Alpes x2

So after arriving early at 5:30am Sunday morning from our game against Mont Blanc in St. Gervais, I spent most of the morning sleeping. This is normal for us to arrive early in the morning after a weekend game, but we usually don't follow it up with another long trip on 3 days later to a place just as far and only 54.9km away from where we played on Saturday night. The idea was tossed around a bit about staying in the Alpes for both games, practicing there and hopefully coming home with 2 wins.

That didn't happen, so as per usual we had our team workout this morning and will practice tonight before leaving again on that same route tomorrow morning at 9:30am.

In St. Gervais, I was not only impressed with the name of the town (haha), but the quality of the ice they had in their rink would have to rank up there with the best I've ever skated on. I would say second only to GM Place in Vancouver where the Canucks play. A few years ago at UBC our team played 4 games there, but that is NHL ice, this is France we are talking about here. Some of the reason for such great ice could have something to do with the -15 temperatures inside the rink. You could even see your breath on the bench in between shifts!  

In all seriousness, it was a pretty solid road game for us, finnish goalie Eero Vare played very solid in net, after giving up a weak goal in the first period. With his solid play in net, we were able to cruise to a 5-1 victory with yet again a depleted lineup. Missing Jan Simko and still Ilpo Salmivirta from our lineup. Other changes saw the forward lines being moved around with our lack of scoring as Alex Sundquist, centered a line with Jan Plch and Tarik Chipaux, and the 2nd unit had Petrak centering Chassard and Papelier. The changes must have sparked Chassard as he delivered a much needed 2 goals and Papelier added an empty netter.

So back to the Alpes tomorrow as we will face Morzine, a team loaded with all French players and we will look for some revenge as they beat us earlier this season in our own rink and also handed us 2 losses last season as well.