More Class #3

A big talking point last night was the event of the first stick breaking!

And can you guess which kind of stick it was?

Yup, you got it! A one-piece carbon fibre stick!

It happened during the scrimmage at the end of class. The contact seemed pretty minimal, but the end result was a guy snapping his Ballistick in half.

Of course, that’s really half the story.

The other half is how much the stick cost? Afterwards, the guy admitted he paids $260!

Ouch!

Now, he said he got it at cost because he knows a VP at Ballistick, but still $260!

I just don’t know if I will ever go down that path. And while I admit I simply drool over those sticks as they are just too damn sexy to ignore (is there a cooler looking peice of sports equipment in any sport?), I don’t know if I would ever be comfortable swinging around something that costs that much.

Class #3

Now we’re playing hockey!

Last night’s session was highlighted by our first scrimmage. For the last ten minutes it was blacks and darks versus whites and colours. Ten long and hard minutes for all the glory!

I was pretty jacked let me tell you! My two shifts were highlighted by a sprawling dive to poke away a pass at the backpost and some good work in the offensive end that led to a good scoring opportunity from a backhanded centering pass.

Of course, it’s not just the play on the ice that has me geeked about all this. It’s all the other little hockey things like shuffling down the bench during a line change, wiping my visor off with a towel, or even closing the door as I came off from a shift.

We also did our first real hockey drill: the Butterfly passing and shooting drill where a skater who has gone around the blueline dot circles in to receive a pass from the opposite corner and then the passer goes out to his blueline dot to receive a pass. I mean, hell, this is what the Sens do before every game!!!

Oh! And how could I forget this: we did another passing and shooting drill and I heard for the first time that sweet sound of pinging one off a post. I also put a wrister over the crossbar that went off the end glass with a satisfying smack.