Czech Hockey Weekend

Last week on Wednesday I was informed that our hockey game that Saturday was cancelled. Great, weekend off! Where should I go? Nope that wasn't the case. Instead there was going to be a Czech National Team training camp in Kralupy (the city we play in). We usually have practice Friday nights and if some of the girls are gone with the National team then we can practice with a guys team. But this time we were told that we could actually practice with the National team. It was kind of fun going out there with the girls and throwing on a Czech practice jersey. Yet it did kind of feel like a Slavia practice as there are only a couple of girls on my team that are not on the National team, minus some of the younger girls that play for us.

Then on Saturday and Sunday we were told that we were playing in games against the National team. They just threw together some players from other Czech teams and a couple of older girls who were not on the National team anymore. I actually played defence those two games with Chelsa, had a blast of course. Made a bunch of mistakes but was nice to play a little defence as I can't say I've done a ton of that this year.

We lost the first game 2-0, but played pretty well. Chelsa and I played first line with a couple other Slavia girls, one who is Slovak, one who used to play on the National team and then one who is not quite there in making it. We actually played really well and if we would have capitalized on a couple of opportunities then the score could have been closer. The following day we started out the same way as the day before. We scored on our first shift out and then on the second. So that put us up 2-0. They did tie it up so it was 2-2 going into the second. At that point we were switched down to the third line. I was okay with this as it was a fun game but our team definitely lost momentum and couldn't recover after that. So we ended up losing 5-2. I’m in positive that the National team coach did that in order to restore some confidence in his girls. Well hopefully they've gained some as they will be heading off to Latvia for the B Pool World Championships in March.

Here's a picture of Chelsa and I in our crazy uniforms that we wore for the game.