Haven’t had much hockey in the last couple weeks as I was only on the ice 3 times over my two weeks in New Zealand so I might be a bit rusty and at the same time this bit of a rest might be a blessing as it gave me time to heal some of my wounds .... injuries remain undisclosed 🙂 tonight I have been invited to play for the last place Moose in the Perth Summer League over at the Perth Ice Arena over in an area called Malaga . I will be playing for James Browns team and I have high hopes that I might make a difference and pull off an upset for them and help them begin their climb out of the basement and of course the team we are playing is the Grizzlies aka the Grizzlords and Bruce Ross and Lara Irons are on that squad and they have been very influential in sorting out ice times for me so it should be fun , especially if we win .
When we got out of bed Hockey was already on my mind and we went to grab a coffee from a place called Nero’s around the corner and that was good and they even gave us a bag for free to take home which was very nice of them . The coffee was really good but the serving was not to Kathleen’s liking as she wants massive amounts but I would still say it was a happy experience . We got back to our room and planned the attack for the day and that would include a free walking tour which we always enjoy . Kathleen did the research before we came here and had printed out stuff off of the city website which said there are tours starting at The I-City booth which is around the corner and they start at 11 am so our plan was to go early pick a tour and wait until it started . When we arrived we soon found out that was wrong as the tour left already at 915 am ??? Apparently the website changed times from when we researched this without any warning and we were stuck without anything planned . This tour thing on this trip has been a real pain in the ass for us and we were feeling dejected and one of the volunteers at the booth saw this and said she would give us a tour . Her name is June 🤗 so off we went on our own private tour on what seemed to almost be a waste of time as one of the first stops she took us too was an elderly center where we were told we could get a good cheap meal ??? At this point I was wondering if the real tour would be making this stop on their route and I was almost hoping to find them wandering around to join them but that didn’t happen and our tour got better as we wandered around the CBD and found some alleys and buildings we wouldn’t have seen or known about without the help of June . On the tour we scooped out what we wanted to go back to see and do and the whole time we had our eyes peeled for Fringe Festival posters to add to our collection at home.
After our tour we decided to go to Jamie Oliver’s restaurant around the corner for some pasta and his restaurant gets a lot of flack from people here generally but the place was full and the food was pretty good with some decent specials . I had a fettuccine and Kathleen had a spaghetti and each came with a drink for $25 , yes that is a fairly priced meal in Australia unless you want to eat crackers with butter or McDonalds ! Jet lag still has a hold on me so I headed back to the room with a belly full of pasta and took a nap 💤 I think I was down for the count for almost 3 hours and when I woke up I had to begin getting my gear together to meet James as he is picking me up to go to the rink .
James is another work buddy that I met in Toronto working in the film business . He used to be a kraft service dude that always made food food for our crews and when he left it was kinda sad to see him go but as it is for everyone that leaves ... the show must go on ! I always told him to get into hockey and he rekindled his live for playing the game here in the last year or so and found himself in a league through some connections he made here and he is really enjoying the camaraderie . It was so good to see James and I was excited to get on the ice with him for the first time . On the ride over to the rink we spoke about mutual friends from Toronto and caught up on most of the gossip then talked about how things are here and he really likes it and honestly I don’t blame him as it’s a really nice secluded big town ... Perth is a city but doesn’t have that dingy city feel like Toronto and people generally seem happier and is also one of the most secluded cities in the world as there are no other big cities anywhere nearby . When we got to the rink I was taken to my room which was small and shared by two teams with the other team on the ice now playing and one of the guys on that team is former Ghetto Blaster Brandon Bailey !!! I walked over to his bench to say hello and he was happy to see an old team mate and his team was playing well and went on to win their game . I grabbed my water bottle and went over to the bathroom to fill my bottle and got back to the room to get dressed . Brandon’s team came into the room and celebrated their win !
I was hoping that room would see another celebration after our game . There was one odd spot though as a guy got ejected from that earlier game and came into our room full of piss and vinegar bitching about the refs ... one of the Moose guys told him to chill out basically and he kept yapping and it almost escalated into something worse and then to my surprise the same guy complaining about the refs put a refs jersey on and reffed our game 🤔 I tried to get on his good side and made some positive comments but I have my suspicions that he had his own agenda to uphold and prove to us that the reffing really is bad ☹️ our game started and almost immediately the Grizzlords were all over us and I had to make a lot of saves which were mostly routine and then they scored with a guy named “Kyros” I think that’s how it was spelled ? He was nifty and apparently plays for the Perth Thunder in the winter which is the pro team here and he was a thorn in my side all game as he continually put good efforts toward scoring on me and I thwarted him for a quite a long part of the game as we took the lead and went up 2-1 then carried a 3-2 lead going into the third period and that’s when the refs took over ....
We had three questionable calls go against us the first was a magic trip , the second was a high sticking double minor which happened behind the ref but he saw the whole play with the eyes in the back of his head ? The player injured was on his way down and got a stick to the face on a follow through from a shot , I felt bad for the guy getting cut but you can’t make a call on a play behind you that you didn’t see and it wasn’t a high stick and didn’t deserve the 4 minutes which put us on a long short handed penalty kill and started with a 5 on 3 which immediately cost us as a shot from the point with a screen tied the game up then we received another penalty on a play that was clearly offside where one of the defence men sweeped the puck off the offensive players stick and it was a beautiful play and to everyone’s surprise was called a penalty because these refs run off the nhl rule book and apparently go to all their meetings and are just following protocol lol ! More penalty killing and another clear offside where I had my arm raised but was ignored leading to me making a really nice save that lead to a fluke rebound goal which was the winning goal eventually . I knew we were done when this shit all started going down and if it wasn’t for the refs we probably would have won but in my mind this was the vengeance of an angry dude that took a disagreement with a player from the moose and made us all pay for it . That ref changed in our room after and heard us all bitch about how good the reffing was and he obviously couldn’t keep his mouth shut and instead referred to the fact that he was following the rules which I call bullshit on because if he was as consistent a ref as he expects others to be then he would have let the game play itself out instead of clearly tilting the ice in our oppositions favour ... I hate losing and this was a hard pill to swallow and not what I expected . I didn’t play a bad game and we were definitely outshot by a large a margin as I would estimate they probably outshot us 45-20 and that 20 is being generous . The other teams goalie wasn’t great but apparently was very rusty since he was a last second call up and I almost forgot to mention that for a minute this morning there was the fear that this game might be cancelled as it is a long weekend here in Australia and everyone will be celebrating Australia Day on Saturday so I’m not gonna knock the goalie for not being the best and I’m not trying to knock the fella that reffed the game but when you come into a room complaining about the refs being shit and then going out to prove your comments were right by being a shit ref yourself then the obvious is going to occur .
After our game we had beers in the room and that carried on in the parking lot where Bruce and Lara had ear to ear smiles on their faces for a much deserved win .... yes they deserved it ! I know I’m saying the reffing was bad but they did clearly out play us and for that they deserved the win and yes I did my all to pull off the upset but couldn’t and that’s that 🤪 Bruce scored one of the goals on me and was very proud of his accomplishment and I was happy to see them happy . I will be playing for them on Sunday in another game where I’m playing for the underdog team .... hopefully I can pull that one off . Those parking lot beers soon had to be moved to the road beers out front of the rink as the gates were locked by the rink rats and we hung out with Levon , Elliott and Bruce for a few hours having laughs before James drove me back to my hotel . Tomorrow is a big hockey day as Bruce has organized a pickup game and we are also going to another rink for stick and puck earlier . I need my rest .... but it’s hard to sleep after a loss ugh 😑
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