Zee Spleens sub for Maroon!

For those that don’t meticulously stalk the Northern California Women’s Hockey League, I’m in the Red (intermediate) league. Maroon is the intermediate/advanced league.

Anyway, since a lot of the Maroon players were in Las Vegas over the weekend, some of the players from my Spleens team subbed for a Maroon team last night.

I was really nervous before the game — I’ve been toying with the idea of trying out for Maroon in March, but had no idea whether or not that was even realistic. I love my Red teammates and will be totally happy in either league, so I was worried about trying out if it would wind up with me frustrated and disappointed.

As it turned out, I had a BLAST. I skated hard and shot hard and grinned the whole time. I played D with Erica, who gave me both tips and compliments. She was fun to play D with and we had a decent line going, switching back and forth and passing to one another behind the net.

Erica:

That was one thing I noticed a lot in general; people really used the ice behind the net a lot more than they do in the Red division. We tend to just say “Oh, an opponent! BLEH!” and thwap the puck up the boards as fast as possible. In Maroon, people took more time and hung back and really used the open ice a lot more.

Even though we lost pretty badly (0-5) and I was playing D, I was only on the ice for two of their goals. I was tied up with a wing on one of those, so I know that I could have only maybe done something about 1 of the 5 goals. So that’s OK. I think the score was mainly lopsided because we spent pretty much the entire 2nd and 3rd periods in our defensive zone. It made for a great workout on D, though I wish we could have had some more shots on goal.

All in all, it was an awesome time, and now I’m crazy excited for the Maroon tryouts. I’m guessing they’ll be in late March…two months to prepare!