Black Bears

Lukey's hockey team, the Black Bears, had a game against Stowe this past Sunday.  The game was at the Waterbury ice rink so we made the very short drive to the rink to watch Lukey and visit with the rest of the family who attended the game.  

Lukey has been playing the goaltender position for the past few years and he is getting good at it!  He has a lot of saves each game and this game was no different.  

Even though this Stowe team was a tier above Lukey's Black Bears team, it was a one-sided game in favor of the Black Bears.  This is a pretty solidly balanced team.  Their offensive line is good with some fast skaters and pretty good stick-handlers.  Their defensive line does a good job.  And, Lukey's goaltending has proven to be difficult to penetrate by most teams his age.  

I don't often shoot video at his games but I attempted a few clips this time.  Shooting video is tough at these games for a few reasons.  First, the rinks are tight which means you are close to the action.  Being close is great for photographs (assuming the glass is clean) but it is bad for video.  You have to move the camera far too quickly to follow the action.  Moving the camera quickly while recording video makes for a dizzying video more resembling an earthquake.  When I shoot video, I resort to randomly shooting video of only Lukey's goal hoping to get lucky in capturing some good action.  This rarely pans out though so I mostly focus on shooting photographs of the action instead.  That being said, I did put together a short video at this game the other day.  The video can be viewed below.  

Naturally, I shot far more photographs than video clips.  Here are a few photos with the video at the bottom of this blog entry.

This photo, below, shows what was another really nice save by Lukey.  Even on relatively open breakaways, Stowe didn't have much luck getting the puck past Lukey...

It is hard to see in this photo, below, but the puck is just entering Lukey's glove for another impressive save!  It is always tough getting the puck past the glove unless the goaltender is being screened by other players on the ice.  Lukey does a good job at protecting that stick side of the goal by not providing any open area of the net on that side.  

The short video is below.  I should point out that, in the video, I indicate that the final score was 9-2 because that is what was posted on the Black Bears webpage.  I thought the final score was 7-2 though.  I chose to use the score that was published online figuring that maybe I was wrong.  Either way, 7-2 or 9-2 is a solid win.  

We had a great time, as always, and we look forward to the next game!

EDIT:  I just watched this video again and I want to point out that the music in the video is actually music being played at the rink during the game (between plays and after the final buzzer).  I definitely did not choose that tacky 1970s "Rocky Theme" garbage as video background music...  the blame on that exceptionally poor taste in music lies in the people running the games and/or the rink.  Geez...  if you don't want to play current upbeat music, at least move to music from this century!