Thinking about this game still makes me excited...

To this point I have focused much of my frustration of our loss in the tournament last week on one player. Furthermore it’s very clear who “we” have made the scapegoat of “our” struggles to be. And to a certain extent, perhaps I have been too harsh on Brendon (and not harsh enough on “others”). But to sit there and defend anyone’s mistakes with the adage “no one is perfect” is a joke. I’m sick of hearing it. It’s a pathetic display. It’s a feeling that has no association with a heart of a champion.

But for a few moments I will go along with this “wise” excuse. If this adage has any credence at all, then I’m right to surmise that someone other than Brendon made many plays that deserve harsh criticism. Am I right in that assumption? Of course I am. None of us are perfect. But I’m stating the obvious.

It seems that when someone makes a great shot, they get all of the praise. And this praise is certainly well deserved. But, the great pass that set his shot up, from his teammate, is often overlooked. The truth is, though, you can’t have one without the other. The pass gets no praise because someone else made a better play. The same can be said about a bad performance. When one player continues to make questionable play after questionable play, the poor performance of another teammate is evident but often ignored. It goes uncriticized because someone else managed to make a more noticeable mistake.

Just like you, I made awful plays. We all did.

Mike was right when he said: “we all made mistakes and bad plays” but I’m sick of the generalization. I’m sick of having all of us lumped into one mass of terribleness because feelings are being spared. We are supposed to learn from criticism, not become defensive.

Oh yes…I’m finally going to recap game 4:

Game 4: Sweat fancy Moses…how’d we do that?

Game 4 was game one of the play-offs. It was our first game on Sunday. And it could have been, potentially, our last game of the tournament. The play-offs were do or die. And the game started at 8:00 am.

8:00 am. Think about. We had played 3 long hard fought games on Saturday and we needed a quick turn around for Sunday. We were certainly tired. We were out of energy. We were exhausted. And our play showed that we were.

When we got to the park (field? Is there a better term? Brendon, want to help me out? Or is the site part of your “ban” too?) we saw our opponent, the Wolf Pack practicing for the game. We, on the other hand, chose not to practice but complain. Nick was mad that Jared didn’t get him breakfast. Though, Brendon was clutch when he gave me a power bar!! (Hey Brendon look! A compliment!!!!!) And Jared was complaining about how our team looks unprepared in contrast to our adversary. We were standing around…they were practicing. We are the epitome of a team.

Remember the Wolf Pack? You know, it was that team that we shared a mutual respect for. (magic v.s bird style)

Well, they were more prepared than we were. They were a better than we were. And we were tired. Does that sound like a recipe for a win? Never mind a win, how about a competitive game? I had my doubts.

Game 4 started off slow (for us). We were down 2-0 quick. And I’ll be honest, it didn’t look good. Every time we scored-they answered. Jared started off our scoring, making the game 2-1. We gained hope. Then they scored. 3-1 Wolf Pack. We thought the game was over. Then Johnny scored making the game 3-2. We began to believe again. And guess what happened next? Yep, they scored. 4-2 wolf pack. Next, we made it 4-3 with another clutch goal from Jared (were you thinking it was a clutch goal from Brendon?). Suddenly, we felt we could come back and win.

And then they scored. Again.

After that goal we began to believe that we had no chance. We were hoping for time to run out.

Instead, time stood still; because Jared decided to call a time-out.

What a tactic.

During our time-out we chose not to work on a game plan or strategy but we sat there in what was almost a dead silence. The one minute timeout flew by. We were soon told to get up off the ground and play (on!).

But before we started up again Jared softly said to his team “let’s score two”

Wow.

What a motivator.

When play resumed there was a little more then 3 minutes left of the clock. We couldn’t afford to waste time. We needed to strike quickly. We did just that. In the blink of an eye John Riley came up with a clutch goal. To this moment, I still can not believe how Johnny got this ball to go in. He couldn’t do it again if he wanted. This ball seemed to pause in mid and Johnny somehow managed to time the slap perfectly for a goal. 5-4 game.

Despite the momentum changing sides yet again, the wolf pack managed to keep the pressure on us. In fact, they even managed to catch Brett out of net in one instance…Hold ON! Glad I caught myself. I don’t want to say anything negative about Brett! Brendon claims that I’m biased; I don’t want to deviate from my reputation.

Our 5th goal is as Griff would say was “debatable”. It was yet another goal by Jared and this time the ball was almost “willed” in. The ball apparently “trickled” past the goal line. As soon as Jared saw this he began to yell “it’s in! It’s a goal”. The reff blew the whistle. Tie Game.

Somehow we managed to hold down the fort the rest of the way. We were about to have a shoot out.

For a shootout the “team” got to decide who would take the shots. Only three players could go. Johnny and Jared were locks, but who would be our third guy? Luckily (sort of a backhanded thing to you Mike) we never got to that point.

Jared was the first one to take a shot. He scored on a forehand. 1-0 Alliance…it was our first lead. (sort of)

Then the wolf pack's representative took a crack at scoring. Brett wanted no part in that. He was shut down immediately.

And now it was Johnny’s turn to give us a commanding lead. Not noted earlier in this recap was a missed penalty shot by John…maybe John would take something out of that missed shot? Of course he did. He scored on back hand.

It was all up to Brett. Could he finish the improbable win? He is the better Driscoll…what do you think happend?

Game Over. he shut them down. The best game any of us had ever been a part of. And we played awful.

Coming “Soon”: Game 5-Am I done writing recaps?????

Recap of Game 4

Sorry guys. I'm already at 2 1/2 pages. (and im still not done!) It was an intense game I guess. This recap is taking a long time to finish. I'm hoping for sometime soon.
It will be up by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest. I promise.

A new season begins! Sunday, September 13th @ 6:30 pm.

The fall has always been one of my least favorite times of year since it marks the end of summer, but there's at least 2 good things about the fall. One is hockey, the other is football. For us Pats fans, hockey will actually start first. The Pats start the season on Monday the 14th, we are playing the day before on Sunday September 13th at 6:30 on the outside rink. This looks like it will be the best season we've had since we've started doing the stats and this site. Next week we'll start throwing some polls and questions out about the upcoming season, by which point maybe Nick will be done his recaps of Montreal. In the meantime, let me know who is planning on playing on the 13th.

Haphazardly using Exclamation points

Wait! Hold on! HOLD IT!!! I lost my number two spot???? You have got to be kidding!! After game one I was moaning about how terrible I played and I was told quote: “You were number two behind Jared!” Were you lying to me??? So I have to ask: What happened??? Did I suddenly go back in time and play worse??? Whose feelings are you sparing??? I need an answer! “My time has come” for an answer!!!!

Anyways...let me ask another question: How many goals did Nick have in the first two months of this past season in Saugus?

He had zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. Nothing. I went two months without a goal…two months!!

Keep that mind as we recap Game Two of the “Tourney”.

Game Two: Another undeserved Win

> I would like to impugn our “struggles” in this game and this tournament to one person (or two, or three, or….) but I hold back because for whatever reason we kept on winning. When I finally recap our first loss of the tournament, I will start the blame game. Believe me, I will.

As the second game started it looked like we were going to be pounded. They were out hustling us. They were not making blind passes. They were the absolute definition of a team. It wasn’t looking good. We deserved a loss. But our goalie played out of his mind. He was fantastic. He was making insane stops. He was absolutely amazing. It was a borderline unbelievable performance. After all, he is the better Driscoll. What else should we expect?

Nick started the scoring in game two with what some of his teammates called “the best shot of his career.” It was a perfect “slap shot” to the top left corner of the net. The goalie had no chance. 1-0 Alliance. This shot set the rest of the team in motion. We got contributions from Brendon, Mike and Johnny creating a 5-0 lead over the Wolf Pack. (did you notice a name missing? No, I’m not talking about Brett)

But, in the second half, after intermission, our team came back to being terrible. We stopped playing over our heads. We fell back to reality (Oh there goes gravity!-Did anyone else start rapping?). In the second half, the wolf pack began to run circles around us and instead of adjusting we decided to hold down. Sit on the lead. For 15 minutes. Think about that: 15 minutes. Is that possible? We kept icing for 15 minutes. Can I stress that anymore? Does that show any confidence? We managed to hold down our lead and score two more goals (including another goal by Nick) but we knew this team was good. We knew that if we faced them in the play-offs, they could beat us. Without an amazing performance by Brett we were going to be toast. But there we stood undefeated heading into our third and final game of Saturday.

Tomorrow: Game Three-An improbable ending…another win.

I want a recap!!

I wonder who said those words??? I have no idea...[insert a Brendon smiley face here-to show an attempt at being clever]

In my first post since my disappointing season recap way back on May 20th, I will recap game one of the Hockey Tournament that was recently attended by some of our "teammates."

GAME 1: The 12 year olds....

No they were not really 12-if they were they wouldn’t have been at the tournament. But they were all 5 foot 5' "men" who seemed to all have a different heritage. I’m not sure they were all speaking the same language.

So let me ask...In theory should we destroy a team that is obviously younger, smaller, softer and represents more languages than the city of Babel?

Nope. That’s not how it works here. This team went 0-5 in the tournament including a loss placed on them because of the mercy rule being put into effect. So instead of steam rolling them like everyone else did we decided to match every terrible play they made with another terrible play of our own. Recipe for succes. [insert a Lenny smiley face-to show that a clever remark was actually made]. Brendon ran around in circles, Nick felt he played awful, Mike De Maio struggled and despite all this Jared still wanted to move up a level (or two). Confidence is usually high when you have 6 goals in one game. "I'd like to say that Jared was great but that goalie was average at best...I want to see how he plays against a tougher opponent", said one scout.

Brett looked solid in net, but it certainly wasn’t his best game of the weekend. Johnny did not have his “great” sniper like shot. Game one’s MVP was Jared. He made clutch shots, he put us ahead, he hustled, and he came back on defense (wait…now you know I’m lying). The point is: Jared came up big. The rest of the team did not. “It was a game in which we all had a tough time getting started (in fact “we”-as a team-never did get started)…we got the win, but we knew we played a bad opponent. We had to play better if we wanted a win in game 2…and we actually did play better. Though are ‘better’ is still bad”, said one confident player. The Final Score was 8-3 Alliance. But the score did not tell the story. We struggled. We were tentative. We were bad. We were flat footed. We didn’t use our size to our advantage. We made blind passes. We made bad shots. And when I say “we” I mean “some of us”. Our opponent was just awful. Its that simple. “We” didn’t win, they lost. They wanted to lose more than we did. But it was the first time we played together in 6 months. Rust was expected. We don’t believe in luck *but* we were lucky to face a weak adversary before our Magic vs. Byrd game…

It was a win…but our least entertaining game…

We ended up playing better in Game two against the team we respected (and they respected us, of course)

Tomorrow: Game Two…another win? Believe it.



Brett, we forgot a part: Kramer: [In Newman's ear] This guy's nothin' but a piece of crap...

Newman: You are nothing but a piece of crap.

Ron: Pardon me?

Kramer: [In Newman's ear] A piece of crap...

Newman: A piece of crap.