That said, our next game (and first game of the final round-robin) is tomorrow against Jonstorp at home.  Obviously an important game as Jonstorp will probably be our toughest competition.  More soon.

By the way, Middlebury just beat Trinity in the NESCAC semi-finals and will play Bowdoin tomorrow for the NESCAC title. Go Midd!

Since our loss to Helsinborg, we’ve played 6 games, including one last night.  Immediately following Helsinborg, we played Kallinge (6-1, at home, loss),  Hässleholm (11- 1, away, win), and Trelleborg (8-3, at home, win).  I’m too far behind on my blogging to give satisfactory accounts of these games so please go to the team site (http://www.laget.se/OIKALAGET/start.html).  I’ll say that we were down a couple guys for the Kallinge loss (and Kallinge has a solid squad so it really could have been worse), and Hässleholm and Trelleborg are in second to last and last place, so I think the results make sense there.  It’s still nice to see the boys put a few pucks home though.

Most notable of these most recent 6 games was our match against Tyringe.  As you know by now, Tyringe has been the number one team in our series from the beginning of the season.  Our first meeting with them ended in a 12-0 loss.  The second and third meetings, while much better games, were also losses (4-1 and 7-3).  However, in our fourth and final game of the year, Osby was able to give Tyringe their 5th loss of the season in a third period come-from-behind win!  An incredible game.  To begin, the match was an “En krona match” or a one krona match at home.  Because of our losing ways at the start of the season, home game attendance has gone way down.  As a result, the team budget has been pretty tight due to unforeseen revenue losses (due to the poor attendance).  The en krona match aimed to help fix this and it was a success!  In an en krona match, instead of generating money through admission (which is free for the game), companies sponsoring the match pay one krona per person that shows up.  With 59 sponsoring companies and our biggest attendance of the year at 841 (avg. around 200), the En Krona Macth was a hit.  And a great game!

To start, Jamie and I were both interviewed as we exited the ice after warm-ups over the rink’s PA.  The guy asked James how many goals he was going to score.  James giggled and said he didn’t know but he ended up getting one (and an assist)!  While the interviewer didn’t ask about my scoring prowess, I was complimented on my skating and defensive game.  Someone noticed!

After an exciting back and forth first period leaving us in a 0-0 tie, the game started to slip down the tradition slope.  First shift of the second period, Tyringe took the lead 1-0.  And not long after it was 2-0.  It was hard not to think about being embarrassed in front of our best home crowd ever.  Tyringe vs Osby is also a long time rivalry (derbymatchen) which adds an extra sting when you lose.  But Osby played on and we were able to get on the board making in 2-1 going into the third (James’ assist).  And then it all came together.  In one whistle Tyringe took two penalties (the ref had his hand up for one and the guy, assuming the ref wasn’t going to call them again, wacks our guy in an aggravated attempted to gain control of the puck).  5v3 for Osby.  10 second in, black line powerplay put one in to tie it up.  With a minute 50 left on the second penalty, the second powerplay unit put another one in to take the lead 3-2.  Not long after, our third line went barreling in on the net to make it 4-2.  We weren’t in the clear yet though.  The penalties started going against us and we took 6 before the period was over.  Tyringe came at us hard but we fought back and Jani (our goalie) came up big!  James made it 5-2 with an empty netter.

It was an exciting game to play in.  And by the sound of it, the atmosphere of the Tyringe game was how it used to be every home game, not 5 years ago.  For whatever reason, hockey has taken a downturn in Osby.  After the game, the bar was packed and I was later told that “beating Tyringe makes life easier to live” haha.

Unfortunately, after beating the first place team fair and square, we traveled to Linhamn (2th place) and got beat up 6-0.  Pretty classic.  Still high on the Tyringe win, we didn’t come to play the next day.

Lastly, we played Alvesta (6th place) at home yesterday and won convincingly 6-2 (James had a goal and an assist) which made for our 9th win at home in our last 10 home games.  Not bad.

Our last regular season game is this Sunday against Jonstorp, away.  Jonstorp is one place and two points behind us in the standings which makes this an important game.  We win, we clinch a by in the first round of the relegation playoffs.  Not insignificant.

Kallinge (4th place) tomorrow (1/27).

Next match is this Sunday against a 2nd place Helsingborg at Helsingborg.

The loss to Alvesta was particularly disappointing.  While being the better team, we were beaten by a good goalie.  The goalie is actually an American also coming over to Sweden after graduating college (Cornell).  Nice guy.  Unfortunately, he was also nice enough to shut us out.  All of Alvesta’s goals were powerplay goals which has been a common theme for us.  The turning point of the game was in the second period when we were down 1-0.  On the PK, I threw a puck off the glass to James who was floating in the neutral zone who won a 50-50 battle with their defenseman to go in on a break away.  James scored but after the fact the linesman complained to the head referee that James had interfered the Alvesta defenseman to win the puck so instead of scoring shorthanded, James went to the box to give Alvesta a 5 on 3.  Alvesta was then able to put two in before our boys could leave the box.  We never recovered.

Beating Jonstorp was essential.  They are currently in 7th place (one place above us) and are a team that we need to pass in the rankings if we want to avoid the play-down (relegation) playoffs.  Coach Higgins has actually written a review of this game in English on the team website (http://www.laget.se/OIKALAGET/start.html) but I’ll do my own.  After a first-shift goal against us, we were able to power back to a 5-1 lead going into the third period.  Surprisingly, it almost wasn’t enough.  In the third period, we took 9 penalties, some of them over lapping (i.e. 5-on-3, and a 6-on-3 for their 4th goal with 3 minutes to go in the game!).  It is one of the worst feeling in the world to watch an insurmountable lead slip away.  Fortunately, it actually was insurmountable and we were able to get the two points. Even-strength play we were dominant.  Unfortunately, you can’t even breath on the opposition in this league (depending on the ref).  I’m proud to say that I actually didn’t get a penalty this game though.  James had an assist.  I may have had one , too.

Värnamo this coming Wednesday (20th).  Very important game because they are another team we need to pass to stay out of the relegation playoffs.

After a great vacation, I am excited to get back to playing again.  James and I returned to Osby by the night of the 27th and were back for practice on the 28th.  We had 7 or 8 good practices heading into our first game back against Tyringe (TIR-ing-ga) who is currently 1st in our league.  Unfortunately, we lost 7-3 but it was arguably the best we’ve played as a unit.  You may recall, the last time we played Tyringe in Tyringe we lost 12-zip.  But this time we had Tyringe on their heels as much or more than they had us on ours.  It was a great back and forth game.  Unfortunately, after a very even first period we were down 4-0, a deficit we couldn’t overcome despite 5 or 6 breakaways.  Things were very upbeat in our locker room, though, so I think it’s a game we can build off of.

And during the time it’s taken me to write this post, we’ve actually played another game against Linhamn who is the 3rd place team and won 5-3 in another good match (this time at home).  Tied 3-3 half way through the 3rd, James made a great pass to the front of the net for his 3rd assist of the night to put us up 4-3.  Then, to make things exciting, we took a penalty at 17:59, but we were able to fight it off (but not before a mad scramble) and tack on an empty netter for the final of 5-3.

Alright, more later.

We’ve played two regular season games now (Oct 7th and 11th) and we’ve lost both (6-1 to Värnamo and 6-3 to Helsingborgs).  Against Värnamo, we were flat.  They beat us with grit and intensity.  Not a particularly talented team, they played for 60 minutes and we could have perhaps put together a single period if we combined all of our good play for the entire game.  But our good play was and is good.  It is frustrating because we do have good players, and Värnamo couldn’t touch us when we were on.  But then again, that’s the trick.  First game jitters?

The game against Helsingborgs is a similar story but with marked improvement.  Again, we didn’t put together a full 60 minutes but our intensity was up and we put together 2 good periods.  We actually dictated the play for much of first period and even took an early 1-0 lead (my first regular season goal).  They tied it up 1-1 before the end of the first, though, and then nabbed an early second period goal to make it 2-1. The game was still very even and we created many of our own chances on a few powerplays including a few missed wide-open-net-backdoor plays.  However, silly defensive break downs (pucks not leaving the zone and a few breakaways (I gave up one)) cost us a few extra goals and made for an even game with an uneven score. Silly goal 3-1. We respond 3-2.  Silly goal 4-2.  We respond 4-3.  Silly goal 5-3, then an empty netter 6-3.  However, Helsingborgs is a much better team than Värnamo and is suppose to be one of the top two team in our league.  Our performance left something to be desired but we showed that we can hang with the best of them.  I’m convinced we have talent so it is doubly frustrating when we shoot ourselves in the foot and give goals away.

As a side note, our roster is still not the way it should be yet.  We’re still waiting for one veteran defenseman to join us (I don’t know what he’s doing but coach says he’s coming) but now we’ve also been struck by a few injuries, notably James (leg) and my defense partner Johan (groin).  Because of these two missing defensemen, we have some of our natural forwards playing D and others filling in for them at forward.  We also know that James is good for at least one floppy muffin per game.  (As a side note to my side note, James is handling his broken leg like a champ.  He still hops it to the gym and I haven’t heard him complain once.)  Regardless of who’s missing though, we still have to make fundamental changes to our game play as alluded to in the previous paragraph.

Outside of the rink, life is great.  As much as I liked going to class at Midd (and I did) I enjoy not having anything mandatory to do outside of hockey.  I’ve still been pretty good about filling my time though.  James and I are still looking for jobs to make a little extra money so I don’t have to pay myself  with my parents money (actually the money we make from the team is plenty to get us through the month but we can’t spend much on anything outside of food and we’d like to have a little extra money to travel later).  Until then, I’ve been trying to learn Swedish.  I found this program online called Byki (www.byki.com, acronym for “before you know it” I think) and I recommend it to anyone who is trying to learn a language, and it particular, who is trying build his vocabulary (and quickly!).  In fact, I wish I had had this program in high school.  I might be fluent in Spanish.  I spent 4 years studying spanish in HS, 1 more in college and I’ve gone abroad twice to latin american countries, and with Byki alone I feel that I am already about half way to being as proficient in Swedish as I am in Spanish, and I’ve only been using this program for 3 weeks.  Grant it, I spend about 3 hours per day on this program (which I didn’t and couldn’t do with Spanish back in the day), but this program gives you the means to spend your time efficiently while learning which makes every minute feel productive and, therefore, enjoyable.  If you think I sound like a spokesperson for Byki now, just wait.

Most basically, the program is an electronic flash-card system that takes the user through three phases in learning “lists” of words, phrases and sentences.  The first phases is called “Preview it” and serves to introduce you to the new terms by displaying cards with both the foreign and English word on the same side.  In addition to seeing the foreign word, there is audio of a native speaker saying the word as well.  You may flip through the cards (and the accompanying audio) in this phases as long as you’d like but once every card has been shown once, it allows you to head on to phase two “Recognize it”.  In “Recognize it”, the foreign words are now displayed alone and you are asked to visualize and say the word to yourself in English before flipping the card.  Once flipped, you are asked whether you visualized correctly or not.  If you were correct, great.  If not, you are displayed the foreign word again and the process continues until you visualize correctly.  Important to note, however, is that the program takes into account when you indicate that you have visualized (or pronounced) incorrectly and as you work through the list of cards visualizing the word, the program has you visualize the words you initially visualized incorrectly more often.  Once you have been able to correctly visualize the English translation of the foreign word 2 or 3 times in a row (I don’t know what the specific algorithm is) you are moved on to a second activity in the “Recognize it” phase which entails typing rather than merely visualizing the translation of the foreign word displayed.  Again, if typed incorrectly, the incorrect term is subsequently displayed more often, and once the program is satisfied that you can “recognize” the foreign word, it moves you on to phrase 3.  Phase 3 is called “Produce it” and is the opposite of “Recognize it” (but also has the 2 activities (visualizing and then typing)).  In phase 3, it is now the English word that is displayed alone and the user is asked to visualize and, when ready, type the foreign translation.  Phase 3 continues until you can satisfactorily “produce” the foreign word.

The program does everything that psychology told us would elicit better memory.  The obvious first tactic is repetition.  The more you see something, the more likely you will be to remember it.  More importantly, the program takes you through stages of repeated recall asking you to know a given word by both its foreign and native form.  In other words, it promotes successful retrieval of information which increases the likelihood of future successful retrieval.  Lastly, the program utilizes multiple modalities (visual and audio).  This enhances binding between bits of information and enables the word to be remembered via more than one cue (some cards even had pictures as well as text and audio).

The company advertises ”perfect recall” and I am yet to disagree.  In fact, sometimes I feel (and visualize) that I’m having information downloaded directly into my brain like in the matrix.  It’s incredible.  The upgrade version of the program (best $50 I’ve ever spent, thanks mom and dad (it was online, I had to use the card!)) also has a “stale” word tracker that re-tests you on words that it suspects need to be refreshed (ok, so it’s near-perfect recall but words only get “stale” about a week after learning them and I was still remembering 95% of them when tested).  Anyway, I’d recommend the program to anyone.  I think I’m going to get in touch with Middlebury’s language department about it.

So, as you can see, I’ve filled my time learning Swedish.  I’ve learned maybe 40 lists of words.  My “flashcard” counter is up to 460 (which includes phrases and full sentences, mind you).  I don’t know how useful Swedish is going to be over a life-time, but I tell ya, it’s a real kick when you understand your first little sound bit on the fly. Förstår du svenska? Ja!  But anyway, I don’t do nothing.  It’d be nice to find that job though…

Well, I have an appointment with the team masseuse (how do you like that?) soon so I have to run.  Check in again should.

As for the camaraderie coming through on the ice, we’re still waiting for it to kick it.  You may have read Jamie’s latest post already but we’re still winless at 0-4.  To be honest though, team spirit isn’t the issue at the moment.  We’re still waiting for a few guys to arrive (I don’t know exactly where they are but I’ve been told they’re coming) or return to the line up (two of our best are expecting children, others have work) and as a result players from the local junior team have been filling in.  Basically, we’ve been playing with a new assortment of guys every game which is not exactly conducive to team building.  We’re also only playing with 5 defenseman and this guy hasn’t been double shifted since peewee’s.  The Sweds also don’t like playing defense the way we might identify it (i.e. back-check optional or lets-have-everyone-change-on-the-back-check but that’s what they do in the show, right?) which leaves the 5 of us to get abused on the odd man rushes.  While Sweds leave something to be desired on the back-check, everyone here can skate and handle the puck.  Lots of smooth stick handling and great puck movement, perfect for an odd man rush.  So, 0-4 we go. And while it doesn’t feel good and while frankly there’s only one team that has been better than us (they were actually very good, top D3-ish (NCAA)), I’m not totally surprised.

Anyway, I really do hope to update the blog on a regular basis so stay tuned. Talk soon.

In short (for now), having left the US about a week ago, Jamie and I are already settled in in our new apartment and already have three games under our belts.  James has posted a more thorough introductory post the state of affairs of here so I recommend taking a look at his blog as well (http://jamiemckenna.wordpress.com/).  I hope to really get my blog going soon so Jamie and I can blog in tandem to give a more complete picture of what’s going on over here in Osby, Sweden!