Who's stopping you?

The Alliance name comes with a reputation. It doesn't matter who dons the uniform, it’s a curse; a plague. Every "Alliance" team is a group of overreacting, overanalyzing, band of "hockey" players. But it’s the trait that we lack that haunts us the most. We lack the killer instinct. We are incapable of sealing the deal. So many times we have come close, but couldn't close. And for a period over the weekend, I believed that we finally found a team with some mojo. We finally had the team that could completely shut the door. If we hustled and battled for every ball, we could wear down and tire out any team we played. The only snag was if we tired out first.

Weeks of discussion and overanalyzing of the "dream team" went into this tournament. But one thing that was never really in question was the lines. John, Nick and Brett were always together. The almost B-Team consisting of Griff, Borges, and Jared was the other logical line. But, after one bad game, against a great team, all that was tossed to the side. We needed a jolt. And apparently, the line change was what we needed. We dominated in game 2 against a solid snipers team. We played our game and dominated. There really is no other way to describe it: Pure domination.

So with the stage set, the question the team was asking amongst ourselves was:

“Can the dominance continue?”

But, to me, that wasn’t the question at all. The question was: ”Were we going to pull an “alliance”?” Were we going to become fat, happy, look too far ahead and collapse under the pressure after a team surprises us?

What is the answer to that question? Patience. Just give us time. We will collapse.

Game 3: The Voice Reason v.s the Eye of the Tiger

Ah, yes…Just rethinking the events of this game makes my blood boil again. These guys were hacks. And frankly that’s pretty much all I remember about them.

For starters, they had a Goliath as their D-man. He was a real brute. A Fat head. A punk. He was a detestable display of the cheap “I can’t beat you with skill so...” mentality. He was a real life Biff Tannen. He was 6’ 3’’, 250 pounds (ish) and he had an amazing shot. He did de-pants (spelling?) Tony a couple times before we adjusted and blocked his shot for the rest of the game. The big stupid never did adjust. Couldn’t have been easier to defend.

Besides having the Ogre on defense, they had a small “insignificant piece of dust” at winger. He was an instigator, a hack, a cheap shot artist, a tripper and a whiner. Think Jimmy Nelson, except this guy would actually hustle a little bit (doh!). Every two minutes, you’d either hear ”ref???!!” or his arm would go up looking for a call or my favorite move: the look at the ref. Yeah keep staring, that’ll get you a call. For crying out loud, just play the game!

But despite having such despicable hockey players on the other team, our team managed to stay calm, cool and collective. That is, until one player became tired of their shenanigans.

Now, if I were to ask you before that game, who was the most likely to get ‘fed up’ and react to another team, how would you have replied?

Let’s make the answer multiple-choice:

A) Griff

B) Ryan

C) Ryan Griffin

D) The guy married to Melissa

E) The son of a Carron

Let’s be real here. There wouldn’t have been any other answer.

Now, what if I asked the opposite of that question: Who was the least likely to dare I say retaliate?

“It was the most inspirational thing I have ever seen…John Riley had a fire lit under him? The entire team was emotionally charged after that” said one player.

The game was real laugher. This team stunk. It went down in the score book as an 8-4 win, but that didn’t give it justice. With penalties coming from every direction, to both sides, many goals were missed (that was one sided) and everyone was involved in the party. (Almost) Everyone had multiple goals.

The highlight of the game was Jared’s penalty for taunting. Well worth the penalty shot that Tony stoned them on.

Game Notes:

* Nick only played for what felt like ten minutes because Borges kept pulling him because he wanted Nick to “calm down”

*Griff was the most relaxed and rational player (seriously)

To be honest, this game was a lot of fluff goals. Not that they weren’t good goals. What Im saying is we could take nothing really out of this game because the team we played was just awful. But we felt that maybe, just maybe, this was a game that could light a spark that would carry us throughout the play-offs. Hopefully this was a game that would solidify a united effort. In our next game, all this would be blown up and forgotten. The Power of a time Out

Next: The Timeout that will live in infamy.