Author: sutherland

No, this list will not be everything that T and I need to work on, just the most immediate couple of things I can see right now.  There’s not enough room on the interweb for the complete list. 

One thing I’ve noticed observing both the kids’ and adults’ learn-to-play classes is that they concentrate on different things.  The kids are combining learning to skate (crossovers, backwards, etc.) with hockey drills, while the adults are assumed to know all the skating maneuvers.  As a mediocre skater, I’m a bit miffed by this, but oh well.

So T’s list is more hockey related, while mine is more skating in general.  Sucks to be me. 🙁

T

• Situational awareness.  He’s focusing on the puck, especially when he has it, and not looking around at all.
• Passing.  Sort of like the first one – he looks at the puck as he’s getting ready to pass, not at where he wants the pass to go, so they tend to go wide or he misses the target if it’s moved.
• Practicing. He needs to start taking new things he learns in class into his regular skating.  For instance, last class they taught crossovers, but he spent the next public session without doing it at all.

Me

• Trust the Ice. A lot of my problems boil down to this – someone once told me to get better I had to trust the ice. I can see this in other skaters, the way they’ll turn and slide with ease and confidence.  I have it with certain maneuvers, but not with others, and I think it needs to be more of a general attitude.
• Backwards. Awkward as it feels, I need to get a lot better at skating backwards.
• Clockwise. Why don’t they reverse direction periodically in the public skating sessions?  I can’t do a damn thing turning to the right.
• Shooting.  It’s not that I have a weak shot … it’s that I have no shot.  Not to speak of, anyway.  I think I need to not practice shooting until I have a class where they tell me how, otherwise I’ll be reinforcing a technique that clearly sucks.
• Balance.  I need to get the Wii set back up and start doing yoga in Wii Fit.  If I had stronger core muscles a lot of this would be easier.

There are a lot of things I need to work on as far as general skating skills before I’ll really feel ready to play, so each new accomplishment is a big milestone for me – one step closer to that first game.

On Sunday, I watched the adult learn-to-play class, the one a coach told me I could jump right into, and saw one of their drills:

Two players skate around the face-off circles twice and head up-ice. Pass in the defensive zone, pass in the neutral zone, pass in the offensive zone and shoot.  They ran it both with and without a defenseman trying to break things up.  I think I could handle this pretty well, except for the skating around the circles part.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I can skate in a circle.  That’s not the problem.  But this drill had them skating the top half of the circle forwards and the bottom half backwards.  Since I can barely make noticeable sternway backwards and can’t transition at all, even in a straight line, the drill would be problematic for me. 

So after sending T off to join the kids’ scrimmage, I worked on that today.  My friend Eric tried to tell me how to do it last week, but I still can’t translate what he said into physical action.

I did, however, get a pretty stable transition going – skating straight, anyway.  It’s not elegant, but it works for me.

It involves going into a hockey stop with less pressure on my leading foot, so it’s still scraping the ice a bit, but not too much, then bringing my trailing foot around to point backwards.  I seem to be lifting the heel of my trailing foot during the turn, too.  So I can then transition my weight to the trailing foot, which is now pointed backwards, and reposition the lead.

I practiced that for quite a while today, skating from the blue line, transitioning at the red and then gliding to a snowplow stop at the other blue line.  Not pretty, but it worked.

One step closer…

Today’s skate-and-shoot had very few people at it, so there was a lot of ice for T and I.  We started out with T skating with the puck and taking shots on goal while I poked the puck away once in a while and gave him something to worry about to keep him on his toes.

Until, that is, he announces that the score is 2-0. Well, hell, I didn’t know we were keeping score.

So the two goals he scored before that don’t count, in my opinion. Neither does the empty-netter he laid claim to after I’d been sitting on the bench catching my breath for a full minute.  Which means that his 5-0 final score is inflated by three.

Yeah, I’ll give him credit for the middle two goals, because I was pushing him pretty hard there and he stayed on the puck well. For some reason, every time I sent the puck to the net it went wide to the left.

Once he was bringing the puck up the right side and I stayed with him, blocking his shot and not letting him move toward center ice.  I figured once we got to the net he’d skate straight into the boards like he usually does to stop, but this time he turned into me and we went behind the net, with him still in control of the puck.  It wasn’t until we got tangled up behind the net and both went down that he lost it.

Since there were only a few kids there today and most of them his size, I sent him off to join their scrimmage while I practiced skating (more on that in another post).  He developed a little tactic of waiting until the crowd around the puck got tangled up, then swooping in to grab it. 

One thing I didn’t realize before starting all this was how much you sweat in hockey – I mean, ice, right? Cold? Sweat comes from heat, right?

Well, once all that gear’s on and you skate for forty-five minutes, you find out different. And even I know that leaving the gear wet is going to result in damp, stinky gear the next time you put it on.

So some kind of stand to let the pads and such dry is in order, but after just buying two sets of gear, another $40-$60 each for stands seems a bit much.  I’d rather spend that on ice time.

So T and I headed over to my crack dealer* Home Depot to see what we could come up with.  For $20 we got enough PVC, connectors, PVC glue and a hacksaw blade to make two stands.

T did all the measuring and cutting of this by himself, I just did the gluing.  Here’s a stop-motion clip of him doing the dry-fit:

One problem with this: We went with 3/4” PVC and the upright bends too much with all the gear on it.  The arms are fine, but it sways like a sapling.  Should have gone with 1” for the upright.  But, never fear, attaching a 2” piece to brace it** works fine and provides a convenient tube to put the stick in:

Next is for me to build mine and figure out where to put it … right now the gear’s piled in a corner of the bedroom, but I’m not sure how long that’ll be acceptable.

* I’ve started a lot of projects around the house recently and kitten thinks I’m addicted to Home Depot.  I disagree – I’ve only been there about a hundred times in the last month, which is perfectly reasonable.

** Yes, getting the 2” PVC required another trip to Home Depot. I feel much better now and the shakes have subsided.

I go looking for T after his skating lesson today to give him the wristband he needs for public skating, but he’s still on the ice where the lessons are.

I figure they’re just taking advantage of some extra ice time until the zamboni is finished cleaning the other sheet, so I get his attention and he skates over:

“They want me to try the learn to play and see how I like it!” he says.

So he tries it … and, of course, he likes it. 

In the learn to skate group he was one of the bigger kids and got things pretty quickly, but he’s being challenged in learn to play.

Of course, this screws up my timing and plan to take learn to play at the same time he does … after I’ve had another couple months to practice skating.

One of the coaches told me its no problem, I can jump into the current adult learn-to-play class and there are enough coaches in it to work with me on skating, but I’m a little leery of that.  I don’t want to be the suckiest guy in the class.

I need to decide by next Sunday what I’m going to do about that. :/

Second skate and shoot for T. 

Near the end of the session, the goalie from the adult scrimmage goes in net at center ice where the kids are scrimmaging.

T’s not scrimmaging, he’s just grabbing loose pucks and skating in to take shots, some of which the goalie lets go by, so T’s happy about that.

On his last shot, though, T’s coming straight in with the puck.  He shifts his weight and lifts his stick a bit to take a shot and the goalie moves to cover him, but T swerves left, takes the puck with him and then gives it a little backhand tap into the net!

It was a very nice little move that he did at-speed (his, at least) – he should be proud of that shot, I know I am.

Tonight there are Division C-Gold games … annotated as “novice” on the schedule.

I come in mid-game and I’m immediately disappointed.  If this is “novice”, then I’m an even worse skater than I thought I was.  I knew I needed to work on things, but I didn’t realize how far I have to go.

There’s a C-Silver division, that might be what the guy at RDV meant as the “rookie” division, but I think I’ll probably have farther to go than I expected even for that … I need the GWFDAL*-division.

*Guys Who Fall Down A Lot

Okay, that was fun.

After checking out the skate and shoot Monday, I decided to bring T today.  The rest of his gear arrived, so he’s well-padded and ready for some more ice time.

Unlike last time, when I just skated around trying to control the puck, this time I had an eleven-year old of roughly my own skill-level to play with (all the other eleven-year olds there being far beyond my level).

We practiced passing – a lot different on ice with a puck, than it was in the garage with a plastic ball. T took some shots on the empty net at center ice. And we just chased each other around in the neutral zone trying to steal the puck from each other – it was a blast.

I like the skate and shoots, so far, but I’d like to find a time when they’re less crowded.  The scrimmages at either end seem to get a bit more aggressive as time goes on and come further and further over the blue line — it’s unnerving to watch a herd of guys four times his size bear down on the little guy and weave around him.

In a couple months T’ll be done with learn to skate and then we’ll both take a learn to play class.  After that, I’m pretty sure he’ll be ready to play on a team, but I’m not so sure about myself. The kid’s picking things up and improving a lot faster than I can.

Tonight I go to the rink to watch a game in the 35+ division – I am, after all, getting up there, so maybe this is where I need to set my sites on playing.  I want to get an idea for what my target skill-level needs to be to join a team.

Things look promising at first … lots of grey hair, lots of missing hair, some bellies.  I might be able to keep up with these guys … then the puck drops …

Old and slow?  Right.  Older and slower than when they played in college, maybe.

Not where I’ll likely ever be playing, but a fun game to watch.  I need to stop by and watch games here more often.