Regular Season Game #2

A happy team after a great road win!

As I mentioned in my last post, the team travelled to Cherbourg this past weekend to play the Vikings in our second game of the season. According to Google Maps, Cherbourg is located on the northern coast of France about 350 kilometers from Asnieres. This distance will be significant later on.

We left at 11:30 am for the game and made two stops along the way. The first was a quick bathroom break for the driver, while the second was for about an hour for the team to consume a pre-game meal. We arrived in Cherbourg shortly after 5:00 pm which allowed us to take a quick around the harbour and the lower half of downtown before getting ready for the game.

After a half day of travel, we started out the first period a little cautious, but skating well. We eventually scored a short-handed goal midway through the period when Emilien Rouyer took advantage of a turnover and raced in on a breakaway. Top shelf on the blocker side and we were up 1-0.

Patrice Kerner (28) chases down a Cherbourg forward while David St.Cyr (21) follows behind.

In the second period, Cherbourg began to play undiciplined and we made them pay with a couple of power-play goals by Emilien Rouyer and Olivier Ducam. We were cruising and seemed to have a speed advantage over Cherbourg as we continued to presure them into taking penalties and for the most part played a good chunk of the period in their zone. Unfortunatly Mika got nailed from behind and cut his lip open pretty good. The cut later reopened and eventually the coach told him his night was over after the second period.

Franz Ehrhart (11) works the puck in the corner against two Cherbourg defenders.

Up 3-0 at the start of the third, outshooting them 47-17, we knew that it was our game to win. Although it seemed like we may have backed off a bit in the third, we still managed to score two more goals to put the game away. Unfortunatly we blew the shutout for Tommi with just over a minute left in the game. Chalk it up as a learning experience.

Christophe Rouyer (28) and David Machon (20) do an excellent job of checking a Cherbourg attacker in front of our goalie, Tommi Kuru (31).

As I mentioned yesterday, after the game we went to a braserie for a team meal. Why did we not just get some food for the road and head back to Asnieres you ask? Well in France there is a law that when you take a bus somewhere, with two drivers, you have to stay there for nine hours so the drivers can properly rest before making the four hour drive back. Since we arrived at 5:oo in the afternoon, we could not leave Cherbourg to come home until after 2:00 am!!! So instead of arriving home around 3:30 in the morning we arrived home at 6:45 am Sunday morning. Crazy fun!!! Anyway, at least we had a sleeper coach so we could all stretch out on the way back.

No video this week as there was a little bit of a technical issue involving a protective net and the camera. Mindy promises to have footage for next game.

Mika showing off the thread.