Tales from the beer league part 2

6-3 loss last night against a team that was lower than us in the standings. Jim Fox would be astonished with how little puck-luck we have had the last three games. Last night was no exception, 4 of their goals were crappy bounces, fluttering pucks that the goalie got a piece of and went up three feet in the air, fluttered down behind him. Another was a rim around attempt to clear by one of our D, hit a door seem and redirected right to the high slot where one of their players was, stuff like that. I forgot to mention our regular goalie wasnt there.

We were out shooting them by a large margin. We also had a goal that the ref wasnt in position to see, so he couldn't say it went in. I had a bunch of shots, many got through, many got blocked. My favorite was a snapper from the top of the circles that went through two sets of legs about a foot off the ice, made it through to the goalie, couldn't contain it but no one could knock the rebound in. Also had three or four shots which were right off the face-off on the left circle and I lined up at the 5'oclock position on the circle for the quick shot after our center won the draw. Those really are a crap shoot with how much traffic is in front of them, but they are fun to get off and see what happens. I think I have lost an edge on the front of my right skate, I kept slipping out as the game when on. The third period was rough for me, just felt pretty out of sync.

No penalties were taken by us, they had a few and I think we got one goal on the PP. Last game of the regular season is next week and I think we have the 4th (and final) playoff spot locked up though. Which means we'll face the first place team in the first game. They've been on fire this season, us not so much.
 
Just had our 2nd game this season.

Still playing D first game got destroyed 1-6. We had 3D and 5 forwards. First period we kept up and it was 0-0. But end of 2nd and 3rd everyone was gassed and we started making mistakes.

2 game was much better everyone showed up! It was close and they got puck luck. Not bummed we lost since it was one of those games you feel you could have won but lucky wasnt on our side.

Ive been skating every chance i get. Backwards is coming along i can move a bit faster! Trying to get backwards crossovers going but damn does it feel harder than forwards.

Got me a new stick CCM JetSpeed with a 70 flex. Its helped my shot with wristers from point/top of circles. Still trying to figure out a slapshot and getting some real strength behind it.

Overall excited for new season but i am getting a bit of rink burnout and might take next season off. My weekends this past year have consisted of Saturdays wife and daughter figure skating mornings. Public sesh afternoon. Playing at night. But thats not all now sundays include wife playing (she joined all womens league at KHS) and public sesh in afternoon before her games.

Its helped my game out alot being on the ice so much. But i think im ready for a break after this season.
 
xLAxKingsx said:
Just had our 2nd game this season.

Still playing D first game got destroyed 1-6. We had 3D and 5 forwards. First period we kept up and it was 0-0. But end of 2nd and 3rd everyone was gassed and we started making mistakes.

2 game was much better everyone showed up! It was close and they got puck luck. Not bummed we lost since it was one of those games you feel you could have won but lucky wasnt on our side.

Ive been skating every chance i get. Backwards is coming along i can move a bit faster! Trying to get backwards crossovers going but damn does it feel harder than forwards.

Got me a new stick CCM JetSpeed with a 70 flex. Its helped my shot with wristers from point/top of circles. Still trying to figure out a slapshot and getting some real strength behind it.

Overall excited for new season but i am getting a bit of rink burnout and might take next season off. My weekends this past year have consisted of Saturdays wife and daughter figure skating mornings. Public sesh afternoon. Playing at night. But thats not all now sundays include wife playing (she joined all womens league at KHS) and public sesh in afternoon before her games.

Its helped my game out alot being on the ice so much. But i think im ready for a break after this season.
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I feel ya on the burnout, it can be time consuming if you play on weekends. That is what's good about my division, we play Wednesday nights. So no pressure to have to rush home, or cut weekend activities short to head over to the rink. We just have to deal with 9:45pm and 11pm games, lol. Pick your poison. I wonder if your old team mate, "Wild Bill" is still playing? Never met him, but boy did I love him!

We have our last game of the season tomorrow night, 9:45pm. Wonder if they'll bring in their ringer from the Long Beach Shredders?
 
Final game of the regular season last night, 5-1 win for us. Finished the season in 3rd place, first playoff game is next week against the 2nd place team. I think we split the series with them this season, maybe? I forget.
 
beedee said:
I feel ya on the burnout, it can be time consuming if you play on weekends. That is what's good about my division, we play Wednesday nights. So no pressure to have to rush home, or cut weekend activities short to head over to the rink. We just have to deal with 9:45pm and 11pm games, lol. Pick your poison. I wonder if your old team mate, "Wild Bill" is still playing? Never met him, but boy did I love him!

We have our last game of the season tomorrow night, 9:45pm. Wonder if they'll bring in their ringer from the Long Beach Shredders?
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Lots of new faces around The Rinks system. A lot of people i played with multiple seasons just end up never coming back around. Always makes me wonder what made them stop.

We had our 4th game and possibly my worst game ever. We got beat 4-10. I was on the Ice for at least 5 of them...

Our goalie had a bad night and so did all of our D. Crazy part is we lost to this team by 2 when we only had 3 D and 6 skaters.

Felt like crap for first time in a long time playing D thought about going back to forward LOL it was that bad.
 
^ Happened to us a couple weeks ago when my D partner rimmed the puck around and it hit the lip of the door that is about even with the middle of the face-off circle, bounced straight out to the slot and they scored on us!!!

So we won last weeks playoff game, 2-1. Tonight we make our third straight Bronze South Finals appearance, going for the 3-Peat!!! The team we are playing beat the first place team last week, apparently they had two ringers. It would be great to 3-Peat, but no biggie if we don't. I imagine if we do, they will force us to move up to Bronze North, which plays on Tuesday nights. Not sure that all of our players would be able to do that.
 
beedee said:
^ Happened to us a couple weeks ago when my D partner rimmed the puck around and it hit the lip of the door that is about even with the middle of the face-off circle, bounced straight out to the slot and they scored on us!!!

So we won last weeks playoff game, 2-1. Tonight we make our third straight Bronze South Finals appearance, going for the 3-Peat!!! The team we are playing beat the first place team last week, apparently they had two ringers. It would be great to 3-Peat, but no biggie if we don't. I imagine if we do, they will force us to move up to Bronze North, which plays on Tuesday nights. Not sure that all of our players would be able to do that.
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Good Luck tonight B! Get that 3peat!
 
We lost last night 5-2, that included an empty netter. They went up to a quick 2-0 lead in the first, then 3-0 in the second period. We came back to within one goal, 3-2 near the end of the second period. Their goalie played well, we had the most players we have ever had show up, 3 full lines of forwards and 3 full lines of defense....yeah, that sucked. I will say though, I wasn't on the ice for any of their goals! lmao.

Their ringer I mentioned in a previous post scored ALL of their goals. And apparently after the game in the parking lot, their a-hole of a captain that nobody can stand (always talks smack and takes "roughing" penalties, including two last night told some of our guys, "since you guys cheated first (referring to a "ringer" that played with us three seasons ago, and has since been kicked off the following season) we decided we would do the same". :mad: Oh well, I'm taking next season off, trying to save money for the holidays and upcoming bdays and I'm also sick of the crap that comes with the BHL.
 
My uncle gave me these for the lil one, but she's way too lil still. Anyone want? Pretty sure they're not even used. He got em from Play It Again back in the day haha. Just gotta pick em up in LA (Lincoln Heights or DTLA).

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Luc SkyBomba said:
where's halfway?
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Appreciate the offer, but I don't know that we would even have the time to skate with all her other activities.

As mentioned, I am taking the current BHL season off, actually, our entire team is. The league decided to refund our Captains payment with a note along the lines of "We have determined you are too strong of a team to stay in Bronze South." I guess three straight finals appearances, with two wins will do that. I can see other teams behind upset/jealous even? Its not like we finished in first every season in the regular season. Anyhow, our options are to move up to Bronze North which wouldn't happen until they finish their current season, move up to Silver, thats not even an option as that level is way too good. Or move over to Artesia or Paramount. Seems like there is some other underlying issue the league director has with our Captain or something? Our Captain is a nice guy and has cooperated with every new rule or request the league has asked of him.
 
Well the first game of our winter league happened and we eked out a 2-1 victory against the C-4 division which is the division we are provisionally dropping to. On the one hand it was great to get back on the ice and not have any pain in my knee. On the other hand...the hockey was not great. Not sure what's gone on with my guys but they're definitely older and getting passes strung together was pretty tough. The other side had 3 guys that could skate well and pass a little bit but everyone else was a bit of a cluster. Actually they probably had 4 guys but I picked off a pass through the slot and took off the other way. Went around one of their defenders and someone managed to catch up to me as I was cutting in front of the net. I guess they thought they were gonna knock me off the puck but I flicked a backhand short side that the goalie blockered over the net. I was braced for impact and then used it to go around the net and retrieve the puck but that dude ate the post hard and wrecked his knee. Haven't seen a guy scream like that on the ice in a while. Anyway I don't know what he was thinking because if he had blown me up I'd have taken out his goalie which would also have been a dumb as f*** move. Still we got a goal in the second off a rush and although they tied it we managed a nice downlow cycle with a minute to go where I was able to find out leading goal scorer all alone in front of the net. I was mentally going all Happy Gilmore "just give it a little tappy tap to get it to him so I didn't bomb the pass. But it got there and he knew what to do with it.
The worst part was we had a full bench with 6D and I was needing both those changes to get my air back. Been a long time since I skated with purpose like that.
 
We finally finally got some wins under our belt. Back to Back baby. Also after my last disappointing play I feel like i stepped up my game. I felt great after not allowing any goals and getting these Ws. I still have a lot of work to do. But I really put in a new level of play to not be embarrassed by another team again.
 
Game two of the new season in C4 working out to plan. Won 4-3. We went up first, they tied it and then we had it to 3-1 before they stormed back in the third to tie it. We scored the go ahead with about 7 minutes to go and finished the game out killing a couple penalties. All of that was well and good but I played well below how I wanted to. Didn't give up any goals but there were a lot of brain farts and mis reading the puck. With 2:24 left I went on for my last shift. Got a whistle at 1:14 and the other team took the TO. Guys wanted me to stay on but I was so gassed I actually got off the ice. Hopefully this lingering cough quits and I can get my endurance back up. Two guys ten years older than me went on to finish the game and they also had another game right after in a higher division.

I'd normally put the plus side, but right now the problem is I'm about 40lbs more to the plus side than needed.
 
Ok so game three on sunday night was a bit of a cluster f***. One of our better players sometimes just gets ornery and early in the game he's skating to the goalie to get a whistle on a clearly covered puck and one of there guys just absolutely two hands his stick as a...honestly I don't know what. We probably would have gotten the slash but in the words of the dude "this aggression will not stand" but he went Walter with it and off to the box they both go. Still it set the tone for him that night and at one point he takes another coincidental but picks up another 2 for mouthing off.
So I ask the ref if we are starting at 4's or gotta put another guy in the box. He says, no put your extra guy in the box and he's sitting for 4. Ok this isn't hard for most beer leaguers. But not our teammate. So the penalty ends and our extra goes out. Theres a whistle and his compatriot in the other box gets let out, but our man decides if hes out so should he. So he has another argument with the ref and of course he loses and has to go in the box to serve his full 4 minutes. Well now we're 5 on 5 and we're playing. Not only are we 5 on 5 but we f*** up and get 6 on the ice so we have too many men. Well the time on the penalty is over and instead of waiting for the whistle he f***ing comes out of the box! So now we got 7, their side is yelling too many men and this ref cant believe he just came out of the box. In the ensuing confusion we get our extra off the ice and the ref completely misses it and chalks it up to some goofy ass mistake cuz our guy didn't wait for the whistle. Back to the box he goes for the next whistle.
You can imagine how this goes but at one point near the end of the game our guy shoots the puck at the ref in the middle of the play. So that ended his night. He of course ends up with the game misconduct. We were down 3-5 at the time but we pulled it back to 4-5 and long story short they got the en goal.
I played like molasses so I wasn't in the best of moods but I couldn't for the life of me understand my teammates personal battle with the ref all f***ing night. Their team was chippy around their net but otherwise nothing super crazy. And even at that if they hit anyone instead of just protecting their goalie the ref took em every time. I mean we couldn't have asked for anything better but every time we were about to get a PP our man had to go even it up for em and blame the ref for taking him too. In any case he gets to sit a game or two to think about it.
 
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