A Good Weekend..

Hi again from beautiful Southern Norway, the weather is in the 40's and 50's but nice. The leaves are changing and falling and it looks like hockey season is right around the corner.. Oh wait. To start the season we played 5 games in 9 days. It felt like a lot of hockey, the days of 4 games in 5 nights in the ECHL and AHL seem so so long ago! We were able to win 4 of them though which puts us in first place 5 games in.

On Thursday we played Comet, they are from Halden a city on the Swedish border. Halden is only 20 minutes or so from us so we all drive ourselves to the game. It is nice because it doesn't really feel like a road game. The game was on TV, which makes it a late start time 20:00 (8:00pm), it was a bit of a long day before the game. In warm-ups my glove broke, an actual hole in my glove, not just a metaphorical one for all of you smart asses! Things just didn't seem like they were going well! The game started off fast and up and down the ice. We were playing well but so were they. The first period ended 0-0. They ran into me several times early in the game whether it was intentional or not I don't know but in the second period when I was ran again I all of the sudden got tough and a local camera guy caught it. (Sorry Mom and Aunt Mary) In the second we didn't play that well but they couldn't take advantage so we were given a last chance in the third. It didn't take long for our golden helmet player Martin Roymark to give us a 1-0 lead 21 seconds into the third period. Did I mention that each teams leading point scorer has to wear a gold helmet? Yep, it is like a bulls-eye on your best player. We were able to get a 2nd goal about half way through the 3rd and hang on the rest of the way. We did score an empty netter to make it 3-0 and my first shutout of the season. The shots were 34-30 for Sparta.

Saturday we played Storhamar, the team who beat us at home our last pre-season game. From the start, we played very well. I didn't see a quality chance the first two periods! Their goalie played very very well and somehow the second period ended and we were only up 2-1. Yeah they didn't have a quality chance and they scored. I am not going to make any excuses.. but shit happens! In the third we played well again and it looked like we would get the 3 points. Then we got a penalty and then another.. So all of the sudden with 3 minutes left we were 2 men short for 1:36. That is when they got some chances but they didn't score and we took the 3 points and that put us alone in first place in the league after 5 games.