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!