In special needs hockey, there can often be some disparity between teams because of their wide range of hockey skills and challenges.  As the undefeated Junior Komets entered their final game against the Steel City Icebergs (from Pittsburgh), it was clear that our team was faster and more skilled than their opponents.  And (realizing this) our juniors quickly adapted their game…showing a tremendous amount of empathy for the Icebergs.  Then, the most incredible spontaneous act of sportsmanship happened in front of the Steel City net.

Brandon VanSickle of the Kawartha Komets gave the puck to 5 year-old Nicole Mullins of the Icebergs.  As you will see in the video, Nicole uses a special-made walker created by her father, fully equipped with her hockey stick. Nicole was born with hip dysplasia…meaning she has two dislocated hips, two short-bent femurs, and two club feet.  But, special needs hockey has allowed her to be part of a team…and allowed this tiny, courageous and very determined girl to achieve her goals.

After Brandon put the puck on Nicole’s stick, the entire Komet line skated the length of the ice beside her, and watched her score a goal…as fans from both sides cheered wildly. Afterwards, there were tears running down the cheeks of many of us who had witnessed this unprompted, unscripted act of sportsmanship.  I have never been so proud to be part of a sports program.

and the video:

Thanks to @Wes_Mantooth for alerting me to this story. I’m tearing up here.

Lots of scoreboard watching though. Like, checking up on the Telus Cup or how PK’s little bro is doing at the U-18 tournament in Germany or how Peter Delmas is doing in Wheeling. The CHL hasn’t been particularly kind to be in round two though. The IceDogs were my only team to survive and now they’re getting clobbered by the Majors in the conference finals (boo). The Juniors failed epically against the Mehniacs and the Volts lost against the Olympiques.. oh and TheShawi lost in 7 against the Remprats…

Which leaves me having to choose between Patrick Roy’s Remprats and Benoit Groulx’s Olympiques.. that’s like having to pick between the Bruins and the Leafs. Ugh.

But speaking of Patrick Roy….

Apparently he was fined $2000 for saying that TheShawi’s GM “has a brain the size of a pea”.

I find that pretty hilarious if only because the real pea brain in this situation is Pat Roy…. Don’t change Pat Roy, please. Don’t ever change. I have too much fun at his expense…

My brain is so fried right now so I have nothing great to add to that other than the Hammies are squashed the Heat and are now one point away from first in the division. Weren’t these guys just last week out of the playoffs? This division is CLOWNSHOES.

I can now officially go buy a Frk shirt without worrying about the potential conflict that’d cause during the series… \o/ too bad Frk didn’t score a goal in this series. Pretty much the the only guy who scored was Abeltshauser. Hmmph.

Also, someone please tell me why the NRJ has this creepy add on their website? Creepy kid was staring creepily at me all night :(

……. oh and there we go…… my bracket’s officially been ruined because Victo just beat Bat. Stupid Victo. Stupid Wahhh failing for Bat. D: And stupid Remprats for sweeping too….

Oh well…  the Juniors are already doing better than they did last season :D :D So yay!

Dorky and Frk and some other Qmoose :D

As Hertzkid said “I guess everyone was too busy being depressed over the Habs because they’re not coming to see us”. So sad :( I’ve been to fuller regular season games. But everyone else’s loss. They didnt’ get to watch Frk beat up on Landry and then Dorky (yeah, the kid’s got something against ex-Volts or something). Or the Qmoose’s epic playoff hair. It’s all VERY BRIGHT yellow. Even poor Piche’s hair no longer matches his red jersey.

I missed out on Dorky scoring in game one because the Qmoose radio cut just JUST as he was about to score. I was hoping he’d score in game two but no such luck. Rose had a sick goal to open the scoring, Blonk had two goals, Captain Nic had a shorty and I’m pretty sure Gouchie and Pouliot (!) had the other two. Bearoobee’s numbers get to look a bit better with the shutout now.

Qmoose got pretty mad later in the game (can’t blame them too much) but all that did was get them into penalty trouble which resulted in more Juniors goals. Considering the Qmoose were technically still in it going into the third when it was only 2-0 for the Juniors, it was kinda not smart of the Qmoose to take stupid penalties. Oh well, their loss.

The Juniors are apparently spending today bowling in Halifax.

In random news: I need a Frk shirt :D

2) My bracket is ruined. Victo is up 3-0 in the Victo/BAT series. I’m sad/mad. Stupid Victo. And stupid BAT. We’re not friends anymore. Not that we ever were.. but still… we could’ve!

3) At least the Volts and IceDogs  are up 2-0.

4) which is more than I can say for the 67s. Did I miss something or is it a big deal that they’re down 2-0 to Sudbury in this series? Considering the 30 points difference between the two?

I’m still in shock that the Juniors are 1) in second place 2) are playing FRK and 3) I’ll be there on Friday to see FRK. ANYWAY. Seeing as I don’t want this to be a post with me just saying FRK all the time… here’s my playoff bracket of DOOM. Hoping this one goes better than the ones for the NCAA in which Pittsburgh apparently messed half the population’s bracket by losing (I was spared because I dont’ follow the NCAA at all. but still…).

Bahahaha

I dunno if I really see the Juniors beating the Remprats, but in my little fantasy hockey world Dorky scores the OT winner against the Remprats and makes Patrick Roy really mad by doing so :D

First off.. Mishy as a Failboat is so sad and strange :( Poor Mishy. Actually…. Mishy was the lucky one. He came into the game after the first period at which point the Juniors were already up 5-0. They added two more and then they didn’t bother scoring again. Sigh. Oh well… :D 7-0 is a good score.

Mishy playing for the Failboats :(

View from my seats at the Civic Centre. Avoided the water falling from the ceiling

Mark Visentin looking super awesome as he the IceDogs downed the 67s

IceDogs celebrating Strome's OT winner :)

So it’s that time of the year again: When EP realizes that the CHL season is quickly coming to an end. It’s a sad time of year because it means an end to another whacky season of hockey. It also means no more live games until August.

To effectively finish my hockey season I decided to see the IceDogs as they trekked to Ottawa to take on the 67s and the real end will be on Sunday when the Juniors flatten the Failboats.

I’m not sure who had the longer journey to Ottawa. Me or the IceDogs. I can tell you that unless the IceDogs pushed their bus to Ottawa like the Juniors had to push their bus to Rouyn-Noranda last week, I think I had the more headache of a journey. But that’s enough about me. More about the cool stuff: HOCKEY IN OTTAWA.

Point form because I’m exhausted and have too many scattered thoughts anyway

• I really wanted to see Visentin play because it’s probably going to be the one and only time I’ll be able to afford to watch him play live :D Despite playing last night, he was in nets again tonight. YAY!
• I think the poor Civic Center has taken a real beating since last year. At least when I was there last time the roof wasn’t leaking (they literally had a bucket in the seat two rows in front of me to catch the falling water) and random stuff wasn’t falling from the ceiling onto the ice. It was like this weird grey stuff. Grosssss…
• Seriously, I’ve had enough of players getting concussions. One of the 67s got concussed after taking a hit and falling on the ice.  Not nice..
• IceDogs responded after that by getting an ugly goal which had the 67s fans in fits. That was pretty much their general state. I kinda understand though. Due to posts, called-back goals and the like, they probably would’ve won 4-2.
• “Let’s gooo six-teee sev-ennnss let’s gooo”. Most annoying chant/song thing ever. EVER. D:
• IceDogs were very lucky that the 67s PP was crappy. I dunno what it normally is, but when you go 0/6 (felt more like 0/10) and your opponent goes 2/3, that’s bad.
• It’s also kinda not cool when your EP’s team and you get outshot 20-8 in the second period. Not cool at allllll…
• Not sure what happened exactly, but little Hammie bro was skating around with his jersey and face all covered in blood towards the end of the third.
• I’m pretty sure I had a good reason not to like Thomas Nesbitt before but I was really not liking him for scoring a sweet goal for the 67s with less than 8 mins to go.  And gloating about it too. Bad Nesbitt.
• Still, if Palat could get two goals on the Juniors in 4 mins then the IceDogs could score *a* goal to tie the game up, yes? Yes.
• With some 67 in the box for slashing (and the 67s fans up in arms over that call too) Strome tied it up. My cheering couldn’t be heard over the booing. Oh well…
• I dunno if it’s just me or if games seem to go on forever at the Civic Center, but this was the second time I had to sit through extra time and it felt like I’d been sitting there foreeeeeverrrrrrrrrrr already.
• It ended well though. Ceci was sent to the box for slashing (promptly a lot more booing) and who scores the GWG with 5 seconds left in OT? Strommmmeeeeeeee!!! A few fans might have heard me…
• Take that 67s!

will add more tomorrow. literally falling asleep at the keyboard here… hfarhewfnesdk…..

Obscene gestures? 2 games.

Insulting your ex-girlfriend? 6 games.

Severely injuring another player with a reckless hit that was perfectly avoidable? “Just a hockey play”

Let’s hope someone doesn’t have to die before the NHL realizes that hits like this, this and this are incredibly dangerous and should be taken seriously.

Get well soon, Patches.

I swear they forgot that this is 2011 and not 2010. 2010 had the Wildcats as the second best team in the Q and the Juniors sitting a million points behind them. This year obviously things have changed. The Juniors have finally put some distance between themselves and the evil Remparts and are second in the league, while Wildcats are some 20 points behind them. Only someone forgot to tell the Juniors that.

They played the whole game like the Wildcats were some really super awesome team that they were just supposed to sit back and watch. Everyone – including yours truly who had a great vantage point – looked pretty surprised when the Wildcats opened the scoring just three minutes in. Not pretty. At least the Juniors had a functioning PP though. Blonk finally scored on the PP and the Wildcats fans across the arena (who had taken over almost an entire section) looked kind of dejected.

If the first period was trying, it was nothing compared to the rest of the game. Parkes put the Juniors up 2-1 on a 5 on 3 PP.  Just as they were about to announce his goal, Blonk ruined it by scoring again, so instead of hearing Parkes name over the PA system we got to listen to the goal horn being blasted into our ears. Oh well…

This is normally the point in time where we prefer the opposition to just quit and/or for the Juniors to score more goals. Well, Moncton had other plans and they scored not once, but twice to tie the game at 3.

Hertzberg got a chance to even more awesome and put the Juniors up 4-3 when he got hauled down on a breakwayish thing and got a penalty shot. We were just praying that he would be vastly better than the Phantoms Wellwood in the Hammies/Phantoms game (if you re-call, Wellwood missed the net by a mile). Hertzberg didn’t disappoint and there was plenty of celebrating after he scored.

The Juniors went up by two goals again when Blonk scored on – you guessed it – the PP in early in the third. Yes, that was a hatty for Blonk. In front of the RDS and Sportsnet cameras that were precariously perched on random scaffolding in the building. Talk about showing off for the cameras. Anyway, I have a policy of not wearing hats in the winter and even if I did, I wasn’t about to toss it on the ice. But I digress..

This two goal lead wasn’t about to last either. Gormley scored while Aubry was in the box after a minor scrum in front of the net. My hockey victim was not a happy person as they realized that that was Aubry’s second time to the box (and the second time that the Wildcats had capitalized). It was about to get a lot worse though… Pretty sure it was Xavi who let Hrvik make the entire team look stupid as the Slovak skated around Xavi and had a really sick goal on Bearoobee. Grosssss….

The game was obviously going to go to OT. The Juniors would’ve probably have won if Blonk’s stick hadn’t exploded while they were on the PP late in OT. As it was, they didn’t score and we had to endure a shootout….

In short… Hertzberg was awesome, Blonk was not and after a million misses/stops/heart attacks as the Wildcats had a chance to win the game but failed/ Gouchie scored and the Juniors won.

It was a good night for:

• Blonk, Hertzberg, Rose, Parkes and Meillure who pretty much on the ice for all the goals.
• The Juniors PP.
• Brandon Thibeau actually gave his team a decent shot later in the third. He was stopping everything. Or so it felt, anyway…

Not having a great night:

• Xavi, Landry and Gouchie. Xavi in particular was having a brutal night
• Moncton’s PK (or we could just attribute this to the Juniors having a good PP. Same difference really).

IN OTHER NEWS…………………………

Did you know it was the trade deadline? I kinda forgot too. It’s okay.

Nothing overly interesting happened. The only thing of note was the Hammies acquiring Drew MacIntyre from the Thrashers/Wolves for Festerling.

The only reason why I see MacIntyre here is because Sanford’s going to be out of commission for longer than anyone was hoping for. If this weekend was any indication of how BobbyMayer’s season’s been going (and yeah, I’ve missed the majority of his season so I don’t know) then it’s been pretty inconsistent. It’s really tight in the North division right now and every win’s important especially considering only 6 of the last 21 games are NOT against divisional opponents.

I cannot for the life of me remember how MacIntyre was when the Hammies played him and the Wolves, but he played for the Sherbrooke Beavers ages ago so that’s one reason to like him :P

Gonna be honest: as far as games went, it wasn’t their most riveting. That’s  to be expected, I suppose, when your most riveting player in David Desharnais (who makes everyone else riveting too) has been snatched away (yeah, still bitter). Also, I prefer to think that everyone was feeling bad about kicking Maxwell off the bus in Toronto when it was announced that he was being shipped off to Chicacgo (as in, the Wolves, not the Hawks). At least they had the decency to drop him off in civilization. I was having visions of them leaving him in a field in the middle of nowhere.

ANWYAY…………………

I had to put up with the Phantoms again (honestly, why can’t we just play the Marlies instead of the Phantoms? Who really cares in Habsland?). Thank goodness Leighton wasn’t in nets though.. that would’ve been just… blergh. Things that were blergh though:

• the Hammies getting a PP and then giving up the puck to a Phantom and then said Phantom ended up being tripped up on his way to not scoring on Sanford and then the refs giving said Phantom a penalty shot. If you were a Phantoms fan then the blergh part came when the aforementioned Phantom missed the net entirely. Hammies fans rejoiced though.
• the 3 PPs that the Hammies didn’t score on. Before you call me picky, just note that you can have a not blergh PP and not score or you can have a totally blergh PP and still not score.
• Bonneau getting into a blergh fight for no real reason.
• The Phantoms lone goal.
• BC people trying to sell you “beer” but waving around Coors in your face. Hey yo, that stuff isn’t beer. It’s water. And I’m not paying $10 + for water.

There were plenty of things to be happy about though. Including but not limited to:

• Nigel Dawes trying to win over the Hammies fans who were quite sad to see Benny go by scoring the first goal of the game (speaking of Dawes.. he fits right in with “the tiny players” profile that the Habs franchise is adopting. No complaints here as long as the little guy plays his heart out).
• Sanford didn’t get hurt! No, really, this is a plus! He got hurt after the first period the last time I saw him play in Ottawa. Stay healthy, Sanford!
• Also, yay for Sanford on being solid/lucky (he was definitely patting the goal posts after the 2nd).
• Wyman scoring.
• Newbie scoring.
• Newbie scoring again.
• Engqvist – who needs a nickname – was very popular in my row. No, I wasn’t sitting with Swedes.

So yeah… in conclusssssssionnnnnnn: Hammies winning is nice. Hammies winning when I’m there is even nicer. I’m now 5-1 at Hammies games  and 3-0 this season :))

I just wish I could’ve seen that period live. Or even on TV. Apparently I missed an 8 goal period, a line brawl and this:

I mean…. really? Meh….

I’ll spare you all another video of Emery vs Squeaky Marty or Patrick Roy vs Osgood… Instead here’s a real goalie fight (courtesy of The Goalie Guild):

Gotta love the ECHL… Well… just hope that Delmas isn’t itching to drop the gloves…..

Pre-thought? Really? I admit I had no idea that he even said that at first because the words that had come out before and after were completely garbled… but yeah, apparently he did indeed say “we pre-thought that”.

Between him and Kessel, not much was being done to negate the stereotype that hockey players can’t formulate sentences in the English language. On the other hand, as someone who perpetually butchers the aforementioned English language, there’s something a bit endearing about Greener’s lack of speaking abilities.

You can see/read the whole thing on puckdaddy but here’s the video.

His earlier meltdown against Hershey:

and his more recent meltdown against the WBS Penguins.

Wow…………..

Then it was pretty much /o\ while the Hammies scored once and gave up three goals (we’re blaming it on BobbyMayer not getting to play in a long time and being super rusty) the Volts went down 2-0 to the Huskies (yeah, really), the IceDogs went down 4-2 to the Wolves and the Habs went down 3-1 to the Ducks.

and it was pretty much /o\ for a while… UNTIL……………..

\o/ The Hammies woke up from their nap and they tied it when Klubertanz and HunterBishop! scored late in the third period. \o/ \o/ \o/

And then they were all alive in OT but then they had to go to a shootout /o\ it was kinda a faily shootout but thanks to Newbie and Dusty the Hammies won! \o/ \o/

While the Hammies were literally making kids cry (I could hear kids crying over the radio feed), the Volts remembered that they were supposed to be winning too and they tied it up (thanks to a Palat shorty goal) and went to OT. They were a literally a second away from a shootout too when Palat scored \o/

\o/ AND THEN it was time to battle the IceDogs failboaty radio station that always crashes on me to listen to the end of their game….. The Hammie Bros decided to be all awesome. Dougie put the IceDogs within one with five mins left and then two and a half minutes later Freddie didn’t feel like getting left out so he scored too to tie it up. OT solved nothing (seeing a pattern here?) and it was off to a shootout. Anddddddddddd they ended up winning too!

At that point I was thinking it’d be hilarious if the Habs tied it up and sent their game to OT or a shootout when Patches actually tied it up.  It was like, “really? REALLY? More OT/SO?”

This one didn’t quite get a great ending because Hiller had to be all poopy and had to stop everyone. Meh. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess. At least the fans voted Koivu for the second star which gave everyone another excuse to cheer for him (and gave me another excuse to yell “WE MISS YOU KOIVU” really loudly at the TV).

Not a bad night considering midway through the second periods I didn’t think anyone was going to score :D

YES THEY DID.

After trekking for miles and miles to return to Hockeyland, I arrived at the Auditorium more than a bit ready for some hockey. I settled into my incredibly old wooden seat along with czechtacular and got ready to watch the Juniors trounce the Huskies.

Too bad the Juniors didn’t feel like trouncing anyone. As per the stream of tweets from the game:

• BBW living up to his name and sitting on the bench tonight :(
• Lol at Gouchie flipping the puck at the ref and the ref making a wild attempt to catch it (and failing epically)
• From czechtacular “EP keeps saying “pffffff” and it’s about to get contagious :)))”. Hey, not my fault the guys were doing all kinds of things that were “pffft” worthy :D
• Bearoobee with a ‘pffft’ kind of save.
• This PP is all kinds of pffft
• Gahhhhhhh!!!! Pffffft!! Dhehdjwj…. Juniors are trying to outfail the fail team.
• And then Dorky FINALLY scored a sweet goal that would have just been “pffft” if he had failed to score it.
• Pffffttt tied at 1 (okay, so maybe I actually said “BLERGHJSGRFHJG” instead of “pfffffft”
• Just as I said (quite loudly) ‘i hope you all get yelled at for not scoring’, Gouchie scored. Hey, maybe there are benefits to being in a quiet arena: the players can actually hear you yelling at them. Although at one point Bearoobee seemed to be glaring at me so…
• Blonk seemed to spend more time in the penalty box than legit scoring. At one point he and another Huskies dude tried smack each other’s faces (the refs were holding them back but they were still flailing away).
• You know you’re no longer watching last year’s Juniors when they score and you go ‘finally dammit!!!’ :) (I would tell you which guy it was but the Q site has decided to take away the game summaries and so I don’t know who scored. Pretty sure it was Gouchie again though)
• Lmfao Meilleur sitting on his butt on the ice and the linesdude offered to help him up
• Oh and at some point I remembered that Aubry and Hertzberg were sitting two rows back from us. Which was a bit unfortunate because by the third period I was exhausted and was just laughing at anyone and everything. Quite loudly too. Oops.
• Roussel somehow got a goal when the Juniors got a late PP and if we didn’t think that the was already over at 3-1 with the Juniors on the PP with just a minute left, then it was definitely over now.
• Well…it was not night over for the Huskies though. Later as I was chatting about the game with czechtacular we noticed that the Huskies were being made to run laps around part of the arena. Ouch.

During the Juniors game I obviously made sure to check up on everyone else…..

The Hammies – who are without half of their Hammies – were in Hartford to play the… Whale (can that name be any failier?). From what I gathered… Hammies scored three times (courtesy of HunterBishop!, Newbie and Nash). Then they gave up three goals (including a shorty……) and then they scored four times (thanks to Wyman, Dany and Ben twice). Take that Whale!

Apparently tonight was ex-Volts night as the Juniors/Huskies game at 3 of them and the Hammies had two. Dany also apparently failed to score on a penalty shot but he did manage to get his first goal in like, forever, later on. Gabby assisted on HunterBishop!’s goal before getting himself kicked out of the game. Dorky had a goal. And because the Q site does not have the summaries up, I can’t give you any statistic-y info on Landry and Comtois D:

The IceDogs also beat Dave Cameron and Majors. Nothing against Dave Cameron, but Mark being in nets for a win against a team with Maxim Kitsyn on it is pretty nice. Both teams basically traded a pile of goals before the IceDogs managed to get one in the empty net and wiiin. Yay Mark! Yay Hammie Bros. Yay!

Oh and last but not exactly least… the Habs (eh, more like, the Habs who are basically 50% Hammies) demolished the Sens. In Ottawa. It’s one of those games where you wish you could be there so you could say “I was a Habs fan in Scotiabank Place when my team won 7-1. It was freaking awesome.” Ahhh…..

I love hockey. And my teams.

Tomorrow night: Koivu vs the Habs. Oh boy.

But anyway, the really interesting bit about all of this is of course PEI already has a franchise (courtesy of one of Montreal’s many failed Q franchises). Of the potential hypothetical places they could be sent to, apparently Sherbrooke is one of the places being discusses as an option.  As much as I don’t like seeing franchises get moved around (unless it’s an NHL franchise to somewhere in Canada), I would be over the flipping moon if the Rocket end up in Sherbrooke because that would bring the total number of QMJHL teams within reasonable driving distance to me to 4 (including the Juniors).

Observe!

Just pretend you can see Hull on the map :P

See how nicely Sherbrooke having a team would be in the grand scheme of places EP needs to roadtrip to to see games?