Saturday - January 10th - Game 12 vs. Predators

Happy Birthday to my Mom! Of course I forgot to call her and called her on the 11th. I felt like such a heal. I always remember to call or visit my parents on their birthdays. I need to start putting alerts on my cell phone to remind me.

I spent the majority of the day picking up, cleaning, and catching up on my blog. That and playing a little indoor golf with Bink. :)

Of course I screwed up and left too early to get to Mitch's place for our hockey carpool. I thought she said to be there by 5:15. It turns out I missed the words...if it snows during the day. Doh! Well I go inside and flip through a scrap mag and I let the kids antics entertain me while they ate their dinner. Benjamin was the funniest because he fell asleep in his highchair while rubbing his eyes.

By the time Pam came over, it was snowing those big fat flakes. You know the ones. They come down hard and it looks really cool, but you know it's not going to last. It was pretty though. The only thing were worried about was getting to our game on time and not ending up stuck in traffic like the ride from hell to Bethlehem a few weeks back. Lucky for us the snow did stop eventually and it turned to rain, but as everyone knows the roads are still slippery. Mitch slowed down a little with her driving while all the assholes blew by us doing eighty and above. Those are the morons that end of killing people in accidents on the turnpike every day.

We got to the rink, which did have a layer on snow, and trudged in. Blessings were on us as the locker room had heat! Wheeeeee! I think the floors were heated because my feet were warm. :) Everyone piled in and yakked as we dressed, getting geared up for the game. We were in second place and wanted to stay there, not let any teams get closer to us. The Predators, the team we were playing, were currently in fourth place.

It was one of those nights where the goalie was good and when we did get shots off where she left open net, we all ended up shooting into her. She worked her ass off, because we outshot them something like 30 or more to 10. Luckily Kate shot a low one that hugged the ice and went on by the post with less than two minutes left in the game.

Now we didn't relax because we've had games where the team scored with less than half a minute left. We learned our lesson and get really tight on defense. They pulled their goalie and Catoia flew in, holding the puck until she was sure she was in close enough for a good shot and she let it loose, scoring an insurance goal. We still didn't relax because until that buzzer goes off, the game is NOT over. Mitch grabbed the puck on the next faceoff and down the ice she went, doing the same thing as Catoia. Her goal was all the more sweet because she worked her ass off all night and dominated on defense. I think she's our best defenseman on the team because she can carry the puck and knows how to protect it on the boards.

One sidenote on this game. Over all the Predators are a nice group of players, but they had one asshole who was checking people. It pisses you off more when the ref stands there and watches it. No, she wasn't riding people off the puck, she was doing a full check. The last one was from behind, in our zone behind the net. She ended up injuring our defenseman. Not cool at all. And the ass had the nerve to stand there and say she didn't do anything. Mitch shoved her and told her to basically get lost. Not her words, but you could tell what she meant. :) We ended up playing two D, me and Micth, for the last three or four minutes of the game because our other D, Wendy, was sick on the bench. That was fun for us, but not for our other defensemen. I hate the fact that the refs let some players do full checks, but when someone on our team does it, off to the box we go. If one can do it, then let everyone else do it.

Game over. We won 3 - 0. After a quick shower we were back on the road for the hour and a half ride home. Of course we took the wrong way home and ended up in the middle of Philly. God was good to us as he placed a Taco Bell on that stretch of the road. We made a pitstop for our postgame meal.

By the time we got back and I got home and in bed, it was two-thirty again. Gotta' love the dedication we have to our sport.