Summer Hockey - Game 1

With the recent winter championship fresh in our minds, we headed back to the rink, after only a very short break, to begin the summer hockey season.  The team is largely unchanged.  A couple of our full time players from this past winter have dropped down to play as spares for the summer.  One of our winter spares took on a full time role.  Two of our guys from the winter season are taking a break from hockey and not playing this summer.  And, we have three new players, all friends of guys on the team.

As fate would have it, our first game of the season was against the Gators.  These were the guys that we defeated to win the winter championship.  The game was on Monday evening, back at Knights of Columbus Arena.  It felt great to be back at the rink.  The day was very hot, with the temperature peaking at +31C!!!  What a change from the ongoing winter like conditions that we have put up with for many months.  Finally we seem to have put winter behind us, and can enjoy the warmer temperatures.  I believe that a temperature record was set this past Monday for Edmonton.  

Summer hockey is so much more relaxed...   The ice times seem to be better as there are not so many players and leagues competing for the available rinks.  And it is so nice to show up at the rink in a T-shirt, and actually enjoy coming inside to cool off with a good skate.

This time around, to start the summer season, the Gators were looking to avenge their recent playoff loss.  They came out hard, and seemed to want, or maybe need the win more than we did.  We just enjoyed getting back to the rink and putting on our skates and our gear again.  We made some introductions with the new guys, and headed out to the ice to enjoy the skate.  It was a close game, as all of the games have been against these guys.  But we fell a little short and ended up losing by a score of 4-3.

No one was particularly upset about it and it felt great to begin yet another hockey season.  The summer season is rather compressed and we will play 15 regular season games over a stretch of about 9 or 10 weeks.  This will be followed by playoffs in mid-July.  Then we will take a break for about six weeks before the next winter season gets underway.  I think that most of the guys on the team look upon this as an opportunity to get some exercise, keep the team chemistry going, and just enjoy playing the best sport in the world.  Whether we win or lose is not all that important at this time of year...