Alliance Win 14-3

Play the ball

I have always said that Crap Teams will always be Crap Teams until they decided not be Crap Teams. Its really a simple concept. There's a choice, an effort, a motive that can change everything. Losing Stinks. And its about time the Alliance takes that next step over the line that divides the winners and losers.

 

The time is now boys, the time is now.

 

After a dominating effort on Saturday, the Alliance found themselves, yet again, with a favorable matchup in the second round of a sudden death playoff. Taking Care of Business was inevitable in game one, but we wouldn't be the Alliance without some bumps along the way.

 

Playoffs, Game One: It's not easy being big.

 

This was rematch of our first regular season game, a game we won 8-2.

 

I would describe this team as a team that just didn't belong. What they lacked in skill was not made up for with size or defensive acumen. They consistently let 2 on 1's go against them and let's face it; Brett, Jared and JB will kill you if they have numbers. Brett is awesome at manipulating a 2 on 1 into a high percentage scoring chance. And it's the reason why the first line dominated this team. Toasted them. They basically scored every shift they had, including 10 seconds into the game.

 

The other team knew they had no chance against our top line and they tried to compensate for it.

 

Fail.

 

Their "ringer winger", wearing a Lucic jersey, ended up being a whiny player that Darrin stoned easily many times. They were better off without him.

 

But that wasn't their only plan at knocking the number one seed down. As the first line dominated with 2 goals from JB, 3 from Jared and 3 from Brett, they decided to poke at the bear on the second line known as Griff. "That's not going to be good for anybody."

 

This created a rough game, with cheap shots, cross checks, bickering and some trash talk by Griff on the side. This game became very, um, not fun. I couldn't wait for it to end. But before it could there was a side issue with Eric and the other team. I'm going to be honest, it looked a lot worse than I think Eric intended it to be toward the opposite winger. The ref had no choice but to throw out both players involved, 2 on 2 hockey!

 

Thankfully the game didn't last long after that. The ref finally had enough of the style of "hockey" being played, the game was called. 9-0 final.

 

Scoring Notes:

 

• Griff had the other goal tallying up to the 9 total 
• Darrin had the first ever Alliance playoff shutout. Ironically, I'd argue, his worst playoff performance. Nice work Darrin!!
• Jared could have had another goal, if Griff didn't blow a 2 on 1 by bickering instead.
• Nick could have had a goal on his great penalty shot move (cough) but was stoned.

 

Next: The first line is vulnerable?

 

Game 2 on Saturday

Epic Gravy

Thoughts of us being cursed like the Chicago Cubs seem to grab more credence with each passing tournament and league game. "Pulling an Alliance" has become a universal saying for blowing it. But this time was going to be different. It had to be.

What started out as just a small pick up tournament discovered by Brett on his honeymoon, has now blown up. The hype, thought and effort put into winning one of these things has reached levels unimaginable. A win was going to happen, no matter the cost.

Year one was a limited thrown together team that over achieved. Great for that team. But the last two years have been a kick in the nuts, a dagger in the heart, a sky dive without a parachute. Year two ended with a misplayed two on one with a patented reaching stick in the background and a downpour of endless Jack wrist shots. And, of course, last year was deemed the dream team with the wrong goalie, against a scary talented team while under the tense stress of the worst timeout any of us have ever been a part of. Two epic collapses. We were a joke in defeat. The aliens sent home as losers again and again.

But the year where the tides would finally turn was coming. The clock was finally going to be on our time. Another dominating regular season was coming. And it means nothing without finally bringing a trophy home. A big one!

The curse will be killed. No one will ever critique our non-practice, drinking, stay up way too late ways again. The negative recaps may disappear off of this site. Champions at last. All of the heart wrenching defeats make it that much sweater.

Yay Muckers!

The Regular Season: Saturday means almost nothing

Almost. The number one seed ensures a first round bye, a late morning start, a cupcake second round and perhaps an easier road. Ok, I'll take that. Great. Awesome. But me, as the steady veteran of the play-on tournaments, have seen this before. Dominating the regular season is a played act, though this was done at a much greater scale. Pure domination. As usual we were the hated, over sized, team from Boston. And it started in game one and the domination continued all day.

While in hindsight, the story of Saturday wasn't the games. Important at the time, of course, but they became a side issue. The means of which to setting up greater championship odds. A stepping stone to a joyous pig pile. A necessary course in order to reach the real goal. But it was also means of trying out our adjusted lines.

Line 1: Brett, JB and Jared

Line 2: Eric, Griff and Nick

Can you say top heavy? But the rationale made sense. Obviously line one is great. You're not getting a better line, in fact. The question was how would line two work? In theory Eric would create his own offense, Griff would do the dirty work in the corners and Nick would be the responsible defensive defenseman to make sure we never got caught.

But there was an issue, we had a simple schedule. You could argue we played the two worst teams in our bracket. You could have ran out any combination of players and still won the game fairly easily. We were headed into the playoffs with two lines that were basically untested in adversity. Would it work?

While all three regular season games were blow outs, they were not left without its scares. On literally the first play of the day Borges was hobbling over his reoccurring knee injury. ( yay! Ice time!) and later on in the day, Eric decided that making a habit of rolling your ankle is good idea. Not to mention Jared's bad back and Griff's swollen foot. Injuries to keep an eye on as the playoffs loomed.

Line one shined on Saturday:

JB with 9 goals

Brett with 7 goals

Jared had 7 goals, two penalty shot goals.

 Line two performed but they saved their best for later.

The team played great on Saturday, held tough and above all else showed a killer instinct. I hate to diminish what we did on Saturday but we only did what we were supposed to do, hard to get excited about that.

It was only getting tougher from here...

Next: The Playoffs!

Just a Taste of What's to Come

Those who aspire, perspire.

I wish I could describe it as taking a dump on ourselves, but that would be sugar coating it. If I could characterize it as a collapse of epic proportions, I would, but it can only be a collapse if the result was surprising.

We did it again guys, we did it again. Why? How? This game left me stunned to silence afterwards and sadly I still don't know what to say. I'm literally speechless. So it leaves me bitter. No recap, but I have a question: Why do you think we lost on Monday?

This is pretty cool

Killer Instinct

                  The whole day on Monday, Borges was scrambling for guys to round out the team for that night. And that’s usually never a good sign. Borges could only scrounge up 7 guys for the game and half of them getting there at 6:58(including the goalie). But thankfully they were all good players and they were playing the North Stars; easily the worst team they’ve played all year.

                  Well right off the bat the Alliance started to dominate play, winning every battle for the ball, cycling the zone with ease and it wasn’t long till JB potted the first goal on the night on a 2 on 1 as he received the pass and waited for the goalie to over commit and put it blocker side. Not long after, Ron let a vintage slapper go that the goalie didn’t react to till the ball was in the back of the net. I swear the North Stars didn’t touch the ball for minutes at a time during the game except for the goalie making saves. But once the Alliance saw that it was an easy night, they started to get cute. Way too cute. Cuter than Justin Beiber cute. Thinking they have the ability to really humiliate teams by not only scoring a ton of goals, but scoring them all in highlight reel fashion. Well guess what, you can’t and you didn’t.

                  The score remained 2-0 through the second period with the Alliance continuing their annoying play for all 10 minutes in the second. Everyone turned into Brett, passing up great shots in the slot just so they could try and set up the other guy who was all alone in the slot but have it ultimately end up not even being a shot on net. Where’s the killer instinct? The want to put a team out of their misery and put the game out of reach? So far out of reach that even the Alliance can’t blow the lead. At the end of the second the alliance only allowed 4 shots on net.  

                The third started off better with the Alliance potting 2 quick goals. One from Eric on a great shot while crashing the net and I don’t know who scored the other. Up 4-0 nothing, the Alliance got called for slashing, an incredibly unnecessary slashing (Jared) and on the ensuing face off, the North stars won it and scored on a shot from the point. Then the North Stars made it 4-2 with a goal on a breakaway that Darrin didn’t even seem to care about or even try that hard to stop. But like one player said after the game: “they could’ve gotten a six goal lead and I would still be confident we could come back and win”, which is probably true. Either way that’s as close as the North Stars would get. They got another power play due to Eric being sick of getting slashed and hooked so he ripped the guys stick out of his hands and smashed it on the floor right in front of him, but they could do nothing with it as Brett and JB killed it off by cycling it in the offensive zone the whole time and then Eric came flying out of the box to come in and one time a blast into the net. 5-2. With 15 seconds left and a face off in the Alliance zone, Jared streaked for the net. JB won the face off and flung the ball over everyone to Jared who actually shot on his breakaway and scored. 6-2 final. Should’ve been 15-0 and that’s not an exaggeration.

Never going to give you up...

"Never going to let you down"
If last night wasn't a wakeup call for you then your not paying attention. If last night didn't make your blood boil as you watched our entire team fall asleep and then proceed to crap it's pants to a bad team for periods of time, then your not seeing the problem. If at any point last night you felt, like I did, that this game was in the bag, then you're part of the issue.

Now I can hear it now, "nick, we won the game. We out shot them. There goalie was really good. Game wasn't as close as the score shows...yada...yada...yada..blah...blah" To that I say shut up. What are you watching out there? All of that doesn't matter.

Do you know why this team, our team, always seems to fail in the end?

Some would say we fail because we don't practice. Others would say its the length of their stick or the turf under their feet. But those are,relatively speaking, non factors. They're minor quibbles or just plain old weak excuses for just not being good enough.

 Others seem to pin our struggles on something within, something deeper. They place the failures on immeasurable qualities such as "balls" or even a supposed lack of the winning "quality, attitude or spirit." Crackpot theories that sound interesting but don't really hold much substance. Ladies and gentleman, those are a great example of a grasping of straws.

It's true that some weeks we are just beat. We were not the better team on that night. That happens. Or at least that's the perception I'm left with after the game. That feeling of, "what more could we have realistically expected out us?"

But then this week happened and I had epiphany or something.

Effort.

Everyone knows the importance of effort, that's obvious. The realization is that the lapse of our effort is our biggest detriment. It's our downfall in the games we win and lose. We lost two weeks ago because of both mental and physical effort issues. We were the better team. The little things matter. Unnoticed until they're not done right.

The non dropping of the stick penalty was weak. The lack of even trying to block a shot is almost distasteful. Anyone can stink up the rink with bad shots and bad passes, but is it really asking too much to put your shin pads in front of a shot? Really? REALLY???

 But the issue is team wide.

When was the last time we played a full 30 minutes?

That's why I felt frustrated. If the effort is there to start it disappears as soon as we see a lead. On the other side of it, if the effort is missing from the start of the game, it doesn't show until the other team already has the game in hand. That has to change. Full effort. No excuses like I didn't get my shots in. Make it work. Mistakes will happen, but effort should never be in question.
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The issue isn't deep rooted. We're not cursed. It's not even that hard to fix.

We just have to avoid the let downs within the game itself. I challenge myself and everyone..a full effort next week, that means 30 minutes. No let downs.