It wasn't pretty but...

We had our fourth game of the season in the DMHL, and even though we won, it was ugly, and at times a little embarrassing.  I really can't figure that team out over there, but my best guess is that we completely lack an "identity" (due to the lack of sponsorship/team jerseys = team unity maybe).  Well, that and the fact that we almost never have the same line up week to week, which made an attempt to correct by trying to get the Brothers playing for us.  I was voted down on that point for last week, but we'll see about this week coming up because we're going to be playing the Black Dog team, (defending league champs) and we can't be short for that game, because we won't be able to play and ugly game and pull out a win like we did this past Monday night.

We played Northern Lumber the other night, who have improved somewhat since the summer.  I think that a lot of us (all of us) looked at this game as a "bye," that we could just phone it in and we'd still be fine...  We jumped right out of the gate with two quick goals and then seemed to ease off a bit, and as soon as we did they turned up the heat on us.  At about the halfway point of the game, maybe a little past that, the score was tied two all.  

The first of their two goals really fucking pissed me off, it was a broken play coming out of the corner of the right wing boards that I was able to make a couple of decent saves on, well until my center, who is a fucking grinder and hustles the entire time he's out on the ice for every single shift he takes, back-checked the just barely loose, almost tied up by me, puck into the net.  He has two goals in two games against me.  Not cool.  I can't remember the second goal, which means it was a good goal on their part, that they earned it, otherwise it would have pissed me off and stuck out in my mind.

We turned the pressure back up immediately though and scored two quick ones.  We had a little defensive brain fart and gave up a breakaway where I found myself in no-mans-land...  I was caught in between charging out at the puck, which was about ten steps ahead of my opponent, and holding my ground.  Hindsight being 20/20, I should have buried the little fucker, because he ended up scoring stick side.  He made it look about as easy as taking a piss in the snow...  

From that point on, the game was pretty even, they pulled their goalie in the last minute, but couldn't win a face-off, which essentially gave us the win.

So in the DMHL, we are 2-1-1, with 13 goals for, and 10 against, giving me a GAA of  2.50, (with an overall record of 3-1-1 and a GAA of 2.60 including the OMHL).  I'm happy, but I feel like, at least in Dennis, we can do more, be a better team, but to do that, we need to be more consistent, and play hard for 50 minutes, not 40...

WInter Wonderland...

So the winter men's league season is underway, and between the two teams that I play for we are 2-1-1, and even though it's early, I can very happily say that in four games my GAA is a tidy 2.50.  Like I said though, it's early, so I'd better savor it now because there is a very good chance that it is not going to stay that low.

The two teams that I play on basically skate year round.  Most of us have no down time, giving us an early advantage when the winter leagues start back up again.  In our first four games, we haven't had any cupcakes, that's for sure.  We played the Tony Kent Men's League Champions our first game back, the runner up our second game, a solid Chapin's team our third game, and in the Orleans Men's League, our first game was against the Summer League Champions (that game turned out to be a bit of a laugher though, welcome to winter league).  So like I said, we've seen some very solid competition early, and if both teams keep playing the way that we have been early we could end up in a very good position at the end of the season.

The Orleans team has it's roster pretty well set, we lost two guys to retirement, but picked up three guys in their early/mid twenties, which adds to an already solid team that made it to both the winter and the summer league finals.  The Dennis team however is a bit of a work in progress...  There has been some talk about adding a pair of brothers (from the team that I play for in Orleans) to our Dennis team.  I am of the opinion that the addition of the pair will make that team very, very dangerous, and will help to cement our lines, bringing a familiarity and consistency to games.  

Also, we're looking for some serious sponsorship for the Dennis team, as I think that we're all tired of looking like a bunch of bums.  Only half of the guys have jerseys that match, no one has matching socks and most nights we have to wear those stupid fucking yellow pennies because we don't match to begin with, so why not make us look even more ridiculous?  Anyway, we've been working on a few different things sponsorship-wise.  Hopefully something will pan out soon.

Next week, it's a ten o'clock game against Northern Lumber on monday, and a nine o'clock game Wednesday against the Chiefs...  Both games should be good tilts.