Team Yellow played its second game of the spring hockey season on Sunday. We won 10-5 against a scrappy Green team. I put one in the net but again, my efforts were more focused on the defensive end of the game. I played with a newly purchased one-piece composite stick after breaking my two-piece at pickup last week. I like the new stick, it's a lot lighter than my last one which took some getting used to, but overall I think it's a good one. Hopefully it'll last a while since I missed the memo about hockey sticks now costing over $100. Seriously, who needs a $200 hockey stick?

I was also coerced in to playing goalie during the first game on Sunday evening. The league only has three goalies, so they rotate through the games and play for every team over the course of the season. Kory is our only consistent goalie; he shows up every week and usually plays all three games. I guess the other two goalies had something better to do this week, so Luke called me on Sunday afternoon asking if I would play. I have the misfortune of actually being pretty decent at goalie since I used to play that position when I was a teenager. I also made the mistake of playing goalie during pickup games, so now the league management knows I can play.

I got to the rink early and found out that the U16 league was having the same issue with no one wanting to play goalie. I suited up quickly and played the first half of their game. Playing against little kids is weird because it seems like they move in slow motion when compared to adults. I got scored on 4 times in one half because I would react to them shooting the puck, rather than waiting for the puck to get to me. See, when an adult shoots the puck, it's on you in half a second. When a kid shoots the puck, it takes about 17 days to reach the net. So rather than waiting to see what the puck was going to do, I reacted to the shot like I normally would against an adult. Also, kids don't know how to play defense, so there were a lot of 1 v 1 situations where I had no help at all. Also, I'm notorious for letting in a few stupid goals at the beginning of the game because I don't take a long warmup.

Anyway, I played the first adult game of the night against Kory. I don't feel like I let in any ridiculous goals; I'd say the other team worked for all of them, whether it was a defensive mistake or they just broke my ankles with a good move. The game was tied up 5-5 with under a minute left when my team put in the game winning goal. After the game, Lindsey (A girl hockey player, OMG) told me that the folks watching the game were like, "WTF? I didn't know Joe could play goalie." It's always nice to get indirect compliments, though, I'm going to start billing the league every time they ask me to fill in.