Shinny

This is the fourth year running that we've had a game of shinny hockey during the holidays. Each year there is progressively less of 'shinny' about it and more of organized hockey. This year we even had two goalies rather than knocked-over backwards nets.





(Ouch!)



We ended up in the unusual situation that all of our players (besides the goalies and Lisa, who had never played before), usually play defence. Sarah informed us that Jamie wasn't defence: he didn't know what he was, so I told him to play centre. Look at him go!





He shoots! He scores!



Paul and Doug go head to head.



Ira decided he was going to play laying down for a while.



Fight!



Doug's Dad brought out the Zamboni for a photo op.



The players (from left to right): Jamie, me, Bob, Paul, Ruthie, Ira (goal), Romy, Steve (goal), Doug, Gary, Debbie, Chantal, Lisa.

This was my first time back on the ice since last year's holiday game. (I wrecked my wrist two days before our first game in January and couldn't play this fall with my injured foot.) I was able to skate for almost half an hour without too much pain in my injured foot, which means that I should be able to play at least half of the first game of the season, perhaps even more if I recover more quickly. The only really painful part was squeezing my foot in and out of the skate (and watching Paul slide headfirst into the boards without a helmet. His head is pretty hard but his shoulder is going to be spectacularly bruised.) I was also pleased to find that I can still reliably raise the puck enough to hop it over sticks, a skill I'd been working on before the injuries took me out of the game. I'm definitely not skating as well as I'd like to, but at least some of the other skills are still there.

I'm not saying anything about how the rest of me feels, although I have to admit that the word 'ache' springs to mind.