No new posts after three weeks! You’re probably thinking by this point; “What a rip-off!”
Well, to be honest, there hasn’t been much to talk about regarding hockey this week or last week. At least nothing I’d care to reflect on too deeply. That’s because the Flyers are off to a rather horrendous start this season, which isn’t much different from last season, I’m told. So far, we've won nothing. No games. No skirmishes in the corner. Hell, we’ve even had a tough time wining face-offs.
See, there’s something infectious about a losing streak that seems to bring out the worst in everyone. Hockey, unlike many other organized sports, is the quintessential ‘team sport.” All six players need to be on the same page and giving the same effort for 60 minutes each game. One weak link means a nasty run on the scoreboard by the opposition. And there’s nothing worse than to look up at those beaming red lights jutting from the otherwise black scoreboard and see it reflect a 5-goal deficit.
That pretty much sums up the last two games by the Flyers. I’ve been of little help to them either. After being kept off the scoreboard in the first game, I netted my first goal on Friday, a top-shelf wrister that nailed the goalie’s water bottle. But it was the third period, and we were already down by five goals, which basically meant the goal was all but useless.
Then there was Monday. My memories of the last game are hazy, because it was an utter disaster for me: missed shots fired at point-blank range, sluggish play, poor defense; pretty much the textbook way to make your team lose. I’m not sure whether I was “the” weakest link, or among a group of equally weak links that led to a seven-goal deficit by the third. My line did manage to pump a couple in, but they were hardly the type of goals that you'd brag about, unless maybe it was at a bar over beers with another team that got its collective posterior wiped across ice in a 10-4 loss. No, these aren’t the things we like talking about often, at least not without a liberal sprinkling of cheap beer.
But losing big is a factor of the game that players are bound to face eventually. These types of blow-out losses affect a player’s psyche. There are stages of acceptance one goes through during a horrible breakdown. First, there’s the blaming stage, where it was everyone else’s fault; the goalie let a weak one in, the defense didn't step up, the forward lines aren’t skating hard. That quickly changes to self-loathing; “I should have scored,” “I should have covered that guy,” “I should have skated harder.” Then, finally, there's collective acceptance: “We [chose a colorful expletive] suck.”
The bright side is that a broken clock is still right twice a day. Or is it that the sun doesn’t shine on the same dog’s tail every day? Well, you get the point, so let’s dispense with the cliches. Eventually, we’ll have our win. And hopefully when we do, we'll throw off this suffocating blanket of a losing streak.
