Warrior Hockey

This fall, Kristin is playing varsity hockey for the Waterloo Warriors. Very cool, you say? I agree. The week I got to check out two of the games. There was an exhibition game against Team China last Wednesday, and yesterday was the home opener against the Western Mustangs.

The game against the Chinese National team was pretty sweet to watch. It really felt like an event – like a big deal. Kristin played really well and almost scored a goal. It was a fast and entertaining game, but alas, a big W, 8-2. As a spectator, the game felt a lot closer than that. Waterloo had a rough second period, allowing at least a handful of breakaways. The third was much better – if China scored at all, it was only 1. (I don’t remember).

After the game they did some shootouts for practice (or practice and funsies, I don’t know) – Funsies for the spectators either way. Actually, we didn’t know that they were doing shootouts at all until it started happening. That’s because something was up with the announcements, by which I mean the crowd, at least where we were sitting, couldn’t hear a word of it. Just noise. A girl sitting to my right lost her cell phone, and figured it went under the bleachers. When she tried to go get it, she couldn’t find it. I was telling Kristin about it on the walk home, and she asked if the girl went to go claim it when they announced that someone had found a missing phone. Ha!

Yesterday’s home game was also great, and a WIN. J I thought the Warriors dominated. After killing off a five-on-three penalty at the end of the first, they put in the first goal just before the buzzer went. Page may or may not have yelled, “Damn straight!” They scored again in the second period, and kept the pressure on. It looked like there were sitting pretty when part was through the third period, the Warriors made it three-zip. The third goal was called back, ruled a kick-in. When I say “ruled a kick-in”, I mean I have no idea officially when the third goal was called back. I did hear an angry fan yell, “What are you blind ref?? That was NOT a KICK IN”, so that’s what I’m going to go with. So 2-0 Warriors with time running out. With about 3 minutes left, Western manages to apply some pressure and put one it. This didn’t seem like a big problem until they managed to find the back of the net after pulling the goalie in a play I can only describe as a cluster-fuck mob. Oh no! Tied!

The game remained tied after 5 minutes of overtime, although there were a few chances on either end. Good thing they practiced shootouts the other day, hey? The good guys came out on top, you can put it in the win column, the day was saved, and any other sports cliche you can think of.

ps. When I say "yesterday", I mean last weekend. I wrote the blog on the bus and didn't post it until now.