World Cup of Hockey '04

[Pekka]

And after that, there's no chance of travel doing any tricks on us, so then we beat you! That's right! YOU'RE ALL GOING DOWN! ALL THE WAY DOWN!

[pchang]

St. Paul has a huge Swedish (and Norwegian) population so I think the crowd will really be against the evil Finns.

[Pekka]

Talk is cheap! You're all going dOWNED!

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Pekka
And after that, there's no chance of travel doing any tricks on us, so then we beat you! That's right! YOU'RE ALL GOING DOWN! ALL THE WAY DOWN!

Now this is the Pekka I remember

[Pekka]

nothing like hockey fanatics aye? ~30 hours until the drop pucks and we start the beatings.

[Flubber]

Ya its far too long until the next game

On the upside I start my own hockey this Friday night in our "I'm over the Hill but enjoy the beer afterward" league. I also play in a "lawyers league"--- believe it or not the sportsmanship is high .. . . The accountant's league is much rougher

Sorry pekka -- I still choose the US over you guys but by the narrowest of margins

I was thinking the Czechs as the favorite over Canada after seeing them just dismantle Sweden but the Canadian performance over the Slovaks was just so strong that I'm back to favoring Canada

[Pekka]

ok.. I just got new Easton gloves too.. I still go skating and play some too, I mean with light gear (skates, gloves). There's this outdoor rink that is always open for everyone, and we have little regular crew in there that usually comes there.. we just shoot the puck for an hour or so and then usually set up a game. It's really good fun, because most all are ex-players, so we get good games going on plus with good sportsmenship. Well you can't have and goon action, because no one is wearing real protection. It's good fun still, I just love the smell of the rink in the night, when it's dark already but the lights are still on and you can see your breath and people are shooting pucks all over. Some things that just you have to have every now and then

Don't worry, murricans will have to go back home, maybe the watch the finals from TV, I don't know. We'll be there for sure.

[Pekka]

It's weird.. we had this open ice in walking distance when I was a little kid. In fact I've alwyas had one close, well, where ever you are in here you'll have one rink close to you there are so many.. anyway I didn't even skate from .. 97 to 2001. I wanted to, but somehow I just never got to it. I was also pissed off I quit hockey, I mean I regret it later on about year after I couldn't hold my horses anymore. So I just didn't even go skating. BUt now I've started agian in the winters, and it's great. Back to the basics... where I started . I love everything about it, down to the smell of the leather in gloves, and the feeling of fingers burning up when I put those old wax laces on my skates, and bust up my fingers tightening them every time . Fixing the stick, and the feeling when you skate, handle the puck, shoot, the sound it makes when you shoot the walls, the feeling when you make a perfect wrist shot or slap shot.. there's nothing quite like it. I miss scoring too. It was such a blast to score in a game, you get addicted to it.. crowd, even though it's not in thousands or even hundreds, but more like parents and stuff, but they cheer wildly when you score, it was great. Euphoric. Addicting.

I also liked to hit a lot, I was pretty good build for hockey at 14 and 15, and pretty good skater and hitter, so I did that a lot.. I liked being aggressive. So, a perfect hit is even better than scoring for me. Open ice hits
Actually the first game ever when we were allowed to hit open ice and all that, maybe it was when we were 11? Or 10? Then you're allowed to hit here, so first time I got to the ice, I played second line as left wing, from face off the puck went to their defensive zone and I saw 'AND NOW I CAN HIT THE FIRST TIME!' and I totally go penalized for roughing Apparently you can't skate full speed and jump to someones back. Oh well.. good times.

[Tingkai]

Well, a disappointing night for me. I'm a captain of a beginner roller team. We finished third out of four team so the semi-final was against the number 2 team.

First period is lots of close checking. I'm yelling to the players "SKATE, SKATE, GO TO THE NET, THE NET.'
Score 0-0


Second period
We're battling back and forth then their captain steps up with puck and let's loose a slapshot.
0-1

Face-off. The bastard other captain snags the puck, takes three steps, I moved towards him (I'm playing D), but before I reach him, another slapshot.

0-2

"Relax guys," I say. "One goal is all we need."

And then "SKATE, SKATE HARD." My guys are spending too much time looking around. They're newbies. "GO TO THE NET, THE NET. PUSH HIM TO THE SIDE. COVER THE OPEN NET. BLOCK THE PASS."

With seconds left in the 2nd, the bastard other captain gets past me and fires a shot right between my goalies' legs, and the buzzer goes.

NO GOAL, THE BUZZER WENT.

"It's a goal," the Ref says.

ARE YOU CRAZY! THE BUZZER WENT BEFORE IT WENT IN. THAT'S NOT A GOAL!

"It went in just before the buzzer. It's a goal. End of story.

THE PERIOD WAS OVER. THAT'S NOT A GOAL!

It's a goal.

@$*$###@

Back at the bench

WAKE UP! We've got time, just get one goal. This is it. One last period. There's no tomorrow. There's just this game right here right now. We can do it.

We come out stonger, but they're playing good defensive hockey. Everytime I get the puck, or KK, the other guy on my team who can play, they're all over us.

But I get a chance, steal the puck on the boards, push pass the defence and it's just me and the goalie. I'm gliding in, taking my time, cause I know what he's going to do. Wind up for the shot, and he drops. I pull the puck over a bit, and then blip right upstairs.

1-3


But in a face off in our end, there's a scramble for the puck. I see and I think clear it, so I hit it, and shoot it right to the other bastard captain, who fires a slapshot.

1-4

SKATE, GO TO THE NET, GET THAT GUY, COVER THE PASS.

I'm getting frustrated. My guys have given up.

Six minutes left and I'm pissed with my players. The only other guy playing hard is KK, but the two of us can't win the game so in a fit of anger, I bench KK and myself. I tell the guys, it's up to you. You can quit now and we'll end the game or you can play to win, but you have to do it.

And to my amazement, they start playing hard. They're buzzing around net, creating chances, playing better than they ever had.

The games ends, we lose. A hard loss.

I have to do a pep talk so I do the old, you're better than you were at the beginning of the season, blah, blah, blah, Great teams lose, just look at Canada losing the 98 Olymipcs, blah blah blah.

After I realise something. During the regular season, either KK or I were always on the ice, taking control of the action, generating scoring chances, scoring goals. And I think what happened is the other players used us as a crutch, relying on KK and I to do the job. But when they had to do it by themselves, they played harder.

So an old hockey player just learned something tonight. What can I say, I'm a bit slow, but sooner or later I get it.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Pekka
It's good fun still, I just love the smell of the rink in the night, when it's dark already but the lights are still on and you can see your breath and people are shooting pucks all over. Some things that just you have to have every now and then

Yup, damn right. I love the competition of league games, but there's something special about pick-up games. Just a bunch of guys having fun.

We used to set a 1.5 litre plastic bottle of water as the goal. Knock it over and you get a goal. It's great. If you get a good hit, you can send it flying or it's a soft hit, the bottle wobbles and you start screaming at it to full over. Great times.

[Pekka]

Tingkai, it's definitely cool.. and everone kind of knows the unwritten rules and can just start playing, without even knowing each other and communicate through hockey for a while.

I never tried that bottle thing.. we always had our own hand made goals, little smaller then regual size for street hockey, and if in open ice without a real rink, we'd fix posts from snow, icey big snow pieces are good for that too. Or something else.

[Tingkai]

Do you play street hockey in Finland where you have to yell CAR (edit: of course the Finn equivalent) to pause the game?

[Pekka]

yell CAR? I have no idea what you mean. We pretty much made our own rules. Street hockey, first we played without rollerskates (back then at first there weren't those new types of skates where the wheels are in line like that), so this would be from 87 or so, and we would play with sticks, gloves and a ball. And just basically run. We'd set it up in the road, our driveway wasn't so busy. We also had contact, checking was allowed . Countless times guys hit each other to the gutters. The rules were, physical game allowed but only body to body, plus slashing etc is definitely a no no, and just play. 2 on 2 etc.. sometimes one is goalie, and 1 on 1 to one goal. If the ball goes to the gutter, the player who touches it first gets to come out with it (kind of like icing), and the other one has to be like 1 feet away from the ball and it's like a face off but the guy who has the ball starts it. That was basically the only real rule, because there were gutters so..

1 on 1 on one goalie would be that when you get the ball decisively, you have to go back to imaginary line and start your offensive, and try to score, and you can shoot, but the one on defensive can't score, he has to take the ball away from you and go cross that line and start his offensive. Kind of like 1 on 1 basketball. Lot of fights about goalie been biased when someone would let 'too easy' for someone it seemed like

Later on we could get the rollerskates, so we added those etc.. we never even heard about real 'inline hockey'. It kind of developed from nothing, as we also didn't have older guys playing in our streets, so we started our own games and own rules and all that. We played everyday in summer, and also winter, because we'd have snow covered street, so you could play good in the driveway, not being a busy one it was also very good surface. We also got one of those street hockey pucks, but it didn't move well on asphalt, so we had to use the ball.

[Pekka]

But if you mean like organized street hockey, or inline hockey, I don't know the rules for them.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Pekka
yell CAR? I have no idea what you mean.

He means that since you're playing on the street, someone yells "CAR" when they see a car. The game is then paused, people drag the nets to the side of the road to let the car pass, then put them back and resume play.