Some milestones

I am trying to be good.  I really am. 

It has come to my attention that behind my back, my name is being attached to silly accusations, and I have a strong temptation to address these things.  However, since I’ve resolved to stop the smack talk for the sake of peace in the Silver B galaxy, I will continue to bite my tongue even if it makes for less entertaining stuff to write about.  Besides, certain people are free to bring up their little accusations with me on Friday.  

So, onwards and upwards.  Let’s talk about some milestones that I’ve crossed over the past couple of weeks.

First, our game against the Ice Dawgs a couple of weeks ago was my 100th as a Puck Hog.  There’s nothing particularly significant about 100 games per se, other than that it’s a traditional milestone.  But, it’s still a good feeling to know I’ve played that many games for this great group of guys.  It’s a ton of fun every week, and not just because of the hockey.  All the postgame hanging out  we do into the wee hours of the morning at our pizza place or another local restaurant makes it totally worth it, win or lose.  We’ll talk or joke around about a gamut of topics - be it about the game we just played or mixed martial arts matchups within our own team.  It’s always a lot of fun and is the best way to kick off the weekend.

To date, I’ve played 103 out of 107 games for our team.  My “career” hockey stats look like this:

Singh10 Career Stats

My points per game went up a bit with the Hogs compared to when I played on the original Foothill Flyers, but I’ve been pretty consistent.  I’d like to think I’ve improved over the 100 games, but that might be a tough call.  The fact that my stats still show a little growth in light of facing more able players in our current league suggests that there was some improvement.  But hey, I’m still working on it.

Excluding some notable exceptions, at the time when Silver B was created, like most teams we Puck Hogs moved our whole team up to a higher league (the league we’re in now – Silver B).  We’ve had to face much tougher competition since then, which I’m glad we do.  Several of the original Silver B teams still retain much of their character from their Bronze League days, including the Misfits (formerly the Phantiaks, formerly the Phantoms/Kodiaks), Ice Dawgs, SMB (formerly Yo MaMa, formerly the Volcanoes) and our team, and I think there is something very positive to be said for that.

Another milestone that just passed was the second anniversary of the Hog Blog on July 5.  On the first anniversary last year, I did a quick summary, so I’ll do that again this time around.  In year two, the Hog Blog has seen:

• Visits: 11,085
• Posts: 54
• Comments: 134
• Busiest day: September 30, 2008
• Most visited post: “Holey the Goalie and Nogoalov” – 256 views
• Most visited page: “The Hog Blog” – 567 views
• Top five search engine terms: “hog blog hockey”, “bryan klein”, “puck hogs”, “puck hog blog”, “puck hogs roseville”.

I posted much more regularly last year, so I clearly need to pick up the pace.  Silver B, you have been warned.

On to year three!

Singh10.

Let your math speak

The Puck Hogs’ resident mathematician did a quick statistical analysis based on regular season stats so far this season.  Basically, he compared the average goals scored per player on each team in Silver B in the regular season.

Try and keep up with his analysis here…

If you take the number of players that have scored goals on each team and divided it by the total number of goals scored by that team, you come up with the following data.  Keep in mind, the closer that this number is to 1.0 for a team, the more spread out the scoring is:

These teams have 2 or fewer goals,  and can be considered outliers, so we’ll exclude them from this analysis -  

Pirates 1.0
SMB 1.0
Spitfires 1.0
Roughriders (0 goals)

Now it gets interesting -

Misfits 0.750
Pints 0.714
NorCal A 0.667
Puck Hogs 0.636
Flying Wizards  0.400
Ice Dawgs 0.385

Now let’s assume, each team has one dominant offensive contributor and take out that player’s stats from each team.  Two weeks in, it looks like this -

Misfits 1.0
NorCal A 1.0
Pints 0.8
Puck Hogs 0.75
Ice Dawgs 0.67
Flying Wizards 0.45
 
Taking out the Ice Dawgs’ top scorer dramatically increases their average goals per player.  In other words, this one player scores a lot of goals for that team, but the average goes up because other people still contribute. 

At the bottom of the list is the Flying Wizards, who despite all of their scoring this season (they’ve scored 15 goals in two games) still have the lowest goals per player.  They go from near bottom to bottom of the list when you take out the top scorer from each team.  

What does this indicate?  There are only a select few players on that team who score and when you look at the scoresheets, you’ll see that only five out of 14 players on their team have ever scored a goal this season.   Clearly, considering how much they’ve outscored their opponents thus far, the Flying Wizards offense is based on a select few very talented individuals (let’s call them, I don’t know, “ringers”) who have no trouble getting lots of goals in Silver B while the bulk of that team – the non-scoring passengers - reap the rewards while contributing less than any other team in the league.

Singh10.

That’s a wrap

The Misfits took the Winter 2008-2009 Silver B Championship last Friday, defeating the Pints 6-4.  Congratulations to them! They played quite well throughout the playoffs.  As the fifth place team, they defeated the fourth, second and first place teams to capture the prize.  Incidently, the Misfits captain is now the most decorated in our league, having won the championship twice – once in Bronze and once in Silver B.  Both cases were upset wins.

For the Puck Hogs, Winter 2008-2009 was a bit of a different one for us.  Until this last season, we never had too many challenges with attendance or injuries, but this winter was very different.  We had several guys go down to injuries or other situations (particularly as a result of the economy shift) that prevented them from being able to play every game, or any game.  We ended up most games a little short and twice we had less than 10 skaters, which coincidentally happened against the two best teams in the league.  We faced a lot of adversity this season.

However, the tough season didn’t really seem to phase us and I think we rose up to the challenge.  Guys worked hard to get over their injuries.  Some even played injured right into our last playoff game.  Those who were transferred due to work made extraordinary efforts to try and make it when they could.  It says a lot about them.  Moreover, it says a lot about the guys who were able to make it regularly that despite all the challenges we had rosterwise, our team finished in third place and had a solid second half of the season.

With the championship awarded, the Winter 2008-2009 season comes to an official close. I’m hoping that my offseason work is largely done as well.  I tried to start earlier this season to prepare for the summer one, but I think all that did was prolong all the ups and downs in trying to get the team ready.  Our season barely ended before my focus went immediately to next season – I didn’t even really have time to reflect or “mourn” our playoff elimination.  However, I think we’re now ready for the summer - our team fee is paid up with the rink and our roster is set.  I’m excited about our roster and am looking forward to seeing how we compete next season.  We’ll have a bit of a new look!

The Winter season provided some valuable lessons for me, and I’m hoping that I’ve learned from them.  Indeed, our roster challenges have influenced my decisions going into the Summer, and I think we’ll have a lot more flexibility in our roster this time around.

This offseason hasn’t been the most pleasant, very reminiscent of my first.  Much like then, I tried to do what I think is best for the team, but this doesn’t make some of the decisions I’ve had to make any easier.  I’m hoping that with the team squared away that I can take a break from the mental stuff and go into our summer season refreshed.  We have a little time until next season starts (April 24), so I’m going to enjoy the next 10 days and not think too much more about captaining than I have to. 

Singh10.

A bitter sweet end

For the Puck Hogs, the Winter 2008-2009 season came to an end at 7:30 PM on Friday night.  Our second round playoff loss to the Pints sent us packing with no more games left to play this season.  The Pints move on to the Silver B Championship game this Friday to face the Misfits.

We left the rink and went to our  post game pizza place to drown our sorrows in meat lovers pizza.  I know I felt better afterwards.

We had gone into our game against the Pints with a lot of challenges.  We were missing four guys and this put us at a disadvantage compared to the full (and overall younger) bench of the Pints.  Another of our teammates was basically playing injured, as he has been for some time.  However, I think we put up a good fight and competed as hard as we could.  It was disappointing to lose, but it was a close loss (we lost 3-1) to a very dominant team, so I’m consoled by the fact that we still were very competitive in light of the odds stacked against us.  But, I do have to say that I left that game upset by more than our loss.  An incident with only seconds left in the game has bothered me, and I feel I have to address it here.

Because this is where I record my thoughts and opinions on the game, I’ve been very quick on this blog to publically get on teams or players who I feel play dirty.   The Pints have been a recipient of this from me for two seasons.  But, despite my own personal belief on how rec hockey should be played, my own team is not immune from engaging in dirty or ugly play on the ice.

We were down 3-1 in our game against the Pints with 19 seconds left and our goalie pulled for the extra attacker.  Frankly, the game (which had been fairly clean to that point) was pretty much over.  One of the Pints – their best player - came into our zone with the puck along the boards, and one of my teammates aggressively checked him to prevent the guy from scoring an empty net goal.

But, my player didn’t stop there.  He proceeded to pull the Pints player down, jumped on top of him and started throwing punches.   I was on the ice at the time, and while I’m usually one of the first to try to break up these plays, I skated to the bench instead.  I was disgusted because there was no justification for this act.  Their player was playing the game as he should have been.  The attack on him was completely unwarranted; it would have been one thing if my player just checked him hard, but it was another to take him down and assault him for no apparent reason.  After all of my ranting about dirty play from other teams in our league, to witness my own player engage in such an act was a bitter pill for me to swallow.

Some people might accuse me of throwing my own teammate under the bus, but I have to be fair about this.  I’ve openly called out the actions of other players, and so it would be hypocritical of me to ignore incidents when members of my team do the same things.  I know that if our places were reversed and someone from the Pints assaulted one of my players in such a manner, I would have been calling for heads to roll.

After our game, I approached the Pints captain in the parking lot and apologized on my team’s behalf for his player getting jumped.  I also asked him to extend my apology to his player.  I expressed my regret for the action of my teammate and I told the Pints captain that this is not how I want my team to play or be known for.  The Pints captain accepted my apology with a lot of grace and didn’t make a big deal about it.  I know that I wouldn’t have been so graceful if it was the other way around, especially given our history with the Pints.

So, to be true to myself, I want to publically apologize on this blog to the Pints for what happened at the end of our game.  I still believe that assaulting other people on the ice has no business in rec hockey, whether it comes from members of another team or my own.

Singh10.