January 29th, 2025
Dear diary,
Tonight, the Broods team was short players against the Red Pepper team and they popped into our locker room to recruit players to fill out their roster. After deciding to play, I came around the corner to enter the ice and could collectively feel the wind quit blowing in their sails as I was their volunteer to help.
I scanned the ice to see who else was there and was told I would be filling in J. Lammy’s shoes (size 6.5 for reference) for the night. “No big deal” I thought as I have no problem complimenting the tiny footed, highly touted, 4th leading points scorer. As expected, the game was fast paced, intense hockey. Early on, it was clear my line mates couldn’t work with my speed, middle to lower end slow, as missed passes were prevalent and several icings were whistled.
After going up 2 goals early, Pepper answered right back. I was able to net our 3rd goal after I allowed J. Douce to do all the prerequisite work, everything, and I come in a clean up the rebound. I blacked out for basically the rest of that period as my goals have that effect on me when they only happen once or twice a year, I think I now know why, seen here. At one point, I was running around out of position and was told to “clog the middle”. Knowing the cameras in the building weren’t on to document my positioning, I went forward with my plan and stayed nowhere near the middle. The potential of having to block a shot or sacrifice myself for the betterment of the team has never really been my thing.
In the end, we fell short 5-7 on the final tally sheet. I left the rink tonight with the mindset that I single handedly kept G. Johnson in check with 3 points despite myself being a minus-7 and distributing 19 muffin pass turnovers to the Caulfield twins throughout the course of the night. I’m looking forward to skating with those guys again and will probably just switch to their team!