On Wednesday night I received an email stating I was selected to play in the 2016 Lakewood Ice Adult League All-Star game, I was pretty jazzed! Each team in Rookie and Copper was to select 2 players to represent their respective teams, and the league would choose the goalies. I was selected out of 20 teams! The league selected 4 goalies, two for each team. I was there representing my Copper team!
Here is the flyer:
The other goalie for our team never showed up, so I was playing the entire game. No biggie, although I was looking forward to just playing half of it and competing in the breakaway skills competition. The other team had two goalies, and they each played 1.5 periods, and also split the breakaway skills competition. The game had a pretty fast pace, as it mixed all of the Copper levels and there were clearly a handful of sandbaggers that should be playing in the Gold division, how they aren't is beyond me, then again, nothing surprises me with this place (or most leagues for that matter). Anyhow, I had a shutout in the first period, and we were up 4-0 after 1. I gave up 3 in the second period, the first one was whacked out of the air by the ringer, I deflected a pass from the corner that was coming to the slot with my paddle, it went up in the air about 2 feet and as it was coming down, he took a backhand swing and it went in, I have video of this and will upload later. The second goal was a great top corner snipe through a screen, couldn't see it at all, third goal was a nice back-hander top glove by the ringer. I gave up for in the 3rd, our defense was non-existent, even my dad texted me after the game saying that I should thank them (sarcasm) for allowing the other team back in the game. It really was nuts of how bad they got. Two of the goals were on me, one short side goal, and a bad top corner over my left shoulder as I was in reverse VH on the left post. There wasn't much room at all, so I suppose it was a great shot? We ended up winning 10-7, and I won the goalie portion of the shootout competition, only allowing 2 goals on 12 attempts. Each skater had 3 attempts in rapid succession, basically skating in the first puck from the blue line, taking a shot then hustling back to the blue line to get the next puck, shot, then repeat. I was getting pretty gassed as it was non-stop, and again I was the only goalie for our team.
All in all it was a lot of fun, I really dig the faster paced game. As seen on the flyer, they did do player introductions, a national anthem and we had some bomb post-game bbq catered. I was given a signed John Gibson Ducks puck, and a nice The Rinks pint glass for winning the goalie portion of the shootout competition.
Here are a couple pix of the locker room. It was cool, they had our jerseys hanging with a hat from Teemu's brand, "Aufeis", and "name-plates". They also had a big bucket full of waters and beers for us in the middle.
I didn't play in our regular beer league game on Saturday as we were in Big Bear, but I saw the scoresheet and we lost, 5-2.