Well, a half-session at a time, VRH slowly establishes itself as the second league, conference, whatever of Burton hockey. Saturday even saw VRH�s first homegrown rookie make his debut. Here is Stefan to fill you in (note to Stef: do you know how many times I had to change �Jarod� to �Jerod� in this write-up?).
If anybody had any doubt about the validity of the new rouge Vancouver Roller
Hockey, they should now face to truth that this league is here to stay.
Today we played another half court session with the following players
showing up: Bernie, Doug Posnick (Jerod's cousin), Jerod, Lorne, Laird and
myself. The session was scheduled to start at 11am, however Doug and Jerod
were nowhere to be seen. A good hour and a half later they showed up after
having a flat tire on their way over. Bad luck, but hockey was on, all was
good.
The first game featured Bernie, Doug and Stefan pitted against Jerod and
Lorne with Laird the lone goaltender. Lorne and Jerod got off to an quick
start with a goal by Lorne. Then after some stellar goaltending by Laird,
Lorne netted another goal, however this time it was on his own net, thus
Doug got the point. After this point we entered the deadlocked phase where
nobody could score on Laird. I wouldn't be surprised if it lasted a good 30
minutes. Part of the reason was Lorne, who ate McDonald�s right before coming,
was going through some serious gut rot. While this meant that team Bernie,
Doug and Stefan were getting numerous shots, and numerous chances they just
couldn't put the puck in. Finally after a few longer water breaks Lorne got
his energy back which lead to another 2 goals by team Jerod-Lorne.
At that point having their team not technically scored one of their goals
Stefan was about ready to give up and do a team change. However after a bit
of convincing they all decided to play the game out to 5 instead of 3. This
was a good thing for team Bernie, Doug, Stefan as they were able to finally
net some goals. 2 goals later and the game was tied at 3 a piece, and the
Lairdowall was beginning to show signs of weakness. A little later Lorne
came in on a fast break and netted his third goal of the game giving their
team a 4-3 lead. Shortly after however team Bernie, Doug, Stefan came right
back to tie the game and put it into sudden death overtime. In the end team
Bernie, Doug, Stefan would persevere and complete the comeback. After game
one each player had 4 points except for Bernie who had 3.
The next game the cousins (Doug and Jerod) had to play together so they
challenged Bernie, Lorne and Stefan to a game. While Bernie and Stefan were
working on getting used to playing with Lorne and vise versa, Doug netted a
goal on the short side on a pass from Jerod to give them the early 1-0 lead.
Again Laird continued his dominance in net, stopping a parade of shots from
Lorne and Bernie in the slot on separate occasions. As play continued on
Bernie, Lorne and Stefan began to gel. Lorne started a rush into the zone
dekeing out his man, then passing off to Stefan. Stefan who was also being
guarded pulled a behind the back pass right back to Lorne who was rushing
towards the net. Lorne with a head full of steam put the puck home making
the game 1-1.
As the game went on both teams started to tire, they had been out playing
for at least 2.5 hours in a highly defensive match. As both teams began to
tire some really bad mistakes were made. Bad passes out of the zone,
inabilities to clear the zone, and some terrible defense was happening on
both teams. On a scramble for a ball after one of these plays Stefan found
himself in the slot with the ball. He quickly through a low snap shot on net
and passed the screened Laird to make the game 2-1.
Both teams at this point were reaching their end, and soon after the last
goal Lorne scored the 3-1 goal, and also the session ender to the second
ever Vancouver session of hockey.
Just some useless information of my own. Laird played an excellent
positional game, stopping most first shots without many rebounds. Doug
played the match in aggressive roller blades (the big ass clunky ones with
tiny wheels). Lorne went from all energy to McDonald�s no energy, then back
to normal Lorne. There was a big volleyball tournament next to the rink with
lots of girls jumping around, this seemed to catch the attention of all the
players. Joern couldn't play because his sister was in town, she wanted her
Turkish boyfriend to play a Canadian sport, and at one moment it seemed as
if we were going to see Joern and the Turkish debut, he backed out of the
offer and decided not to, meaning Joern was out as well.
All in all another great session, we played for a good 3 hours, and more
games are being scheduled as we speak. While these sessions are in no way
stats padders (unless of course you are a goalie) they sure are enjoyable,
and this fall looks to be very promising.