I find that the longer I'm away from this blog, the harder it is to get back to writing, probably because it's difficult to know where to pick up again. It's like scrapbooking: the further behind you get, the less likely you are to resume. Rather than fretting about it for much longer, I decided to just post some observations and hope that these kick-start some more regular posting over here, since now's a good time for me to write—I'm in the process of finding a new job, and in the meantime I have more time to write about (and play) hockey.

This past Freeze season was a bit of an off (I originally said odd, and that would probably apply too) one for us, especially after winning the championship last year; as I mentioned in earlier posts, we lost several players at the top end and and gained a few from the D team, so it was really a rebuilding year.

I was disappointed to finish the season with NO GOALS (arrgh!), but I did make some progress skillwise. My shot got harder and higher, for one thing—although knowing that I have a decent shot now just made the no goals thing all the more frustrating.

I think Billy knew it, and noticed that the shot I have in practice (which is usually executed at full speed or nearly so) is not the shot I get a chance to use in games. In games I'm usually camped out down low, staying 1-5 feet outside the crease until the puck is definitely over the blue line. (I'm still not fast, exactly, but I can clear the zone quickly when necessary, and I feel like it's a good idea to stay in front of the net until I'm forced to leave it.)

Staying down low until the last second gotten me lots of chances, but most of them went right into the goalie's pads or glove. Billy had a solution though: He said that since I was down low so often, I needed to master a kind of snap shot that goes high, fast, so I'm shooting over a goalie who's dropped to cover the crease.

It took a bit of practice, but I can now execute it pretty reliably both on and off the ice. I actually miss *over* the net more often than not now; I've lost a few pucks over the glass, and two over the chain link fence I shoot against behind my house. (I have no idea what the neighbors did with them.) I'm looking forward to trying the shot in actual games now, since I only learned it with a couple games to go at the end of the season.

The other big thing I learned this season (and to many it will seem like a little thing, but to me it's a milestone) is how to kick the puck onto my stick and keep going. I can't do it every time, but to my shock, I can do it fairly regularly. It makes a huge difference in my puck handling in that I'm able to recover from bad passes or my own mistakes.

Oh, and can I just say that it was nice to be the good example a few times this season (as in "next time, do what Lori did and cut across the ice to shorten the pass") instead of the bad one ("STAY AT YOUR POINT!")? Yay me! Looking forward to mixed-level, refereed pickup this summer, and especially to the regular Freeze season in the fall!

Posted by Lori at 12:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Link to this Entry

In general, I'm a fan of staying up at my point. I can cycle*, sort of, but I'm totally fine with staying high most of the time in the defensive zone. I'm not great at getting control of the puck when it comes out to the point, but I'm fairly decent defensively and can usually block a shot or keep my check from doing much other than popping the puck forward blindly.

More importantly, by staying high I'm not clogging up the slot and causing confusion, and I'm backing up the opposing D if we get control of the puck. (This is something Billy taught us; by moving out of the defensive zone aggressively, we force the D to back up instead of trying to hold the blue line.)

It also happens that I'm a fan of forechecking. I've forced lots of turnovers by forechecking in the offensive zone, some of which have even resulted in goals. I usually *don't* forecheck in the defensive zone, for the reason stated above: namely, I'm covering the point and trying to avoid clogging up the slot and confusing our D. There are exceptions, however, and this is one:

The girl carrying the puck was their slowest, most tentative player, and yet we kept backing up whenever she got the puck. Maybe it was her strange skating style that froze us all (we tended to stop and stare at her, slack-jawed), but whatever it was, I finally got sick of just letting her walk around unchallenged. I left my point and and skated straight at her, offensive-zone forechecking-style... and she passed to Carol. :-)

*Incidentally, this video also shows me cycling a bit; Carol had come up to the point at the beginning of the clip, so I'd covered the slot. We switched when the D sent the puck around the boards.

Posted by Lori at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Link to this Entry

I've been working on my backhanded shot for a while now (maybe two years?), but more earnestly over the past few weeks. There are two main scenarios in which I want to use it: (1) on breakaways, where I come down the left side, cross in front of the crease, and flip the puck into the net (I'm a left-handed shot playing Left Wing), and (2) on faceoffs in the offensive zone when I'm lined up on the goal-side hashmarks. The idea in scenario #2 is to grab the puck and flip it into the net from a standstill.

I've had some success with both scenarios—but especially #1—while practicing by myself during warm-ups, and a couple times while skating against goalies during practice or pickups, but I haven't gotten a good backhander off in a game. (I did score a goal in an almost #1 scenario when I first joined the Freeze in 2006, but if I remember correctly, I just knocked it in five-hole rather than trying to lift the puck over a sliding goalie.)

Part of the reason I hadn't really tried it is that I haven't had that many opportunities, and also because I'm somewhat inconsistent with this shot. I probably fling half my shots hard and high into the back of the net; about a third of them never leave the ice or only come up a few inches; and the remainder fly over the crossbar and into the glass.

In our last game (or my last game, I should say, since I missed the team's last game due to a sick Beaner), I spent several minutes during the warmup working on the backhander with about the same success percentage as usual. Without a goalie in the net, however, I wasn't sure how successful those shots would really be in a game. I decided that if I had a chance in this game, I'd find out.

Answer: Not very—at least in this case, where I didn't get the shot nearly high enough. I'd totally try it again, though (and I'll also keep the fake-deke in my mental toolbox, since a last-minute decision *not* to cross over and backhand the puck worked against a guy goalie in a pickup game this past summer—probably because the backhander had worked the first time. :-).

Posted by Lori at 06:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Link to this Entry