would have it, about 2/3's of the way through the woods a dear decides to jump out infront of the truck - luckily I was awake enough to anticipate that as we didn't hit hit....this time.
We get to the rink safe and sound only for find a few other folks waiting outside of the arena...the "Jack" only opens 30 minutes before the first scheduled event and it was only 7:28 - we wouldn't want to open a few minutes early now would we?? Didn't really matter though because around 7:35 a teenaged boy says that his buddy with the keys slept in and should be there soon - you can imagine how well that went over with the blury eyed parents......
We finally get in around 7:45 and rush to get the lads suited up in the hopes of giving Coach Anthony a few minutes to assign positions and go over some last minute instructions. I leave the dressing room and take a seat in the dark arena, well it wasn't pitch black, there were 4 lights on (out of about 40 or so). Finally the old lights start to warm up and the level light increases just as the boys hit the ice.
With no time for a proper warm up, the boys pretty much line up right way, I'm looking on the Bench for Quinn, totally missing the fact that he was still on the ice lined up as a defenseman.....not a good thing considering that he hasn't played defense since IP.
The game gets underway and the boys are playing quite well considering that it is the first game of the season. Positional play was the best for the first few shifts but the coaches did a good job of coaching on the fly as the boys started to tighten things up a bit. Quinn was doing a good job of getting the puck hard around the boards and out of the D-zone and a really good job of pinching in at the offense blue-line. However, if he is going to be playing D regularly, we'll need to work on pivoting earlier when defending an opposition forward as he did get beaten 2 or 3 times by a rushing forward.
In terms of game flow, I would say the Ice Dragons had the better part of the play for the first half of the game as they jumped out to an early 2-0 lead. About mid-way throught the 2nd period the opposition scored a goal that somehow bounced through the legs of our goalie to make it a 2-1 game. That provided them with a spark as they started to come at the Dragons in waves. Our goalie was stellar, shutting the door until the last minute of game with an opposition forward grabed a loose puck and dashed in on a breakway. He faked glove side and then fired a high wrist shot blocker side, our goalie got a lot of the shot with his blocker, maybe too much it didn't deflect over the net, but just kind of popped up and over him into the net to make it 2-2 with 44 seconds left.
Everyone in the stands starts wondering if we would go to a shoot-out to break the tie or if each team would take a point and walk away happy.......that was until our D-man chipped a puck up the boards to an open winger who grabbed the puck and dashed towards the opposition net. I looked at the clock as he hit the blueline and there were 8 seconds left on the clock. Everyone in the stands started shouting "SHOOT!!" as he started to bear down on the lone defenseman and goalie, but instead he calmly deked the defenseman and fired a wrist shot into the net - I immediately looked at the clock and say the last few 10ths of a second tick off - Ice Dragons win! Ice Dragons Win!!
What a great way to start the season! Who would have thought that Atom B hockey to be filled with so much drama..........
Getting the boys up and ready to leave was surprizingly easy so I took that as a promising sign. Unfortunately things went a little down hill after that. I open up the garage door to find the truck covered in a very heavy frost....it's only October 18th, and waaay to early for that!!
It take 5 minutes or so to scrape off the truck and to have the windshield heat up enough to actually see where I'm going so hit the road at about 7:15, aiming to be at the rink for 7:30 which will give us lots of time to get dresssed and get some last minute instructions from the coach. We are playing at the "Jack" today so I take the short-cut through the woods and as luck would have it, about 2/3's of the way through the woods a dear decides to jump out infront of the truck - luckily I was awake enough to anticipate that as we didn't hit hit....this time.
We get to the rink safe and sound only for find a few other folks waiting outside of the arena...the "Jack" only opens 30 minutes before the first scheduled event and it was only 7:28 - we wouldn't want to open a few minutes early now would we?? Didn't really matter though because around 7:35 a teenaged boy says that his buddy with the keys slept in and should be there soon - you can imagine how well that went over with the blury eyed parents......
We finally get in around 7:45 and rush to get the lads suited up in the hopes of giving Coach Anthony a few minutes to assign positions and go over some last minute instructions. I leave the dressing room and take a seat in the dark arena, well it wasn't pitch black, there were 4 lights on (out of about 40 or so). Finally the old lights start to warm up and the level light increases just as the boys hit the ice.
With no time for a proper warm up, the boys pretty much line up right way, I'm looking on the Bench for Quinn, totally missing the fact that he was still on the ice lined up as a defenseman.....not a good thing considering that he hasn't played defense since IP.
The game gets underway and the boys are playing quite well considering that it is the first game of the season. Positional play was the best for the first few shifts but the coaches did a good job of coaching on the fly as the boys started to tighten things up a bit. Quinn was doing a good job of getting the puck hard around the boards and out of the D-zone and a really good job of pinching in at the offense blue-line. However, if he is going to be playing D regularly, we'll need to work on pivoting earlier when defending an opposition forward as he did get beaten 2 or 3 times by a rushing forward.
In terms of game flow, I would say the Ice Dragons had the better part of the play for the first half of the game as they jumped out to an early 2-0 lead. About mid-way throught the 2nd period the opposition scored a goal that somehow bounced through the legs of our goalie to make it a 2-1 game. That provided them with a spark as they started to come at the Dragons in waves. Our goalie was stellar, shutting the door until the last minute of game with an opposition forward grabed a loose puck and dashed in on a breakway. He faked glove side and then fired a high wrist shot blocker side, our goalie got a lot of the shot with his blocker, maybe too much it didn't deflect over the net, but just kind of popped up and over him into the net to make it 2-2 with 44 seconds left.
Everyone in the stands starts wondering if we would go to a shoot-out to break the tie or if each team would take a point and walk away happy.......that was until our D-man chipped a puck up the boards to an open winger who grabbed the puck and dashed towards the opposition net. I looked at the clock as he hit the blueline and there were 8 seconds left on the clock. Everyone in the stands started shouting "SHOOT!!" as he started to bear down on the lone defenseman and goalie, but instead he calmly deked the defenseman and fired a wrist shot into the net - I immediately looked at the clock and say the last few 10ths of a second tick off - Ice Dragons win! Ice Dragons Win!!
What a great way to start the season! Who would have thought that Atom B hockey to be filled with so much drama..........
