A few weeks have passed since I last updated... I was back home for the holidays and we had 17 days off of games.
After the big win against Sterjne on December 11th, I thought that we would skate to stay in shape, have some fun and enjoy the holiday season. WOW was I off. We skated twice a day the week before break and I mean we skated!!! The practice week was much tougher than any one week of training camp, but it did delay adding any 'Holiday' weight to our waist lines!! Needless to say, on the 19th I was extremely excited to make the 2:30 am drive to the Oslo airport and bored a plane to Amsterdam. Once I got to Amsterdam, I was nervous... not to fly, not of airplane food, or sitting next to 'that guy'... but I found out that global warming is bull shit and Detroit was getting the worst winter storm in recent memory. To credit the pilot of Northwest/Delta/KLM.. I don't know who it was but he made Mother Nature his bitch and flew us through the storm and landed on a snow covered run way. The passengers applauded, then the flight attendant, announced welcome to the United States of America and Detroit Michigan............. I applauded!!!
My time at home was perfect, it was so wonderful to see everyone. I am so lucky to have a great family and friends! Well some of my friends, are not always described as great but......that is a completely different series of stories.:)
I arrived back in Norway on Christmas day, re-charged and ready for our last 18 games. The first couple skates I felt brutal... The chips and dip, coors light, beers around the world, Little Caesars pizza, no sleep, coors light, and coors light were all catching up with me. On the 28th, we played against Lillehamar who had beaten us in their rink last month and who had also climbed there way to one point behind us in the standings. I was very nervous for the game, mainly because of the 17 days between games, no other reason to be worried! ha ha As a team we were ok, we played solid, no non sense hockey and were able to come away with a 2-0 win. The nevousness paid off and I was given player of the game for the shutout. I was given a gift certificate for lunch for 2 at a local restaurant, oddly enough when I went to use it, they didn't open till dinner time. ??? hmmm
Our next game was in Stavanger, Norweigan Oil country. It is a 8 hour drive from here so we left the day before. It is our only long trip but it is still tough to get through. We beat the 'Oilers' 2-0 at home the last time we played them but they are well known to be much better at home and they were and our penalty kill was just awful. We played strong the whole game and constantly were able to answer their goals which led us to a 3-3 tie going into the third. I felt that I was playing well, I was just getting beat. In the third we took a quick lead and hoped to hold on. Stavanger knew all they needed was a powerplay. We did kill one off, but then they got another and they tied the game with a pass from behind the net to a guy in front who buried it over my glove. So we were tied 4-4. We took another penalty and they converted their 4th powerplay goal of the evening giving them a 5-4 lead. They held on and 2008 ended with a loss and a 10 hour ride home... our ferry was delayed two hours making a long day at the office even longer. We celebrated the new year with practice on New Years day, we worked on our penalty kill.
Our last game of the week was against Comet. They have resided in the bottom of the standings all year but we had only beaten them by a goal or two each time we played them. This time would be different. We came out and scored 4 in the first. We also killed off a penalty!!! We killed off a couple more in the second and added 3 'insurance' goals in the third period. We started off 2009 with a good 7-0 win. This time for the shut-out I was given a pat on the back. The guys who scored got the phantom gift certificates!
A little side note, the game against Comet was my 300th career regular season game played. I would like to know how many bus miles that took..... http://www.sa.no/Video_import/article4015547.ece Video from Lillehamar game
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