Hockey Season

Wow, this season is shaping up to be a bit of a frustrating one. For the past several seasons, the Mens C league has been split into and upper (C1) and lower (C2). We have consistently played in C2 with some success. Well this year, there is one league. Supposedly there was going to continue to be parity as the upper players had either left or whatever, but its sure not shaping up that way.

The last 2 games have turned into blowout losses for us, and both games have turned very ugly late in the game. The previous one was a bit chippy throughout, culminating in a full on body check by their tallest player against one of our smallest players, into the boards with less than 20 seconds in the game. It was a complete and totally blatant hit, which is completely illegal in our league. Of course the referree's don't take any additional action to punish this behavior other than assigning a 2 minute penalty.

Last night was very similiar. We faced the team with 3 of the top 4 leading scorers in the league. And it didnt take long for them to increase their stats with one of them having 4 goals and one assist. While we were down some skilled players I don't believe the overall result would have been any different (a loss). However this game stayed very clean and actually fun (what can you do) until late in the 3rd period. And of course it ended similarly, a body check to one of our players with 15 seconds left, which actually turned into a fight and almost a brawl. While we lost a key player for a game due to the fight, we were lucky in that we didn't lose anyone else as Noyes came off the bench and was pretty much third man it. I don't think I've ever seen him skate that fast!