A young goalie in the minor leagues had his dream come true on Tuesday night. He got “called up.”
Joel Martin is a talented young goalie with dreams of playing in the NHL. He’s currently playing for the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. Imagine his surprise when, in the middle of a game, the coach of the New York Islanders asked him to come to New York and put on his gear—and be ready to play.
The Islander’s starting goalie hit a rut in the ice during practice and hurt his knee badly just before their game against The Toronto Maple Leafs. The team’s back-up goalie had to fill in for him. But the team would need another goalie, in case something happened to the back-up.
That’s why they called in Martin. He went from the minor leagues to the NHL in a matter of minutes. That doesn’t happen very often.
Martin dressed to play, but he didn’t get to go on the ice because the back-up goalie played the whole game. He sat on the bench, waiting to see if he would get to play. He said that after the call, he got dressed faster than he’d ever dressed before. He said he was ready to go out there for the third period.
The back-up goalie, whose name is Mikko Koskinen, also has a story. It was his first NHL game, too. He let in a goal in the first two minutes of the game, but his teammates said he played really well. They said that Toronto scored on them, not because he was a bad goalie, but because the whole team didn’t play defense well enough.
Toronto went on to win the game, 5-3.
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
Writing/Discussion Prompt
Joel Martin explained that when he found out he was going to play in NHL, he got ready faster than ever. Have you ever been so excited to do something that time feels like it is going by very quickly? When you’re thinking of your answer, be sure to use a lot of descriptive words. Descriptive words help your audience imagine what it must have been like.
Reading Prompt
When you are able to read a word quickly or solve an unfamiliar word by thinking about what would makes sense, you are using a strategy called semantics. Readers often reread sentences when they think they have not understood it correctly. How do you check to make sure you are understanding what you read?
Primary and Junior
Predict the meaning of and rapidly solve unfamiliar words using different types of cues, including: semantic (meaning) cues OME, Reading: 3.2).
Grammar Feature: Singular nouns and Plural nouns
A noun is a person, place, or thing. When there is one noun, like a horse, it’s called a singular noun. When there are many nouns, like horses, it’s called a plural noun. Reread today’s article. Underline all singular nouns and circle all plural nouns.
