14-2

Um, so yeah, that was the score in our ball hockey game today. I don’t have to tell you what end our team wound up on.

When you get shelled like that, you can’t really expect too many positives from the game, but surprisingly there were some. I’ll go into those later.

As for the game, I knew we were in serious trouble in the warm-up. I looked over to the other team and watched a guy shoot the ball. It was a fucking laser from nearly half court. I instantly knew they might be going into double-digits. The other team had clearly played ball hockey last term, while on our team, some guys hadn’t played hockey period.

Max volunteered to start in goal, but he took so long to get his equipment on that he couldn’t warm-up. He started the game cold. He was also wearing shitty gear that didn’t help.

Here’s where it got incredulous. About a minute into the game, we actually scored the first goal. Kent scored a beauty in close. I was on the bench and I thought it was a mistake.

Then reality set in. They notched the equalizer about a minute after our goal. Then they went up 2-1. I think they scored another one soon after to go up 3-1.

Kent then got in alone with the goalie and made a helluva forehand-backhand deke to bring us to 3-2. That would signal the end of our scoring.

After that they just came at us in waves. Guys were missing defensive assignments left and right. We left the other team alone out front and their pointmen were sending in bombs with impunity. It seemed like everything was going in.

Mercifully, the half ended and we talked about getting our defensive responsiblities together.

It didn’t really matter as they continued to score unabated for the second half, but we definitely cut down the amount of chances they had.

By the time it ended, the score was 14-2. I played poorly in my mind, though I was only a -3 which was pretty damn good. I didn’t register a shot on net, though I knew I was probably going to have to play defensively the entire game.

At the end of the game, there were two amusing anecdotes. When I was picking up my student card from the official scorers table, I overheard the stats guy and the ref in a middle of their conversation.

“Man, you only hear of games with a score like this…”

I looked at the scoresheet that the ref had handed in to the stats guy. It was a piece of paper divided in the middle into two columns. Each side showed what player on each team had accumulated how many points. The other team’s column was littered with numbers and check marks. I don’t think a single guy on their team was with out a point. Our column was clean as undriven snow. Out of our two goals, only two players registered a point on those plays. It was awful looking at that.

The second thing happened as we were shaking hands with the other team after the game. I overheard one of our opponents ask one of my guys, “So, what team are you guys?” He asked it in a way that you would ask your friend if someone was mentally-challenged. I figure he didn’t want to start bragging if we were some “special education” group that was being studied at UBC. I think what he meant to say was, “So you guys wear the helmets when you’re not playing hockey too?”

Well, here come the positives, how small in number they are. I think overall the team improved in the second half. For a bunch of guys who never played together before, it could have been worse… but not by much. Individually, Kent and Steve were our best players. They definitely should be linemates. With their skill, it only makes sense. Aseem had a wicked shift near the end where he broke up two scoring plays and kept the ball hemmed in at the other end.

Well, I’m not sure if it’s going to get any better. My biggest fear is that the team we played today was the 2nd worst team in our pool. Whoa, what if that was true?