I had just let in a second breakaway goal.  The other bench at the Columbia Icefields arena in Waterloo, Ontario was cheering, and I found myself fishing the puck out of the back of the net.  I didn’t look at my bench.

As a goalie, I hate every goal I let in.  I subscribe to the theory that every shot on net can be saved; some are merely more difficult than others.  Better positioning, better reaction, better reading of the play — there was always something that could have been done to make a goal into a save.  Of course, if such perfection were easy, it would be no fun.  The odds that I’ll be able execute well enough to stop a shot go down as the level of competition I face goes up, and with the game in Waterloo, I was facing an uphill battle.  I hated the thought of letting down the team in general or Matt in particular.

Holy crap, a save! (Photo: Sarah)

Matt was 23 and a student at the University of Waterloo nearing the end of his studies, prior to which he had played goalie as high as the Junior B level.  Matt was the usual goaltender on the team I was playing for.  He gave up his net and skated out so that I could be in the game.

About a week earlier, before the Puck Daddy piece and before the Ottawa Citizen article, Matt contacted me with an offer to play in Waterloo, Ontario.  According to him, he’d been following the blog ever since I posted a lonely request for a game in Calgary way back in June on the Goalie Store Bulletin Board.  He’d been waiting for me to wind my way around the country and get close to Ontario, and when that happened, he posted an overture as a comment: “I know you’re traveling through my home province of Ontario soon and I wondered if you might be interested in playing a league game?”

Well, of course I would!  I hadn’t planned to stop in Waterloo, but a hockey game was a good reason for a change of plans.

Oh, the game.

In addition to providing a hockey game, Matt provided a great suggestion for a brewery tour: Steam Whistle in Toronto.

I took a drink of water and looked around as the players mulled around prior to the post-goal faceoff.  The arena had wonderful laminated wood beams holding up its roof.  The warmth of the wood was unusual for an ice arena; cold gray steel and concrete are the norm for arena construction.

The puck dropped, and play resumed.  I tried to focus on the game, but I kept getting distracted by a girl taking photos with a DSLR near our bench.  I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but she seemed to be taking an unusual number of photos of me in particular.

The photos made me nervous.  I thought they were being taken as evidence of my presence.  I fully expected to get thrown out of the game at any moment.  Why? Well… I had to be a student at the University to be eligible to play, so I kind of just ran onto the ice while the lady checking ID cards wasn’t looking.

Matt and me (Photo: Sarah)

I figured that the only reason I hadn’t been booted yet was because my team wasn’t winning.  We weren’t even on the board at that point.

Still, the score wasn’t as lopsided as it could have been.  Breakaways aside, I was coming up with decent saves.  I had worried that I would be totally dominated based on the team’s skill division.  Fortunately, the fear of humiliation, or perhaps sheer luck, was preventing that from happening.

Matt’s team was in the “Advanced” division, above the “Beginner” and “Intermediate” divisions but one notch below the “All Star” category.  Most of the guys had played while growing up, some to reasonably high levels.   I had nothing approaching their Canadian hockey pedigree, and on top of that, I was the oldest guy there by at least five years.

We finally got on the board, and I held off a few more third-period assaults.  Unfortunately, we didn’t come up with the win at the end, but the mood was still upbeat in the dressing room after the game.

Even better, the photographer turned out to be Sarah, Matt’s girlfriend, not somebody out to spoil good hockey.   The photos documented my being at the game, but the goal was nothing but good.

Toronto hockey round #1: Success.