Efe

Altay Spor Kulubu: 4
Istanbul Buz Kartalları: 3
(1-1, 2-2, 1-0*)
* game forfeited with 11:07 left in the third period

I've decided to form a beer league here in Turkiye.

'Cause if we're not going to practice and we want to waste one day a week 'playing' hockey, I figure we might at least have some fun while doing it. We lost this game by forfeit, after playing all through the first two periods and almost midway through the final period. And we were the better team, playing better hockey and we had 11 minutes to equalize and even go ahead.

Anyway, more on that later. Let's not deviate from the standard format.

First period, I got a couple of early saves and was feeling pretty happy about myself. They kept one guy at our blue line and I was constantly screaming at my defenders to make sure they kept an eye out for him. And then I let in arguably the worst goal this season (apart from the one in Week 1 when I tried to play the puck and had it taken off me) when they shot from just behind our blue line. It was coming relatively high, so I started out with my blocker and it suddenly dipped and I dropped my blocker down but wasn't quick enough and it went in low on my blocker side. We got in one a few minutes later and the period ended 1-1.

The second period started with me in a pool. The ice was so bad at my end that the back of the goal was under half an inch of water and the crease was not much better. I called over the ref and he called the head ref but after a minute of deliberating they decided it was OK to play on and we started. Of course the first few minutes were full of shouting aimed at the ref about how the puck wasn't moving at our end. At around the five minute mark I had to redo my crease because the water had finally frozen.

They got some shots off but most were going wide and I deflected them to the corner with my stick. I had a couple of nice glove saves off stick deflections and one where it came off my stick and deflected high to just in front of my crease and I ended diving facefirst with my glove extended to get it. Later on, there was a commotion at the other end when one of our players confronted their player and the referees gave them both minors. Unfortunately for us, our guy decided the smart thing to do was smash his stick into the glass of the penalty box on his way in. He was ejected from the game for his trouble. So we started the game 11 players plus a goalie and how had 10 + 1 players.

Anyway, a couple of goals on my end this period. Mind you both goals were off powerplays of double powerplays as thanks to the guys on our team we were playing 5on3 or 4on3 most of the period. The first one came when the guy came in blocker side, though not at low enough of an angle for me to go VH. He came in real close and I should've poke checked or at least gone down in the butterfly but I decided to wait it out to see if he went high and instead he went five hole over my stick. Too close for me to react, at least in the form I'm in now. The second one came in when the guy basically slalomed past 2-3 players and it was a short 1v0 with him putting it blocker side high into the top corner. The second period ended 3-3.

The third period started nicely and like most of the game, we were attacking their goal systematically but just not putting the puck in the net. They had a couple of shots but nothing extreme till one attack where the guy got past a couple of defenders on the blocker side boards and then tried to pass high to the front of the goal. I played it and it fell in front of an opponent and I just stacked the pads towards the far post. The shot hit my pads and when to the glove side corner and I got back up and watched the puck get carried behind the goal to the blocker side. Then the guy turned back behind the goal to the glove side and skated out with our guy trailing him. He suddenly turned and shot and I extended my pad down low to the post and the puck got stuck between the post and my skate and managed to squeeze past. I gave our captain a 'what more can I do?' look and he basically shrugged as if to say 'you did all you could' and then we were down 4-3. Mind you this was again when we were a man down.

Near the 9 minute mark on the final period, there was some commotion near our bench and play was stopped. They gave our captain a 10 minute penalty and he kept shouting so he was ejected from the game. I later learned that he was screaming at the ref about getting the medical staff to the bench for someone and the ref warned him about keeping his voice down and keeping calm but I guess he didn't want to understand. With him ejected, we were down to 9+1 players and below the league minimum and the referees called the game. So in the end we ended up forfeiting a game because we didn't have enough players.

I was pretty pissed off, but I stayed on the ice and shook the refs' and other team players' hands. Then it was off to the locker room, where for two minutes I listened to the players talk about how the first guy ejected was right. After three games, I got over my new guy jitters and reprimanded the whole team about how it didn't matter if he was undeniably right or not. In the end, he negated everything by doing something stupid and getting sent off. On the ice, it doesn't matter how right you are, its a matter of how the ref sees it and in our case he was given a minor and decided to be selfish and get himself sent of because he wasn't able to control himself. The captain as well, he was just being a hothead when he is supposed to be the most calm and cool guy on the ice.

After some of the guys had left, I talked to our club president about how I was thinking of starting a beer league like in the US or Canada. This way, at least if we were going to waste one day a week (we're still not practicing) playing hockey, we might at least have some fun without having to think of playoffs and our win-loss record and we could pop off a couple of cold ones in the locker room afterwards. That's how we're playing right now, like a rec team playing in a beer league where it doesn't matter who gets sent of and when you get home you think about what you did and not how the team played. Anyway, enough ranting for now. Sorry about carrying on.