Monday, February 7, 2011

Monday night is ice hockey madness

A couple hours ago saw the top u18's and senior cape town based national squad members going head to head showcasing their skills to coach Ronni Wood and manager Lloyd Birrell.

The game took off at 8pm with a 10 minute warm up, teams simply being divided using players own black and white practice jerseys. First period took off at a rather high pace and all players were looking sharp.

First line on my line was reeves, yates, millar and magmoed. We generally play together most of the time and enjoy the flow from each other. On the other side of the ice was tchekashkine, joubert, stevens klyde, blazer and van rooyen.

Not putting too much focus on the physical game but rather playing at speed and moving the puck. Our line was dominating most of the first period with good possession down low, on the boards and getting shots in from the blue line.
Taking a shot on the inner thigh from yates kinda put me on edge and after the next face off we got a fumble infront of the net and put the puck away for the first of many to come.

Our 2nd line was made up of johnson, williams, samaai, carlse who saw themselves facing the young line of alex, keenan and lead by cai nebe with his rather comical backhand slapshot.

A fab goal by luke carlse on the rebound from the shot from samaai put our team in the lead but not to speak too soon... Goals from both lines brought them back within range but a bad pass from me, trying to make a cross ice pass was intercepted by mich joubert who finished on lucian lorenzo but redeemed himself moments later with 3 shots on him from russian tchekashkine all with flashy glove saves that put "lucy" back on top.

The final period was a rather scrappy one with the ice not being done throughout the whole game. Passing became a lot more stale and the hitting came into play as players were getting frustrated with the terrible ice surface.

A tag team hit by yates and myself put tchekashkine on his ass in trying to make his way from behind the net to try and stuff the puck but that ended swiftly. A wild stick from youngster heiko meyer landed in the top lip of reeves and caused minor irritation with a blood flow that took a couple minutes to subside.

A tussle behind the net between magmoed and joubert and a big collision with myself and stevens and van rooyen put a great end to the game. Playing half the game stop time and the other half running time, giving the players a feel of what is to come in the world championships in april.

End score was 8-5. A good start and level to measure our final 8 weeks before the champs.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom

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