Defense!!! clap clap Defense!! clap clap

Aidan has hockey practice on Friday evenings.  Last Friday, he and I arrived with enough time to get a new chin strap for his helmet and then get him suited up.  While helping him dress, I listened to the coach and one of the dad's talking about the upcoming game against the Blue team.  They were a bit pessimistic and negative about how it was going to go.  Apparently, the Blue team was #1 for our Mites league. 

Part of the problem was that we had a four day weekend (quarter break and election day) so three of the families were going out of town and wouldn't be here for the game.  That left us with 8 players total, one of whom was the goalie.

I wasn't too thrilled that the men were tlking so openly in front of the boys.  Aidan doesn't need any help feeling intimidated with this league.  He knows he is younger and smaller than most.  But, he has a lot of heart and puts all he has into playing well.  So, I prepared myself to talk positive with him over the weekend leading up to the game.

After practice, the Coach and a couple of the dads were doing head counts to know exactly who would be there for the game.  Still a bit down, but they did start saying we would be okay.  That's better. . .

Sunday dawned. With that extra hour of sleep and the later 8:50 game, we felt very refreshed.  Aidan woke up happy and excited to play hockey!  We got him into some of his hockey attire and headed down the road to the ice house. 

The locker room was quiet but had an undercurrent of excitement and anticipation.  After getting the gear on, the boys headed out to wait for the time to go onto the ice.  Once on, they went through some warm up drills and then headed to the bench to get a pep talk from the coach and find out the line order. 

The first line headed out on the ice, Aidan among them as a winger.  Our boys looked a little (lot) smaller than the boys in blue. . .the puck was dropped. . .the blue team had control, but Aidan stole it away and skated down to the net and scored!!!!!  15 seconds into the game!!!

And it went on from there!  Our boys ended up with a score of 16 to 1!!  Resoundingly beating the Blue team!  They played some of the most awesome defense.  They only allowed 10 shots on our goalie for the entire game and the one that went into the net was actually unstoppable. 

When they came off the ice, the coach was so happy and proud of them, he said that maybe they wouldn't need to practice the rest of the season since they were doing moves he hadn't had them practice! 

It was truly an awesome game. 

Aidan actully scored a second goal in the second period (his first multi-goal game in Mites!) and one of the moms got a great sequence of pictures of it:

We actually started to feel a bit sorry for the Blue team goalie because the coach was over on the bench just yelling at him and also at all the Blue team boys.  Thankfully, our coach always has some redeeming remarks to make to our boys when they lose. 

We were in 5th place (out of 12).  I'm thinking we may have moved up to 3rd after Sunday's game.  I'll find out on Friday night during practice. . .

So, this week, Aidan has his turn as goalie. . .yikes. . .we are practicing every day on the pipe stem with the pads, inline skates, goalie stick etc. . .it's going to be very hard watching other boys take shots at my baby!  Hopefully, our defence will be like last weeks!  But guaranteed, my hands will be in front of my face!

Go Grey Wolves!!!!