I can remember every painstaking detail of the worst game of my life.  The bad passes, the giveaways at the blueline, scoring on my own net – it was horrible.

They always say that hindsight is 20/20, but looking back on it, I know exactly where it all went wrong.

It was a long road trip.  We had a 7 hour bus ride to get to the rink and there was a lot of snow. Never a good thing when you are driving north in Ontario.  We knew that we would probably end up pulling into the rink parking lot with only minutes to spare before the warm-up began – and we were right.

We quickly dragged all the equipment off the bus and got dressed as fast as we could.  Miraculously, we managed to go from being on the bus to hitting the ice for warm-up in less than 10 minutes flat.  Within the first few minutes of warm-up, I knew this wasn’t going to be my best game. 

I was too stiff, too sore and nowhere near ready to give 100% out on the ice.

Let me backtrack a little bit.  My worst game ever happened 5 months after I had major back surgery.  One of the discs of my back exploded the season before and I was still on the (long) road to recovery.  I couldn’t bear the thought of not playing the entire season, so I was on the ice just 2 months after my surgery.  Not one of my smartest decisions, but I figured if I could walk pain-free, I could play pain-free.

Unfortunately, walking and playing elite women’s hockey are entirely different.  I had (and continue to have) nerve damage in one of my legs from my injury, so I couldn’t even feel the outside edge on my left skate.  I couldn’t sit on the bench in between shifts because all of the muscles in my back would seize up in seconds.  I had to lie flat on my back in the dressing during the intermissions because sitting down meant I might not be able to get back up.  I really shouldn’t have been playing, but no one was going to stop me from playing the game I loved.

Someone really should have stopped me in that one game.  Just put me out of my misery.  We had no time to do an off-ice warm-up before hitting the ice, which was the first kiss-of-death for me.  I had to do at least a 15 minute warm-up before every ice session to feel even remotely comfortable out on the ice.  With no warm-up at all, I knew I was going to be in trouble.

On the first shift of the game, I went to transition from forwards to backwards to defend a 2-on-2 rush and I completely wiped out.  It was like there was a sniper up in the stands took me out – I fell for no reason whatsoever.  Luckily, my D partner and goalie were able to save the day, but I felt like a complete idiot.

And it only got worse from there.
I directly caused 5 more breakaways by either wiping out on routine plays at the blueline or making weak passes in the direction of my D partner. The other team scored on 2 of those mistakes.

The final straw was when I ended up scoring on my own net.  Normally, I would have dove across the crease to block the shot, but I knew that would cause excruciating pain. So I reached out with my stick instead and ended up deflecting the puck in my own net.

At first, I was furious.  I was used to being able to do all of these moves effortlessly and now I had lost control over my game.  I hated playing badly and letting down my teammates.  I didn’t want to use my surgery as an excuse, so I kept playing through the pain and the embarrassment.  My teammates didn’t say a single thing to me despite the fact I was single-handedly losing the game – probably for fear that I would completely lose it on them.  And they were probably right.

But after 2 periods of this horrible display of hockey skill, it became downright funny.  No matter how hard I tried, how much I pushed, how positive I tried to stay, how much my teammates tried to help me out, I couldn’t do a single thing right out on the ice.  I am sure that no one would have blamed me for just going to the dressing room after the first period and staying there for the rest of the game.

So why am I telling you all this?

Because there are going to be days when you can’t do a single thing right out on the ice.  You will score on your own net, you’ll pass to the other team and you’ll fall over for no reason.  No matter how hard you try, you just won’t be able to put it together.

Maybe you’ll be dealing with an injury, had a horrible day at school or had a fight with your friend on the way to the rink.  Any one of these could be an excuse to play your worst game ever.

Don’t make excuses. 

Fight and claw your way through it.  It says so much about you as a player to be willing to battle hard through your worst game ever instead of giving up.  You can’t be great all the time.  You can’t even be good some of the time.  But you need to work your hardest no matter what all of the time.

How can you survive your worst hockey game ever?

What strategies do you use to bounce back for the next game?