As Christmas dinner approaches in a few hours, I have found some time to sneak in a quick blog and hopefully if I write fast enough, a quick nap. I am pretty tired after our 5-1 win over Amiens last night in Coupe de France 1/4 finals. Usually after a game, I have a hard time falling asleep right away, and since I have subscribed to ESPN360, I have been staying up late watching NHL games live on my computer. Last night I took in the first two periods of the Montreal/Carolina game, where I was happy to fall asleep with the Canadiens leading 5-1.
I think part of the reason after my games I can't fall asleep immediately is because mentally I am wide awake from the game and all the hype and energy it takes to be mentally alert at all times, but also because of the pre game nap. Generally I like to relax and have a little snooze, I do not set out 2 hours, 12 minutes and 36 seconds or anything superstitious like that. Though I do like to have my pasta around 1pm, then relax in bed. I usually watch hockey highlights on TSN or NHL.com for a while, then try to fall asleep. Sometimes I am so excited for the game, all I can think about is what I am going to do on the ice, how I am going to help our team win. That, however, is not the best strategy, because thinking too much can often be a negative thing. Hockey is very much a game of read a react situations and very instinctive, there is simply no time to think and calculate, it must be automatic. Visualization I do encourage, or imagery. Which entails running through situations in your head exactly how they would happen and seeing yourself perform them with 100% execution. That way, when that same situation arises in the game, there is not thinking involved, you simply react because in your mind, you have repeated many times over again with fluidity and precision.
As for our game last night, the big story was our penalty kill. With the game tied 1-1 nearing the end of the first period, we found ourselves down 2 men on some pretty weak calls. The shocking part for us however, was that after being down 2 men, we managed to take another penalty 3 seconds later. Then another penalty 20 seconds after that, followed by our coach, who was obviously pissed off, receiving another 2 minutes for a harmless hand gesture (which I must clarify, was not the middle finger). So for over 4 minutes we were short handed 5 on 3 and I forgot to mention, 3 of our defensemen were in the penalty box. In Epinal I was always on for the penalty kill in 5 on 4 or 5 on 3 situations but in Briancon, with many solid defensive defensemen that we have, I usually am conserved on the bench for the power play and even strength.
With about 2 minutes left to kill, I find myself racing out onto the ice to replace one of our defensemen. I was so excited and so determined to kill this off, because I knew it would give us so much energy and confidence. They took possession in our zone early but forced a bad pass which I swooped in on and dumped down the ice to kill some time. They came back into our zone and moved it around a bit, the puck went out to the point and I raced into the lane and blocked the shot off my ankle. The puck went down low, back up to the top again and as I was hurting in pain, I jumped into the shooting lane again for another blocked shot. Man this was getting exciting, I was having so much fun blocking shots, I started thinking that being a defensive defenseman could give the same pleasures as scoring goals! Anyways, the puck gets dumped back out, I make a line change and the kill is completed shortly after. Wow, that was awesome, sorry for rambling on there. What a momentum shift that was though!!!
Ok, less detail to sum up the rest of the game. We scored twice in the 2nd to make it 3-1, then again twice in the 3rd to win the game 5-1. We now head to the semi-finals in Strasbourg on Jan 5th, with the winner earning a berth to Paris, Bercy to play in the finals of La Coupe de France on Jan 31st. It is going to be a tough game, but we are going to be ready.
This is getting exciting :)
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