8 goals despite missing Adam; Many still ‘pull a Walker’ Suddenly Lady Byng is 'hot' Final at HNA.com Thunder - 8 Eagles - 0 Attendance: At least 2, on a frickin’ cold night (Ooooh, K-Feld: she is devout!)
Their severely short-benched opponent may have had something to do with it, but the Thunder responded to the loss of Adam* for the foreseeable future with a veritable offensive orgy, a K-Feld Shutout Special (Does that really make TWO?!??! In the SAME season??!!), and a Lady-Byng scramble, as absolutely no one picked up a penalty in this pacifist-filled game. Suddenly, it's sexy not to get penalties.
The Injury (*For those who did not hear the news, or for twisted “Faces of Death” fans who just want to read it again: Adam had a confrontation with a circular saw – no, not “Da Saw” Warger – and the saw won. Adam was scheduled to have surgery Thursday to reattach tendons and nerves and what-not, all of which, not being made of titanium, somehow failed to keep the saw from cutting half-way into the bone in his thumb. All Thunder thoughts were with him on this night, and all made mental notes to either call a carpenter or a more expendable player for their future carpentry needs. Here’s wishing you a thorough, speedy recovery, #7.)
The Love Now the game: Where to start? A whole lot of hustle, for one. Subbing in goal for the Eagles, Dejai made some fantastic saves, but we moved the puck well enough and often enough and peppered him with enough shots (42 by one count) to give him no chance. He was particularly tough one-on-one and with point-blank opportunities, as Garrett and I discovered on a few occasions. Stenson, too, found him hard to beat despite an end-of-game breakaway that featured indescribable Stensonesque moves and dekes not found in nature.
But making passing plays did the trick, and Copeland started things off with a 2-on-1 goal on the first shift, and we were off and running. Hoagland The Greater soon followed with a goal set up by Mouser. Since Hoagland The Lesser couldn’t get on the scoresheet despite his two mammoth forecheck efforts that gave me the puck all alone in front of Dejai (again, point-blank shots were no sure thing), like a good brother The Greater added another goal on a one-timer to bring the family tally up to 1.0/Hoagland on this night.
Decoy Jansky…did not contribute to the Jansky family average, but he skated well, and unconfirmed reports say he didn’t check any of his own teammates, leaving the friendly-fire average for the evening at 0.0/Jansky. Decoy also, after considerable effort, put on the correct socks, thought it took him all of warm-ups to do so.
Sloppy Rob had several rushes to the goal while Stenson stayed behind and tended the pasture at center ice, but since Rob’s a defenseman, we generally ignored those efforts. In what is becoming a patented move, though, Rob skated down the left boards with the puck and set me up with an easy conversion from the top of the slot.
You know, kind like one of the setups Walker made last week? The kind he promised to repeate this week? Not to be, as Walker pulled his namesake. What do you expect from a banker when you have no collateral to speak of? And speaking of no collateral, Wiggins, no doubt distracted by the growing prospect of K-Feld's shutout, also “pulled a Walker,” which I’m sure he will blame on me for not converting some sort of beautiful pass that I don’t remember or didn’t see because my head was still fogged-over from his incessant musings about the aesthetics of 1920s Russian film or some such artsy crap.
The Pep-Talk But the story of the night may have been Mike K., who combined with Copeland, Mouser, and just about everybody else he played with on several pretty hustle-and-pass plays that resulted in two goals and two assists for him. To think, in all my prescient brilliance, I pulled him aside at one point to remark that he looked like he lacked his usual confidence. Mercifully, he did not tell me off or question my vision.
The Shutout Then there was K-Feld. In every shutout, even in a blowout, there comes a point where a goaltender’s team must force him to earn the clean sheet, and we certainly did that. Kev made a handful of memorable saves, including getting just enough of his toe on a breakaway shot to make the puck hit the post and stay out. “Mr. Zero” rises again, and you can bet he’ll send an autographed puck to quasi-French separatist Spenard.
The Post-Game Afterward, many Thunderers retired to Stenson’s Kirkwood abode for the comfort of heat, beer, carpet and dogs. Mike K. cornered “Can’t Botch a Crap Case” Martin for legal advice on all sorts of promising cases – though suing the manufacturer of Adam’s saw was not brought up...Captain Lee told us of his plans to sneak into Cuba to trade medicine for cigars. No word on what priceless Western medicine The Lesser is bringing on this mercy mission, but unconfirmed sources say they include pharmaceuticals from the “Wal” class of drugs, such as Wal-nol, Wal-fed, Wal-tussin, and the recently recalled Wal-agra...And Toronto was casually brought up; it still requires both making the playoffs and winning in the playoffs, but threats about participation were made nonetheless.
Anyway, nice hustle all around on a very fun night.
Next Game – important! We will be short next week, with both Hoaglands, Adam and Stenson out for sure. (Presumably, North County and Carlton will have power back by then.) Plus, we’re playing the “division rival” Longnecks. It's an "earilier" game than most and a longer commute for many of us. So let me know as soon as you can if you won’t be there. We’ll likely be calling up reinforcements as it is. Tue, Feb. 20, 9:30p at North County vs. Bud Longnecks | We are away/BLACK
As you may have noticed, the site has changed. Sampa, the free-site host, did a version 2 of some sort.
Despite an FAQ that made it sound like allowing one's site to go through v.2 surgery would be okay, there were several flexibilities that surprisingly disappeared with the click of a button. (e.g. I cannot believe sidebars like this one are even narrower than before.)
And I'm told -- miraculously! -- that the conversion cannot be undone. Truth be told, I'm actually quite pissed. But free is free. Sampa has otherwise been good to me.
So I need to sort through site "features" to see how I can make do. Except that I don't have the time at the moment, in the middle of graduate classes and Lighthousehockey.com. (btw, I've removed that Lighthouse RSS feed so that you're not clogged with random Islanders hockey gibberish).
But I promise to touch up the accessories when I get a chance, and return to irregularly scheduled blogging.
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