There is no "U" in Longo!

Ethan was very excited to be the goalie for his hockey team on Sunday. Not only did he get to wear full goalie equipment for the first time, but he also got to play on the "big ice". It was Minor Hockey Day in Saskatoon and all minor hockey teams were featured in the newspaper and had a chance to play a game on the ice where the Saskatoon Blades play (which is also the arena where the World Juniors played last year).

This was the team picture we submitted to the paper (which thankfully looked more realistic in grainy newspaper print - a "Photoshopper" I am not!). You can only imagine how excited the kids were to see it when they woke up (upon seeing it Ethan screamed, "LOOK MOM: we won the Piston Cup!!!" - which is the trophy in the movie "Cars". Sigh.):



So the big moment for our goalie arrived and he was beyond pumped. Thankfully Ethan is a pretty strong kid so he actually handled the heavy equipment well (we've had kids in tears from the sheer frustration of not being able to get back up after falling down in all the goalie gear). He managed to skate to his net and practiced going down and getting up a few times before the game began. He was focused and ready when the ref dropped the puck.



All in all he did pretty well and managed to enjoy himself in spite of the score (his team was outplayed and he had lots of action). He changed his strategy a couple of times and by the end of the game was getting the hang of it. He made some good initial saves but often got caught by the rebound as can be seen in the following video:



After the game he was quick to say he enjoyed being goalie but that there were 2 things he didn't like about the position:

"Number 1: I don't like getting scored on. And number 2: I don't like not getting to score goals."

So there you have it folks. Roberto Luongo can keep his "u" and we'll stick with being regular non-goalie Longos... at least for now.