Scrimmage v Eagan, Part 1

Last night we scrimmaged against Eagan, a fast skating team that knows how to pass. They may have played a better game than we did. Certainly,through most of the game up until about 3 minutes before it ended the score of 4-2 in Eagan's favor would tell that story.

But the Spartans came fighting back. With 3 minutes left to go, Coach Jake McCoy waved goaltender Andy P. back to the bench. Six skaters on the ice could change the momentum. After a few tense moments, during which it looked at least once like Eagan would have a breakaway and goal on an open net, the Spartans scored. After sending Andy P. back to tend goal, the game resumed. But the tide had turned for the Eagan team, and we scored again. And here's the final score:



There will be a few posts with photo hightlights, but not until late this afternoon at the earliest. I hope to get at least one done before the scrimmage tonight. See you at the rink!

Addendum: it turns out the description above is not quite accurate. Coach McCoy did pull goaltender Andy P. off the ice with three minutes left to play, but it was the fourth and tying goal that was scored, not the third. At least, that's the way many of the other spectators remembered it.

Scrimmage v New Prague, Part 6

Here are the last two photos from the game against New Prague.

Hunter, a strong play maker on offense...

...and finally, Jackson, who played the entire game and did a great job limiting the opponents goals.

Good luck to the team later today!

Scrimmage v New Prague, Part 5

Further highlights:

The Trojan defense tries out a new tactic on Eric, without much success.

Willy watches the puck.

Max, on the left, and Henri, on the right, prepared to defend the goal.

Max D. skates back to the bench.

Scrimmage v New Prague, Part 4

Some single photo highlights:

That's Matthew, Dylan and Garrett lined up during a faceoff in front of the Spartan goal.

This is Matthew moving the puck over the blue line.

Andrew S. on his way in a hurry.

Willy sitting in the penalty box for body checking. He later told me,"I didn't do anything! I was just skating along and stopped suddenly so that he crashed into me!" "Yes, William, but that's called checking." "Really?"

Here's Andrew S, again, just airborne and getting ready for a soft landing.

Scrimmage v New Prague, Part 3

Faceoffs are easy to photograph. The puck floats frozen in the air above the players' sticks, just released from the ref's hand. The players wear looks of concentration, and so does the ref.

Here's Gavin facing off against one of the Trojan players. The puck is just reaching the blade of Gavin's stick here...

...and here a split second later it's ricocheting back up toward the ref.

In these two shots, Max B and his opponent manage to send the puck directly back at the ref.

He seems to be in a tough spot as both of the players in the faceoff turn toward him, and Max D. is right behind him. Those refs almost always come out unscathed.

You may notice a distinct and different color cast to the photos. The first one is sort of sepia. The second definitely green, and the third starting to turn pink. The last one is very pink. All computer monitors are different, but I'm almost certain we owe the color shifts to lights like this:

I'm not sure just what they're called. I think it may be mercury vapor lamps. They're different from the yellow/green cast we're familiar with from tungsten lighting. One way you can see that they're not tungsten is the oscillation across the color spectrum. Tungsten lights are consistent in their color cast. In person, you can't see the oscillating colors because it happens fast and our brains interpolate for us. But it fools even smart cameras with automatic white balance. I could have fixed the white balance in the minimal post processing I do, but the color cast is kind of nice once in a while. It's red and green for Christmas.

Scrimmage v New Prague, Part 2

The team scored eight times, but this is the one I caught most effectively.

Max B. is about to lob the puck net-wards.

There it is, past the opposing Trojan goaltender.

Everyone celebrates! Here's Max D.

And there's Max B with Max K!

Not bad to get photos of all three Maxes in one post.

Scrimmage v New Prague, Part 1

It's always safe to name a team after an ancient and long departed group. Unlike native Americans, who have legitimate complaints about having been turned into mascots for sports teams, the ancients are no longer around, so no one complains.

But why name a team after the ancient Greeks or those who fought with them? (Or only after some of those who fought with them...don't know of any teams called the Persians.) Might have something to do with the extensive documentation of sports, games, and warlike behavior of the ancient Greeks.

Today we had a match-up between the Trojans of New Prague and our own Richfield Spartans. (That's Max K. in the picture, by the way.) The original Trojans may have lived in what is now Turkey. The Spartans came from the Peloponnesus, which is the southern peninsula of Greece. Homer wrote an epic poem called the Illiad about a war between the Trojans and the Greeks, especially the Spartans. That war was called, wait for it, the Trojan War, duh. Today's game wasn't exactly an epic battle worthy of Homer's Illiad, but as in the Illiad, the Trojans got trounced on their home turf, or in this case, ice. In the posts that follow, you'll see some highlights of the game.

Merry Christmas!

Now that the Christmas morning free-for-all is over, here's one more from the tournament in Monticello, courtesy of CJ, Marco and Jacob's dad.


I uploaded this one full size, so if the gnomes at Blogger (our host site) are kind you will see a very large photo when you click on it. Might take a second to load.

I couldn't resist including this shot from the "making of" disk.

Hope everyone has a terrific Christmas! See you at practice or in New Prague!

Game v MAML Stars, Part 5

Goaltending is critical to winning, of course. Our goaltenders got pounded all weekend, but made a ton of saves.

Andy P. stops an MAML shot during the game, and gets ready to defend against a rebound.

Jackson deflects a shot on goal.

I spotted Coach Jake McCoy coming out of the team room carrying the trophy and asked if I could take his photo. He insisted on including Jackson and Andy. Jake has done a lot of work with them in practices.

Game v MAML Sars, Part 4

Suddenly, the game and the tournament were all over, and it was on to the celebrations.





So there they are with their third place trophy, well earned. We had two wins, one tie, but came in third, while the second place team most likely had one win, one loss and one tie. That's the irony of the tie breaker. After watching Hopkins play in a couple of games, I bet that Crow River was the second place team. I tried to find out by surfing around the Web, but no luck. If anyone knows, please leave a comment.

Game v MAML Stars, Part 3

It was a slightly rougher game than most. Our opponents may have forgotten that checking starts in Pee Wees. I didn't get a shot of the most egregious example, which occurred at the opposite end of the rink from where I was standing. Their players seemed to get the worst of things though, and they had at least 4 skaters who required attention at various times.

Some of these incidents happened early in the game...

...putting players temporarily out of action.

But they came back at us. Must have been a home ice sort of thing.

It didn't look like there were any permanent injuries.

Game v MAML Stars, Part 2

The team is starting to play well in front of the net, as the next sequence shows.

MAML's goalie stopped a shot, but Hunter is right there for the rebound. Keep your eye on the Richfield player at the top left of the frame. I think it's Jacob...

Either Jacob skated off into the sunset, or he's there in front of Hunter and blocked from our view by the opponent number 19. Note that you can already see the puck behind the goaltender.

Now the puck has moved to the back of the net, and we can see another Spartan arm emerging from the fray. It can't belong to Hunter.

It's Jacob. From the photos, I can't tell who got the goal. There's too much going on in front of the net. Someone leave a comment, please, if you know.

They both did a great job.

Game v MAML Stars, Part 1

Our opponents in our final game of the tournament were our hosts, the MAML Stars. (MAML stands for Monticello, Annandale and Maple Lake, in case you were wondering.) It was a fun hockey game even though it looked a little rougher than some of the other games we've played, as we'll see in a subsequent post. For now, here are some of the single-photo highlights.

Here's Wyatt getting ready for a shot on goal.

Matthew escorts the puck down the ice.

Eric waits for a pass.

Marco is being pursued by a MAML defender as he approaches the goal.

Gavin cranks off a shot.

Even though the game was tied some of the time, it wasn't really close the way the previous game against Crow River had been.

Game v Crow River, Part 2

Both of our goalies played well during the game.

Jackson with a save...

...and a save for Andy P.

Max D. with a look of concentration.

Henri moving the puck down the ice.

I have no more good photos of this game, so this is the last post for the Crow River match-up. I'll remember this as the game with the ambiguous ending. The teams tied, and at the buzzer there was a bit of milling around as teams and coaches tried to find out what came next. The answer was that nothing came next. The goal differential was the tie-breaker. Crow River was declared the winner.

At least the pizza in Monticello is excellent.