A simple skate & shoot last night and I practiced some of the things I need to work on.
First I worked on something I noticed at Monday’s clinic. From a standing start, I can start moving forward or backward pretty well, but at Monday’s clinic I was trying to step side-to-side if the passes weren’t right to me.
So I spent some time, off and on, going from standing to skating short distances right and left. I still don’t think I have it right, I think – it takes me too much time to start and I’m quite off-balance.
I also spent some time working on my shooting, which has little force behind it yet, but is starting to stay on target and I think my form’s better. And I did some passing with one of the guys from the Monday clinic.
At this rink, they have the kids on one end and adults on the other with cones along the center line, so I spent some time weaving through the cones with a puck. I was having a lot of trouble with this to start with and then realized what was wrong when my inner-retard spoke up:
“Where’s the puck, dumb ass?”
“It’s behind me … oh …”
Yeah, I’d been practicing my shot and dragging the puck behind me and that carried over into skating for some reason. I was trying to skate through the cones with the puck a foot or more behind my feet. I still don’t know why I did that little bit of nonsense, but things went much better after I started skating with the puck where it should be.
