It's been about 7 weeks now that I have started playing hockey regularly. It is time to make a first assessment of my skills.
For the people who don't remember the colors of my outfit, and who have never seen me skating, I am attaching this little movie to show that you don't need a camera with high resolution, or you don't even need to see my face to recognize me on the ice:
As you can see, my style is quite eloquent: I skate as fast as I can, forward, straight, and I use the walls to stop. Still, to help you spot me in the other movies: I have a red shirt, blue shorts, a white helmet, and usually I really have to fight hard to get the puck because my teammates don't pass it to me.
Now, there are times when the same set of skills -skating straight, not stopping- can give a good impression.
That's pretty much the coolest move I did in 7 weeks. I call it the "Big Dive". A word of caution: don't overuse it. The "Big Dive" becomes predictable, and therefore much less effective, once you do it 3 times in a row or more.
So, to me, hockey is mostly about falling at the right time, without too much damage.
A last little movie to show how I can handle the puck when I get it:
Well, OK... That movie was taken during the warm-up, before the game started... but it is promising, no? Note that I got back to a leftie stick after I hesitated between a rightie and a leftie for the first few sessions.
Thanks Natasha for the movies. Next movie is my first goal... Stay tuned (for a long time).