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!

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.

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. :-).

I tried to maintain the positive attitude I'd had last week and on Saturday, but I felt it slipping after the first set of stopping drills. I was slow and tentative (due to still-oversharp skates, which I'll hopefully get around to explaining at some point) and couldn't keep up with my line. It got worse with the three-man weave, which was sloppy for everyone.

I don't even feel like elaborating on all that went wrong, lest in my demoralized state I start pointing fingers at others and regret it tomorrow. All I know is that by the time we got to the scrimmage, I was having flashbacks to playing with the men—lots of passes behind me or to my feet, lots of looping around trying to get open, lots busting down the ice for nothing. It's tiring mentally and physically.

For all that, I think I'd get back on the ice right now if we were going to run some drills where if the drill failed, that group would just clear the ice immediately and the next group would go. Complicated rotating drills are good for variety, but if one part of the drill fails, we can't just let it die and move on. I think we need that (or at least, our team needs that; perhaps the Blue squad, with whom we were practicing tonight, does not). I know I need to do something over and over until I get it right, until it feels natural. And I need to stop when things are so far wrong that my head is too busy trying to untangle the mess for my body to perform.

I'm bummed to be going into two off-weeks (no games this weekend or next, and no practice in between) with such a negative hockey experience, too. Although... maybe a break is what I need.

At the beginning of the game it seemed like we'd be able to beat them easily, but I think instead of picking up the pace and skating right past them, we slowed down to their speed. We had more trouble breaking out of our defensive zone than we should have, too. And as for me personally... well, things were going well until the middle of the second period, went suddenly everything went to hell.

We were up 2-1, and the play that set the awfulness in motion was a breakout. Laura got the puck near the bottom of the faceoff circle on the far side, and I skated to the top of the slot, stopped, and called for the pass. As I was waiting to make sure it got to me—I didn't want to leave the zone and have the puck left there in the middle of the ice—I heard Billy scream my name from the bench and looked up, right between the words "LORI!" and "SKATE!—and just as the puck got to me. Since my attention was now on the bench and not on the ice, the puck went under my stick. I heard Billy yell "AWW!", and that's when my annoyance started to rise.

I wasn't mad at Billy, but I *was* wondering what the heck was supposed to happen there. Yes, I understand that skating and not just standing still for the pass is a good thing, but breakouts in general weren't working well for us, and long passes in particular are not our strong suit. Anyway, this is going through my head as I chase after the lost pass (which obviously did make it to me and then some) and pick it up just outside the blueline near the boards. At this point the D is coming on hard, so I go in hard too, dig the puck out, and pop it out to where my Center should be, and go down under the weight of the D. From the ice I see an opponent pick up the puck because my Center, it turns out, hadn't been coming up into the neutral zone beside me; instead, she was behind me on the boards. *That's* when I got mad.

I pulled myself up off the ice and tried to jump into the play, but my head was roiling with the whole series of events that had just happened, and I couldn't think straight about what was happening RIGHT THEN. The puck came out to the point on the right side, and no one was on her, so I skated over in that direction. She shot it back in, and I drifted back to the middle. I saw someone down low pass back up to the left side point... and it was at that moment that I realized where I should be—namely, right in front of that point, who was now taking the pass smoothly on her stick. I thought to myself as I rushed to get over there, "if they score now, it's on me." A few seconds later, they did. (Not directly from the point, but the goal was a result of the point being able to throw the puck back in cleanly.)

I came off saying "I know, I know!", and Billy and I ended up yelling at each other a bit over the whole mess. (Again, I wasn't angry at Billy so much as at myself and at the situation, and I think Billy felt the same way. Billy never stays mad for long, anyway.) It turned out that he'd been telling the D to wing passes out to the red line rather than trying to break out properly, so that's why he was yelling at me to skate. We never really got into why my pass out from the boards wasn't successful, but that bugged me for a while longer. What bugged me even more was that I'd let my anger get to me on the ice, and it made me play stupidly. The game ended in a 2-2 tie, and I had neither of the goals. (Angie had the first one, and Meghan scored the second with authori-TAY.)

The next night we had practice for the first time in two weeks (we had last Monday off). I looked forward to it all day, and on the drive to the rink I resolved to skate as hard as I possibly could, to work as hard as I possibly could, to not whine or complain or make excuses for bad execution. I suspect Billy was on a similar wavelength, because he had us work on making breakout passes; making long, hard passes from the goal line to the point; and skating with the puck with pressure. (I had asked him after our third loss if we could practice passing with pressure, and he said, "Allow me to be blunt. You guys can't pass WITHOUT pressure." Point taken. I suggested instead that we just work on *skating* with pressure, and I think he remembered.)

In the first passing drill, a D and a Forward started at the boards and skated on parallel tracks, the D behind the net, and the F in front of it. At the far post the F was supposed to turn up ice and skate, and the D was supposed to bank a pass off the boards. The first few times we ran it, either the F didn't turn up ice and skate as she should have, or the D didn't pass up the boards hard enough, or both. Billy encouraged the D to pass harder up the boards... and of course the puck often blew by the Forwards, especially if they weren't skating hard. For my part, I had to come back to get a couple passes that went behind me, and there were a couple that I had to skate hard to catch.

Several people complained when the passes got away from them, but Billy blew the whistle for the next pair to go. No second chances. I must say, I LOVED THIS. This is exactly what I was hoping for. I love Billy because he's helpful and patient and supportive, but on this night I was hoping for a little tough love, and I got it. Do we get second chances in games? No. When we miss pucks do we pay for it? YES. I was thrilled to not only be practicing a skill, but having the consequences of getting it wrong be real.

By the time Billy put a second Forward into the drill (to backstop the puck if it missed the first girl for the purposes of the drill, but also to back the D up in a game situation), I was waggling with excitement like a Labrador retriever waiting for its owner to throw the ball. I skated hard. I caught pucks. I occasionally made mistakes and resolved to fix them on the next run-through. I SCORED GOALS. It was thrilling, I tell you. I'm getting all waggly again just thinking about it.

Hopefully I can bring that excitement and AW YEAH enthusiasm to our game against the Wicked in Bethlehem on Saturday. I'm ready to WIN ONE!!

I actually hit the ice so hard that it didn't occur to me at first that it *had* to be Josh, since he was the only person on the other team who knew my name. I know my helmet was on crooked when I got up, and that I had a headache before I even made it to the bench. My teammates say I sounded like I was drunk when they asked if I was OK. I got it together after a few minutes of neck stretches and deep breathing, though, and correctly identified the order in which Jerry, Eric, and I were supposed to rotate. (Jerry moved up from D to join us at Left Wing so that I didn't have to skate as much after the fall.)

Today my neck and head, and especially my elbow, are sore, but I seem to have suffered no lasting effects. I'm reminded, however, of how often I used to get injuries like this when playing in mens/coed leagues. Although the womens league I play in now can be very physical—no checking doesn't mean no contact—I'm much less likely to suffer near-concussions, slapshot bruises, and tailbone injuries. This probably partly because the women I play against are much smaller than the men (even Meghan, who's 6'1", only weighs about 145 or 150, and the top weight in the league is probably around 170), partly because we're a bit slower (even a collision at top speed is more funny than painful), and partly because we're a bit less aggressive on the whole.

If it makes me less tough to admit this, I don't much care. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I never thought I'd enjoy playing womens hockey, but my experience with the Freeze has been stellar. I'm happy to have the extra ice time with the men, and I like the challenge of keeping up with faster and more aggressive players, but I wouldn't trade the coached practices and camaraderie of my womens team for the cheaper league fees of the Mt. Laurel mens league or any other. I've come to appreciate not just ice time, but time spent learning how to play the game.

I don't always execute properly—there's often a big gap between knowing what you're supposed to do and actually doing it—but I do like knowing that I and my teammates are on the same page. I like knowing what's going to happen when I pass back to the D on the faceoff, or get to the front of the net, or stay on my point. I like playing with the same line each week and knowing what my linemates' capabilities and tendencies are. I like knowing I can count on them to be where they're supposed to be, and that they can count on me.

These pluses aren't unique to womens leagues; Gang Green (the team I played with for one season in San Jose), for example, had occasional practices, regular lines, and regular discussions about what to do in different situations so that everyone had the same expectations. My Freeze team's just taken what was great about Gang Green and brought it to a new level.

What I hope to do is to be able to translate my Freeze experience to the ad-hoc style of the mens leagues. That is, rather than relying on knowledge of certain plays or expectations based on experience playing together, I hope to improve my individual skills such that I can react to whatever situation unfolds on the ice. It may be a while before I get there (and hopefully I won't be old and creaky when I do), but that's the goal. In the short run, I intend to enjoy my time with the Freeze, and attempt to survive my time with the men.

I had no goals in the first game (I think Laurie knocked our goal in after a scrum in front of the net), and I obviously had no goals in the second, though I did have at least two breakaways and at least three shots on goal. My shots seemed a bit weak, though, and the puck never left the ice for any of them—a stark contrast to how I've been shooting in practice. Of course, in practice I often have no one on me when I'm shooting, so I can skate into the zone at top speed and let one fly at the optimal distance from the goal. This isn't usually an option in a game. One of my shots in the Queenston game had to be timed to pass through the defenseman's legs (I'm proud of myself for that bit of finesse, but it took any power the shot might have had right off), and another was shot around the same defenseman while another player caught and bumped me on the right.

Midway through the game I was already thinking about asking Billy what I could do to get more oomph on my shot when Billy suddenly had a similar thought. It wasn't so much the weak shots that made him suggest I should start lifting weights, however; it was that I jumped on the ice, grabbed the puck, and skated the wrong way. I had been shooting video when Shelly came off, and since we'd just switched periods, and we were sitting in a weird order on the bench to avoid an offsides when jumping on, I didn't realize at first that Shelly was calling for me to go on. The puck sailed over the blue line just as I cleared the boards, and I looked up and saw Laurie twenty feet behind it but not skating toward me. So I took the puck and made a mad dash for what I thought was the offensive zone.

Luckily I looked up and saw Meghan, who was playing D; I thought, what the heck's Meghan doing in front of me? and then suddenly checked the net to see who was in it. When I saw Grace's green jersey, I quickly turned and went back the right way. (And I used to tease Al about being Wrong-Way Magoo! Sheesh!) Anyway, when I came off from this shift, Billy remarked, "we gotta get you lifting weights or something if your first instict is to give the puck back to your D." He was thinking that since I'd made a couple weak shots, I'd lost my confidence; apparently he didn't realize that it was my sense of direction that I'd lost.

Since Billy had mentioned weight lifting—something I did quite a bit of at the gym this summer before aggravating my Computer Shoulder with some lat pull-downs—I asked him in the lobby after the game what I could do to make my shot more powerful. Lifting weights was a good start, he said (basically working all the muscles of the upper body), but the best thing I could do was start my shot from farther back (that is, start with the puck and my stick behind me, and transfer my weight forward as I brought the puck forward for the shot).

I mentioned that I was able to do it in practice, but that I had a harder time during the games, when the D and the backcheckers were covering me. "You're not going to get good at shooting practicing an hour a week," Billy replied.

He suggested that I shoot pucks against the wall in the park to get stronger, to work on the motion, to figure out my timing. (Allison also gave me a tip about strengthening my wrists, which I'll mention in another post.) So to that end, this is what I did last night and tonight in the alley behind our house:

Excuse the loud sniffle before this one; it was kind of chilly out, and I think I instinctively sniffled before each round of shooting so that snot wouldn't fly along with the puck.

I think I'm still not starting the shot back far enough, but the longer piece of cardboard Al found me (I'd been shooting with one about half as long before I got out the video camera) helped my timing a bit. I didn't expect to get it in two sessions anyway, though. I'll keep at it until I can shoot like Shelly—or better.

Tonight was the first Freeze practice of the season, and it was GREAT. I feel like a wet lasagna noodle with overcooked fusili arms at this point, but as Al noted when I got home, it's only by pushing past the point where you think you can't go any further that you build stamina and skill. (This is true with weightlifting, so it's not surprising that it'd be true with training in general).

After warmups (suicides, circles, and a passing drill), we did the Czechoslovakian drill, and amazingly I did it correctly the first time and with only slight delays to ponder in which direction to skate next on subsequent tries. We then did a couple variations on a drill designed to (a) get us to shoot from farther out, and (b) get us to consider our options when skating into the zone with the puck.

On one of the later variations, Billy challenged the puck carrier as she skated along the boards and behind the net. I got by him the first time I carried the puck, but by the second time, we were into the last 20 minutes of practice, and I was getting tired. I totally let him knock me off the puck without him even trying that hard, and I blamed my noodle arms for not being able to control my stick (and therefore the puck) with enough authority. It was totally like every game I played with the Barons this summer, where I'd have the puck taken away from me the second after I got it.

The third time Billy challenged me, I knew my arms weren't up to the task of fighting him off *and* controlling the puck, so when he came on I stiffened my arms and picked up my speed a bit. I actually ended up picking it up a bit too much, and I didn't make the turn around the net as sharply as I'd intended, so I lost the puck as I tried to pass to the girl in front—but by then I'd left Billy in the dust. Not that he couldn't have caught me if he'd really tried, but that was the "aha!" moment:

It's not my arms, noodle or strong, that make the most difference in maintaining possession of the puck when challenged. It's my legs.

That would have been the game to bring my camera to, since I'd have had enough time between shifts to shoot some clips, but of course I forgot. Instead I only remembered to bring my (new) camera to our last game of the season, when we had only 9 skaters.

Despite the fact that the Barons take waaaay longer shifts than we do on the Freeze, I still only got one clip because I didn't want to be filming when the Winger on my side finally decided to come off. Better to plan for 45 second shifts and be wrong than plan for 2 minute shifts and be wrong.

The clip is from the very start of the game, the other line's first shift out. I wish it were easier to see how efficiently the Coaches break out of their own zone, but you can infer it from seeing one guy with the puck back at the goal line and then the Left Wing with it up at the red line about a second later.

Not only did that Winger body check Tony when Tony tried to poke check him, but he also nearly checked his own teammate when they both went for the puck right after that.

I didn't have any trouble (if you don't count having noodle arms and dull skate blades as trouble), but the check in the video wasn't the only one in the game. There were at least two that resulted in penalties on the Coaches, and one that resulted in a fist fight (and two five minute penalties; I'm not sure why both players weren't ejected, as they would have been at any rink in Northern California).

The Barons will be playing at the Igloo in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey this fall (I think the season starts in late September), and I'll be subbing on the nights that Al can't or doesn't want to play (provided the games don't conflict with my Freeze practices, which I've totally come to look forward to—me, look forward to drills! I know!). I think it'll be a bit closer to my—and the rest of the Barons'—level than this summer's "C30" league, which felt more like the Bay Area over-35 leagues that hosted former pro, semi-pro, and college players. The guys who played in those called them the "old and slow" leagues, but that's only compared to the speeds they reached when they were in their early 20s. Their skills were still far beyond anything in our C/D and mixed-level leagues.

In other hockey news, we're having our Freeze pre-season get-together tomorrow night at Cafe Intermezzo (leave a comment if you're interested in playing on the Indy D team or our C+ former MAWHL team, and I'll hook you up with the team captains), and we'll have our first practice at UPenn on September 22. I can't wait!

Al has been playing on this team at the Igloo in Mt. Laurel, NJ for a few seasons now (one of which coincided, and often conflicted, with my Freeze practices during the fall and winter). Most of the guys from that team decided to join an over-30 league with an abbreviated late-summer season in between spring league and the main fall/winter season, and I asked if I could share a spot with Al. (We can play in the same games and pay a $20 sub fee if we want to, but I'm not sure we will; sub fee + sitter is expensive.)

This particular league is so small (originally 3 teams, now 4) that I ended up playing the same team in the second game of the season that Al played in the first game. There were apparently some differences between the two games, however; while the opposing team was just as fast and experienced as in the first game, they had fewer players, and we had a few more ringers. As a consequence, we won the second game by an overtime goal, where as the first game was a loss.

This was my first game since a tournament in April, and my second time on the ice since then, and as was to be expected, I was rusty. I thought I improved over the course of the game, spazzing less (DUDE, SKATE WITH THE PUCK INSTEAD OF DUMPING IT FORWARD!), making and catching a couple decent passes, and mixing it up with my check, but the first period was kind of awful. I was reminded of how slow I seem when playing with mixed-level men.

If I did nothing to help the team except provide a rest for the ringers, playing last night did make me want to play again. I didn't find it nearly as angst-inducing as I might once have to know that I was among the weakest players on the ice, and I'm eager to get back out there just to get in a comfortable groove, build my confidence back up, and mabye even make a move or two. I know from playing at pickups and the aforementioned tournament that I can beat goalies if I can just get in there and get a shot off. I did also wish that I were already back practicing with the Freeze, though, because I could use some reminders about what to do in certain situations, and practice doing it.

Here's a brief clip of the St. Louis drill, which we ran for several weeks in a row. It involves two lines starting on opposite sides of the ice at each blue line. When Billy blows the whistle, the first skater in each line takes off, skating around the neutral zone faceoff dot, down the far blue line, and up the opposite-side boards. As she does this, the second skater in each line makes a pass off the boards and then takes off after the first skater (who at this point has just passed her and picked up the puck), and they go into the zone together (although slightly staggered). The first skater is then supposed to come to a hard stop along the boards and pass to the second skater, who shoots.

Once we've done this a few times, Billy adds defensemen, who try to break up the inside-the-offensive-zone pass. At this point the first skater can either hard stop or not (we discovered that if we did, the D just came right at us and broke up the pass every time, because they knew what we were up to—and the whole point of stopping is to shake *off* the D), whatever she thinks will be most effective in confusing the D. If I can find a clip of the drill with D, I'll add it to this post later—though I doubt I have one. Once we add D the forwards are skating almost continuously, and there's no time for videoing!

Directly after our game, the Indy team played *their* last game of the season. They were a bit short, so a few of our players helped out. I didn't because I'd arranged for Al to drop the Beaner off after my game was finished; we were planning a Freeze-wide cookout after both games were over, and since it was a large time commitment for me, I wanted to make sure I shouldered my share of the childcare.

The Beaner actually watched the game with me fairly actively. I've learned that the secrets to keeping him interested for three whole periods are (1) bring at least two drinks (vanilla and chocolate soy milk this time) and lots of different snacks (dried apricots, pretzels, fruit gummis, tangelos, baby carrots); (2) bring the camera and shoot video (he likes to sing and/or commentate); (3) cover his ears when the end-of-period buzzer goes off; and (4) tell him which players are which, and then cheer actively. He'll join in.

Speaking of video, I got a couple fun clips, including this one:

...which ended with this:

There are more photos from the game in the Philadelphia Freeze Pool on Flickr, and I'll be uploading videos to Vimeo over the next couple days. (One of Molly on O and Katrin on D is already posted.)

We also talked about Tiff's goal; like me, she couldn't remember how it happened, exactly, but the rest of us remembered it being a one-timer. What's funny is that she clearly remembered my goal being a one-timer, but couldn't remember how her own went down, while I clearly remembered her goal being a one-timer, but couldn't remember how *my* own went down. Guess we've cleared that up now.

I got a bit more video of the drills last night for an upcoming post, but other than that (and the warm-up one-timer practice with Meghan), it wasn't that great a practice for me. I'm getting over bronchitis, and I spent the entire practice coughing, soaking through the two Kleenex tissues I'd brought to the bench almost immediately, sniffling, and coughing some more. Consequently, I didn't get as good a workout as I'm used to. Hopefully I'll still be able to play effectively in our game against Queenston on Saturday...

The other two goals were scored in the third period. The first was by Tiffany, in an almost identical setup to mine with A.T. again shooting from the point, and then Steph had a satisfying empty-netter at the end. (It was satisfying mostly because she skated around several opponents before taking the shot.)

Our last game of the regular season is next Saturday, when we will play the Black Widows (to whom we lost 7-0 in Harrisburg back in December, when Laurie volunteered to play goalie; she actually stopped way more shots than the score indicates, while we couldn't get our act together on offense AT ALL). Meanwhile, the Senators will face Queenston—which means all 4 playoff teams will be playing each other on the 8th as well as on the 15th & 16th. Can't wait to see how it all shakes out!

I didn't play *that* badly, and at another game I might have just thought, "bummer, didn't score" and moved on. In this game, though, I felt like I was not only not living up to my own expectations, but everyone else's, too. It's probably mostly (or even completely) my imagination, but it seemed like I could feel, and sometimes hear, the disappointment oozing from the bench. Result? Confidence = gone. I wasn't completely useless with the pall of disappointment hanging over me, which is a huge improvement over past seasons. But I was edgy and defensive and mad at myself for most of the night... and a bit depressed and annoyed at myself in the morning for being edgy and defensive and mad. Reminds me of morning-after-drinking-to-excess remorse, when you feel a little under the weather, a little depressed that all your buddies are gone, and a little mad that you did that to yourself.

I was hoping to find some joy in practice tonight (though, honestly, it *is* a little frustrating to see improvement in my shot, my skating, and my team play at practice, and yet still make STUPID moves and have no goals during games), but now I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to stay home and sleep. I've managed to contract the Beaner's cold, and I'm exhausted. Then again, it might be less taxing to go to practice than to stay home and single-parent the Beaner. Hmmm.

Whether I go or not, I plan to write about some drills we've been doing at practice that have seemed helpful. I'm still occasionally a "drill killer", as Megan says, but I've gotten the hang of more drills than I would've thought possible when I started with the Freeze, and Billy's been coming up with a few to address specific issues he's noticed during games lately. Look for video of Billy explaining the drills (and of the drills themselves) coming soon.