One Icy Blog

     For our second Wednesday night game of the year, we have our second Wednesday night win, which are also our only 2 wins, so Wednesday nights are where we shine, apparently. Won won 8-2, despite being 2-2 going into the third period, and while this win was definitely good for morale, I worry many people developed some bad habits by playing against this team (Glenwood) because of how terrible they were.       Glenwood was missing half their team and I don't think their starting goalie was their usual goalie, so the 8-2 score line makes sense. I don't even particularly mind the fact that we ran the score up on them to get to 8-2, but I do mind how we got there. Our first two periods were filled with a lot of us playing down to their level and we were even losing 1-2 at one point, but we were still controlling a large part of the game nd the tying goal was more than expected. But, once we went up 4-2 on them and the floodgates started to open, so...

      It only took 6 games, but I can finally say that the Champaign Chiefs have won a hockey game this season. Since the last blog post, we've played 2 games: 1 on Monday and 1 last night. The Monday game wasn't close, with us losing 8-3 to Sacred Heart. I didn't play terribly that game and I scored another goal, but the highlight of that game were one of my teammates getting a bloody nose from being hit but still scoring a goal on the same play. All-in-all, this was a game to forget and is definitely not going to be the main focus of this post.     What is going to be the main focus is our 5-4 win last night against Decatur, where I also scored a goal. The details of this game (even though it only happened last night) are slightly fuzzier than the other games because neither the stats nor the game footage has been uploaded yet, so this post is working off of memory alone instead of having those things to pull from. We started off well, going up 2-0 thanks to g...

     Well, the season has definitely not had the best start. Our only big loss has been to the top team, Pekin (PEK), but we also lost a close game to Springfield High School (SHS) and just yesterday tied another bottom team, East River (ERIV). Our other tie against Bloomington (MCYHAV) was a decent result considering the standings, but the fact that we had ANOTHER goal called back during that game, meaning we should have won, soured it for us.       Our 0-2-2 record has landed us near the bottom of the pack, standings-wise, but we are definitely  capable of moving upwards and getting some wins if we iron out a few of our basics. Overall, our team is looking better as the games go on, but we are often slow to start the game and give up early goals because of it. We also rely heavily on our defense to both generate offense and still also take care of the defensive side of things, which is not a winning long-term plan because it works the defensemen...

    We lost. Badly. As it turns out, Pekin did actually fix their arena, which was nice of them since then I could at least lose while being able to sit down and see the game at the same time. As it also turns out, Pekin now has a huge team and a bunch of really good hockey players (7 of them have played on Pekin's Central States team, which is just below triple A), which is not a great matchup against us, who have a smaller-than-usual team this year and also can't field consistent 5-player lines that don't have weaknesses in them. We're also used to having the best goalie in the league, but he isn't playing this season, so we have someone who should be our backup playing as the starter.      During our 6-1 loss, the referees managed to make both teams feel cheated. Between highly questionable line calls, inconsistent enforcement of the rules, and them somehow being the only people in the entire building who didn't notice the puck cross the line on what should...

     The time has finally come for the season to officially start. A Saturday game in Pekin, IL, best known for the fact that until 1980, their high school team's name was a slur for Chinese people and their mascot was people dressing up in stereotypically Chinese clothes. Besides that, I also hate their arena, since the bench areas aren't raised higher than the surrounding floors like they're supposed to be, meaning even the tallest players can't easily step over the boards to get on the ice. But before we get to open our hockey season there, we had a scrimmage against the UIUC D2 club team as our last practice before our first game.       It went better than expected, with the first game going 3-2 in our favor thanks to 2 goals in 1 shift from a line filled with D2 players on loan to us after it was clear that we were generating next to no offense and even struggling to not just be constantly on defense. But we scored the third goal o...

    Welcome to One Icy Blog, future home of weekly updates about my hockey schedule. Seeing as our first official game isn't until next week, the first update will still be pre-season musings. But in the future this blog will hold scores, my thoughts on how I and the team played, and my rants about bad officiating that will inevitably happen. Hopefully you check back in every week but until then, goodbye!