There's More To The Story Than The Final Score

Alternate captain Tom here! Instead of a traditional game recap, I wanted to shine a light on some pretty cool things happening this season, including at our most recent game last night.

Even with the power of our awesome new official jerseys, The Ogopogos’ third game ended in a loss with a score of 12-0. But one thing I’ve learned about hockey is that the scoreboard doesn’t always tell the whole story.

For example, in our first game we racked up a total of 3 shots on goal against the other team. In our next game we got 12 shots on their goal, and last night we totaled 17 shots on goal. That’s huge. Each of those shots means we not only had to escape our own zone, but then evade the other team’s defense through the neutral zone, and then spend enough time in the offensive zone to get a shot off.

Adding to that the fact that The Ogopogos are currently the “most beginner team” in the league (meaning the majority of our players have never played on an official team before) and we were playing against a team of significantly more experienced players, then those little victories start to become more apparent.

To take things a bit further, from my perspective as goalie, we had 69 shots against us in the first game and 64 shots against in each of the following two games. It was tough to look up at the board last night and see the number of goals against climb to 12…but what the scoreboard doesn’t show is the 52 saves. I won’t lie, I’m kind of proud of 52 saves– the same way our team should be proud of 17 shots on goal! From here it’s really a matter of continuing to mount offensive pressure while reducing the other team’s shots on goal. Then good things will happen.

Away from game time, the majority of Ogopogos are skating and practicing as often as possible through scrimmages, Learn to Play classes, Stick & Puck sessions, and open skates before and after work pretty much every day of the week (and on top of oodles of family/community commitments too).

So even when the final score shows a loss there are always a ton of wins in every game. Someone spent time during the week working on passing and then was able to receive a pass at a critical time in the game? That’s a win. Someone spends hours working on backwards crossovers to be more effective at defense and then is able to disrupt a play from the other team? That’s a win. Someone spends hours training in Sense Arena virtual reality and is quickly able to make a glove save before a puck hits dead center in the middle of his mask? I can personally tell you that’s most definitely a win.

On top of all that, the support we’ve received from the community has been unreal. Kind words, encouragement, coaching– you name it, people have given it to us while asking for nothing in return. It’s an incredibly special thing and I hope you know how much it means to everyone on the team.

Don't get me wrong, The Ogopogos are a competitive team. Each on of us takes to the ice before a game with the intent to win, and when we do get that first W it’ll be an incredibly exciting moment, but there’s much more to the game than the final score.