Three in Six

The winter season for my Renegades Hockey Team started on September 10th.  We played three times in six days.  Then we get a break of almost two weeks until our fourth game.

The first game was on Saturday the 10th at 11:45AM at Clare Drake Arena.  We faced off against a team called the Rogues.  They had almost a full bench, and we only had nine skaters.  So we played the game with two forward lines and three defensemen.  As a result I ended up being on the ice for two-thirds of the game.  Despite that, we won the game 4-2.

Then on Tuesday the 13th we played again, also at Clare Drake Arena.  This one was an evening game, starting at 9:30PM.  Once again only nine of our skaters showed up so once we again we played with only three defense.  I'm starting to get used to it, and it wasn't all that bad.  The team we played, the Bulldogs, were mostly really young guys, and pretty quick.  They had a few more players than we did.  The game was really close and the score went back and forth all night.  Late in the third period we took a lead and managed to hang onto it, including a couple of goals in the dying minutes.  The final score was 10-7.

The third game was on Thursday the 15th at 9:30PM at Argyll Arena.  Things were looking up, as we had ten skaters for this one.  That meant we could play with four defense for a change.  But, about eight minutes in, our best player got ejected from the game.  He scored a goal, that clearly went in, but the referee didn't see it properly, and disallowed it.  Our player took exception to that and called out the referee.  So, once he had been ejected, we were back to nine skaters, and only three defense.  We were down 3-0 at the end of the first period and then got a goal in the dying seconds on a lucky bounce from out at the blue line.  Our opponents had a full bench, and were a good team of hard, fast skaters that passed well.  They were really good in tight on the net and got a couple of goals from right in the crease.  We were down 4-1 in the second period.  But then we rallied and five straight goals, including an empty netter at the end, to win 6-4.