An open letter to the Puck Hogs

A few days after our double OT shootout loss in the Silver B Championship final, I wrote the following e-mail to my team. With the Summer 2008 chapter now closed, a new season begins this Friday when we kick off Winter 2008/09.

Puck Hogs,

I didn’t want to let last season officially go without giving a few closing comments.

First, congratulations on a great third season as a team. It’s makes you pause when you think we’ve been a team for only three seasons. As several of you said in the locker room, this has been the best season of hockey I’ve ever had. I’ve never had more fun on – and off – the ice as I did this summer. Despite the final outcome, I consider this season a success that goes beyond what can be measured in goals, wins or trophies. I hope you all feel the same way. If you don’t, it’s not too late for you to get traded.

…Sure, winning the trophy would have been nice icing on the cake, but without the icing, it was still awesome cake. We have nothing to be ashamed of in our loss on Friday. We went to the absolute limit and we could have just as easily won a game that really did come down to Al Pacino’s “game of inches”. It was a rollercoaster of a game, but we battled and I believe we left what we could on the ice. We can’t ask anything more of ourselves. We’ll return next season knowing how close we came this time. Kudos to the Dirty Dozen on scraping through.

I also want to acknowledge all of our families, friends, and fans who supported us throughout the season. The support of significant others has been paramount to giving us a great season, and so please extend my thanks to your families and supporters. Their contributions to our team are definitely appreciated.

With the start of our Winter 2008/09 campaign, we’ll be losing two great teammates in Grady and Doug. Grady’s presence on this team will be the stuff of legend, and the locker room definitely will not be the same without him. In just his first season with the team, Doug made a huge impact on and off the ice, he’ll totally be missed. Both of them are always welcome back and I wish them the best of luck.

The departures of Grady and Doug left us short two players going into next season. We’ve signed two guys who I believe will fit in with our team well, and I’ll introduce them to the team shortly.

I feel privileged to be playing with all of you and am totally looking forward to the Winter Season, which I’m officially calling “Puck Hogs’ Revenge”!

See you all on the ice soon,

Singh10.

Here’s something to chew on

I’ve been away from The Hog Blog for a little while.  It’s been a crazy couple of weeks in the Skatetown Roseville hockey world, and I just didn’t have the energy to blog with all the correspondence going around.  Suffice to say, we’re relatively back to normal.  I’ll write more about what kept me away from hogblogging later.

There’s also the big final to write about.  We play the Dirty Dozen tomorrow night in our first ever Championship game (for both our teams, actually).  If I have time, I’ll write a bit about it tonight.

In the meantime, to ease you back into the Hog Blog, I came across the article below on the internets.  I have a feeling several of our teams can relate.

Singh10.

8 Guys on Every Beer League Team

Mike Halford and Jason Brough, The Province
Published: Sunday, August 31, 2008

It’s a well-known fact that there are only two seasons in Canada: summer and hockey. According to long-standing tradition, the former starts with the hoisting of the Stanley Cup as fans in an American city celebrate. The latter officially kicks off after Labour Day weekend.

In fact, there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of managers across Canada who will spend the long weekend making personnel decisions in time for the September dawn of a new season.

Granted, the majority of these managers are in charge of teams with names like “Just the Tips” and “Nine-Inch Males,” but don’t be fooled; beer-league hockey squads can be downright tricky to put together.

As with any successful organization, you need the right mix, and that means drafting from the following beer-league player categories:

The Ringer

Some teams wait until the playoffs to unveil this option. Others go with it right from the opening faceoff.

Either way, without a ringer, your team is done. The challenge for managers is convincing a good player to suit up for a bad side. This can be accomplished a number of ways, including promises of goal-scoring glory and awe-inspired teammates. Most effective, however, is free hockey. It’s simple math, really. Everyone else pays an extra $50 and everyone else gets a shot at the Division-7 title.

The Young Guy

At first glance, he can easily be mistaken for a ringer, since the young guy still wears the shorts and socks of his junior or college team. But it’s time for the next phase of life now, and that means an office job. The young guy stays in shape for the first half of the year. Sadly, an increasingly sedentary existence catches up by Christmas. Ten to 20 pounds later, he’s just another player, huffing and puffing with the rest. Welcome aboard, kid.

The Old Guy

Forget the 50-and-over league; that’s not for him, even though his gloves reach up to his armpits and he still uses a wood stick. To be fair, the old guy can be an effective player, especially if he’s a wily old guy — a hook here and a chop there, because that’s how they did it when professional athletes were real men. “Eddie Shore — now there was a hockey player! Lost an ear against the Maroons. Sewed it back on himself. Never missed a shift.”

The Tardy Goalie

Hey, thanks for showing up. Only five minutes gone in the first. Not like you play a crucial position or anything. Take your time.

The Beginner

Required only for cheap laughs. On the one hand, you have to admire the beginner. It takes a lot of courage to take up hockey in adulthood. On the other, learn to take a pass, man. It’s right on your stick. How does that knock you over? And now you’re offside.

The Complete Psycho

Also good for a few giggles . . . from afar. The complete psycho is capable of anything: running the goalie, challenging an entire bench, a tomahawk chop — all in the repertoire. Do not feed the complete psycho. He doesn’t want to be fed. He wants to hunt.

The Naked Guy

Bane of the dressing room. Most players have the courtesy to stretch their hamstrings while sporting, at the very least, a bit of underwear. Not the naked guy. He’ll carry on full conversations, too, and you’ll maintain eye contact like your life depended on it.

The Guy with the New Girlfriend

A good way to lower everyone else’s fees is to load up on a few of these. The guy with the new girlfriend will show up to five games, tops, so it’s not like you’ll lose ice time by putting him on the roster. That said, beware that the guy with the new girlfriend might very well turn into the guy with the wife, at which point he’ll never miss another game.

Monday Musings: Wardrobe malfunction

Call it karma.  Now who was messing with who?

Two games ago, we saw sockgate.  Last game, our final one against the Fwuit Wollups for the regular season, I decided to return fire at the team started by my ex-teammates with “jerseygate”.

I had a little surprise in store.  Much to the chagrin of the rest of the Hogs (Kinney33 called me a “sick mother”), I planned to wear my old team’s jersey in the second period to mess with them, just as they tried to mess with me in our last game against each other.  I also was going to wear my old team’s third jersey in the third period.

So, there we were, with seconds left in the first period.  The Puck Hogs were winning 1-0.  I decided the time was right to change out of the Hogs jersey and put on the old Foothill Flyers one.  All the while, the rest of the Hogs rolled their eyes.  And wouldn’t you know, the second I pulled out the old uniform, the Flocking Wonders scored their first goal of the game, and tied with 14 seconds left in the first period. 

I (and Jones3, who wouldn’t let me do this alone, though he didn’t think this was a good idea himself) still played a shift to open the second period with the old jerseys on, but the colors were confusing and he ended up throwing a pass right to a Frocked Whippersnapper – thinking he was me.  I could sense the stares of a thousand Hogs as we returned to the bench after our shift.  

So, we changed out of them and put our Hogs jerseys back on.  The ref skated up to me shortly after and told me the Floppy Wellwaters complained, and to keep our Hogs jerseys on.  We were going to anyway.  I called off the third jersey for the third period, because clearly this mindgame backfired on me. 

These old Flyers jerseys are cursed. The random combination of colors on these things must be some kind of voodoo, and that is what caused us to lose the game 5-1.  To add insult to injury, I was even treated to a ten minute lecture on sportsmanship at the end of this game from the person who not long ago called me an a-hole.  I guess that’s what “wise” people do.

When I got home, I put my Flyers’ jerseys in a potato sack, threw in some heavy rocks, and tossed the jerseys into the Sacramento River.  We can only pray that they will never be seen again, and no one will suffer the effects of the teal curse. 

Our last regular season game is against the Phantiaks this Friday.  Hopefully we’ll end the regular season on a good note.

Singh10.

Wednesday Wusings: Spoke too soon?

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.