It was bound to happen.
No sooner than when I said this:
There are two teams this season that have been fun to play against, in the sense that there was no animosity or particularly rough play. The Ice Dawgs are one of those teams, and the Volcanoes, who we play this Friday for the last time this summer, are the other.
…that we then would have a game against the Volcanoes with a little chippy stuff in the last minute of the game (which seemed to take forever).
I will say though, that it wasn’t so bad. I think some frustrations boiled over a bit on the part of the Volcanoes, while we were desperate not to give up our delicate one goal lead in the game. The Volcanoes played really well. Despite being outshot by a large margine, their chances to score were very high quality, and our goalie had to make some amazing highlight reel saves (if we had highlights, or a reel) to keep the Volcanoes off the scoreboard. It also didn’t help that several of my own teammates decided to mismatch their socks this week, in another apparent attempt to get in my head. It must have worked this time, because I got no points this game.
Good thing we only play 15 minute periods. I was relieved that we got out of that game with the win, because I had a feeling that it was only a matter of time before the Volcanoes tied. We really wanted this one, because the win would clinch us first place in the standings this season, with two games remaining. A loss would have meant that we would have to play the Flustered Winterbreaks for first place, and obviously we wanted to avoid that.
We’ve now locked up top spot for the second season in a row. Whether we now win or lose our two remaining games, we can’t finish in any place less than first (sadly, we can’t finish any higher than first either). All that first place typically guarantees is the top seed in the playoffs which doesn’t always make things easy. Last season, we were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs and took an early break from hockey while the third and fifth seeds battled it out for the championship.
This season will be different. The first seed team plays the first round against the sixth seed, and the winner of that game gets the “GO DIRECTLY TO FINALS” card, bypassing the second round of the three round tournament.
None of this matters unless we win in the first round, which means we will need to defeat any one of the Volcanoes, Phantiaks or Ice Dawgs (depending on how the rest of the regular season pans out). After just scraping by the Volcanoes last week, we know that the first round will be a battle.
Singh10.
