soreness v pain II

Now a few weeks after my soreness v pain query, I've been able to experience the feeling a few times and have come up with some (personal) deductions:
1- Some soreness of the patellar tendon is acceptable. In other areas much less so. This is because the acl graft, as well as the two bones segments acting as anchor points, were removed from this portion of my knee, and it is still healing.
2- Soreness elsewhere definitely warrants closer inspection. After playing pickup then goalty back to back a while ago, there was soreness _within_ my knee, hence my pulling the reins a bit and slowing down, allowing it to heal fully and for any soreness/pain in that portion of the knee to subside.
3- Some workouts tax the knee (especially the patellar tendon) more than others. Stair workouts certainly do, as they repetitively stress that tendon.
4- Goaltimate, with its multi-directional cutting & short burst speed focus, has often left my patellar tendon feeling utterly pain free. Further, it feels tight to begin with, but seems to slowly "loosen up" as the game wears on, and I can only deduce that there is some tightness to the tendon as it heels and that it actually does become a bit looser with the exercise and multi-plane stress that comes from cutting in multiple directions (rather than 1-dimensionally simply going up stairs).

None of this is brain surgery, but certainly helps me to feel more comfortable with certain soreness/tightness sensations within the knee, and to know how to loosen up in pre-game situations. Basically, I would most like to do hard, small-field cutting in any pre-game situation, with drills like 3v3 keep away in a small box, or Mini, or simply suicides, probably to conclude a warm-up session that began with a decent run/dynamic stretching.

It's been less than a month since my first competitive game (High-level Mini on Jan. 25), and already I feel much, much better, both in terms of knee stability/dependability, and overall speed/quickness/stamina. The main facets still absent from my game are top-end speed and jumping ability, which I am working on by varying between 2 stair workouts per week vs. 2 cleated speed workouts per week. I believe that much of what I have now can be attributed to the work I did in January, so hopefully February's efforts will show themselves in March/April. Fingers crossed.