Day 13 – Vienna – Game vs. EUHL Selects 2

We had a nice, late 10 am wake up today to start the day off on a good note. After breakfast, we hopped on the bus to go to Bratislava for a walking tour around the city. We started out at the Bratislava Castle, made our way through the city and ended at the opera house.  Thank God the tour was only an hour long because I swear the wind chill made it feel like it was -20 outside. After the tour, we had two hours to kill before we needed to head to our game. Most of us took this time to grab some lunch anywhere that had heat. I stopped at an American bar and grill with a few of the guys who, like me, have been dying for some American food. I had some very questionable ribs and a $3 bottle of water to tide me over for the next five minutes before I found a Panini shop down the street. We then stopped at a famous coffee shop down the street and had a cup o’ joe with some of the guys. After all of our eating, it was time to head to our game. The rink was only a few minutes drive from where we were but, like I said, it was frigid and windy in the city so we were more than happy to use the bus. This rink was the dumpiest of them all and it wasn’t even the rink we were originally supposed to play in. The rink we were originally supposed to play at was a beautiful rink that hosted some games for the World Junior’s a few years ago but they told us that we needed to play somewhere else due to “politics”. So……. yippie for America on that one. The game itself seemed to fly by as we jumped out to an early 2-0 lead after the first but penalties and lackadaisical play lead to us trailing 3-2 after the second period. We woke up in the third and took a 4-3 lead with just under half of the third left and gave up a power play goal with four minutes left to send the game to a shootout. Our third shootout of the trip. And I have been in zero. I don’t know who I angered to make that happen but I got hosed in that category. Anyway, we ended up losing a hard fought game 4-3 to end our hockey schedule out here. We leave with a respectable 3-1-1 record (4-1-1 if you count the game in Atlanta) against a lot of very good hockey teams. Once again, we had dinner with the opposing team in one of the school dorm buildings and have just gotten back. Tomorrow we have a five hour trip to Munich to spend the day before our 6 am wake up to get on the plane back home!