My hockey team, the Shock, finished our season on an 8-2 run to make it to .500 for the season and squeak into the playoffs. This was a pretty impressive feat considering we were a disaster in the first half of the season going 2-8 and enduring a lot of sloppy play and internal team difficulties. We pulled it together and have become a pretty strong team. I ended my point drought in our last two games scoring 2 goals (one on a breakaway, one on a deflection). Was nice to get them in wins as well. So we eeked into our playoffs against the Phantoms, a team we had been pretty evenly matched with during the season.

Game 1 they came out strong and scored 2 quick goals. We recovered and got 1 back in the 2nd and tied it with 6 minutes left in the 3rd period only to have the goal waved off because the ref said it deflected off of one of our forwards skates while it was in forward motion. He said even though it was not intentional, any forward motion of the skate on a deflection that goes into the goal is no goal. We didn't want to get into a whining war so we finished the game unable to score again and lost 2-1. After further review, the ref was wrong. If the puck is purposely kicked in the net it is no goal, but unintentional forward motion does not nullify the goal. So we were robbed. But that's they way it goes.

Game 2 was last night. We came out stronger and had a good 1st period which ended with us down 1-0. With the score 3-1 in the 2nd I had a shot go off the post. Then midway through the 3rd it started to get a little more desperate and physical. We had to start taking chances and got burned and lost 5-1. I had a few checks and slashed someone in the head in the last few minutes but the refs weren't calling anything so... I took a few more penalties in the last few games trying to use my size a little more on the ice to my advantage which had good results despite putting me in the box more (the website doesn't show all the penalties... I took a couple more than it lists)

Bitter end to the season. We all believed we could win and get to Toronto, but there's always next year.