Last Sunday around 19:30 was the first game of the student competition. The champions of last season would face the bottom team of last year. Will it become another David and Goliath? For this game, the first team of the Studs drove with a van and two cars to Eindhoven. The aim was to start the new season with a good first game, so the hopes were up and a team of 14 players was ready for battle.
We played the game with three offence lines, consisting of
1. Vincent, Matthias and Lauri
2. Nick, Bibian, Aydar
3. Max, Joey and Willy.
Behind them, as defence:
1. Casper and Vito
2. Elmer and Paul.
Last but not least, Sylvio was assigned to defend our goal. We knew this was going be a tough game, because the Studs lost last year with 37- 2. But this year, we could do a better job.
The first period started off quite 'okay'. In the first 7 minutes, Eindhoven found the net three times. But after that it took 10 minutes for the next goal. Clearly, we had some difficulties starting up. The fourth goal was scored by Eindhoven from a powerplay situation, caused by last year’s butcher of the year. He took a penalty to start off with the new butcher of the year list. After that goal, his brother took also a chance to have a break and sat in the penalty box for interference. But due to hard work they didn’t score a 5th time this period.
The second period started of really good. After already 38 seconds we scored our first goal and the scoreboard showed 4-1. Here Vincent made a great a shot on goal. Meanwhile, Matthias and Lauri tried to poke the puck after the rebound. Matthias didn't find his reward on the game sheet, but Lauri did. The assist was for Vincent and the goal on Lauri. The Icehawks didn’t like it; therefore they made another 5 goals. So that we could go to the dressing room with an 8 goals difference. These goals were partly our own fault, following directly after chaotic changes on our side, whereas we needed to defend, but that makes a good point to learn from.
Sadly in the last period everyone got tired. This was the moment where we started to feel the lack of training, and at the same time Eindhoven got reinforcements from two fresh players on the ice. With only four training moments before this game, the team could not keep up with the condition of Eindhoven, who were (according to the rumors) already training from the beginning of September. Anyway, Eindhoven managed to find the net for another 8 times in the last period. This lead to the final score of 17-1. However, even though the score showed a clear quality difference in the teams, it was really a nice game to play. At the same time, we have a lot to learn. But the team now knows what to work on!