The Great (almost) Comeback

We had an interesting problem at hockey last night. The center on my line (one of our better offensive players) is also a goalie. Last night he played goalie in the game before us (and gave up 10 goals!) and when it came time for our game we found out that due to vacations, injuries, going to college, etc. that we didn't have another goalie for our team so he was going to play. Well, that hurts us both in losing his scoring but also because he just had a horrible game.

We moved another guy to center our line and went at it. Unfortunately, he picked up where he left off the previous game, giving up 4 weak goals in the first period and we couldn't get any offense going. So we're down 4-0 going into the 3rd period and finally our offense starts getting on track. We score 3 in the first 8 minutes to get us close and we tie it up with about 9 minutes left. We kept the attack going and got some really good chances to go ahead but couldn't quite do it (one of my shots hit the underside of the crossbar and dropped straight down, somehow staying out of the goal).

Then with about 4 minutes left the ref called a pretty bad penalty on one of our defenseman. Ok, we can deal with that, we score short handed goals all the time. Unfortunately, they called another penalty on us a minute later, again a cheap call where two players got their legs tangled and fell down. Not sure how they could decide that was a penalty on us, especially in a tie game and already down a man. By the time we got back to full strength there wasn't much time left. We had a few chances but the game ended in a tie. I guess we get the "moral victory" but it still felt disappointing.