Weekend from Hell

After taking 3 of 4 points from Detroit last weekend we were on a nice little roll finally. This past weekend was another tough one with 3 games in 3 nights, 2 of which were on the road and playing Detroit twice again. Friday night we made the trek to play the Evansville Ice Men, who play 1 mile away from the middle of no where. 7 hours in a 15 passenger van doesn't make for the most comfortable travel, but welcome to single A hockey. We got to Evansville early to eat dinner and decided on a Chili's, anyone who has been with twenty hockey players for an extended period of time knows there are always pranks going on. At Chili's we had our first shoe check of the year, little guy Brett Riley was able to squeeze his 5'7" frame underneath the table and load up 1st year guy Kevin Demers' shoe full of ketchup. The ensuing clinks off the glasses came and the audible worried groans turned into laughter when Demers realized he was the sucker of this one.

We had heard all week that Evansville was loading up on new guys to play us, but when we got there not much had changed other than the fact that they traded their best defenseman to Chi-Town. We were all over them for the whole and cruised to an 8-1 win and we were back in the vans to make the long journey home. We had to play at 1pm at home against the Dragons on Saturday afternoon. 17 guys split between 2 vans and hockey equipment doesn't make for comfortable sleeping arrangements. We tried to sleep but I think most guys only managed 3 hours of sleep at most. We got home at about 7:30am I slept until 10:30 and was back in the dressing room around 11:15 for the 1 o'clock start. Playing hockey sleep deprived is not an easy task and our play proved it. We hung around with Detroit for a little while, but we lost both Nigel Hawryliw and Mark Allen indefinately to concussions in the 2nd period. It unravelled in the 3rd and we lost 6-2. The only good thing about Saturday was that our work day was done at 4pm and we had plenty of time to rest before going to Detroit on Sunday night to finish out our long weekend.

There was talk on the message boards about "Bounty" night in Detroit, that some fans were placing bounties on some of our players heads. Guys like Brett Aimone, Demers, Mason Cossette and Wes Baughman were targeted. In my opinion, there is no room for these kinds of shenanigans in hockey. It gives the sport a bad name and there is no need for it. That's all I'll say on that subject. Anyways, well rested and ready to go we came out flying and gave it to Detroit all night in their home barn. Even without Mark and Nigel we were able to put up 8 goals for the second time this weekend and come away with an 8-5 win. Newcomer Charles Harvey stepped up to the plate with a 3 point night and both Brett Riley and myself had 4 point nights to lead the team to a big win and hand the Dragons their first loss at home.

We're now slowly climbing the standings and are in the right direction. We play again in Detroit this Wednesday and then play them at home on Saturday before getting a few days off for Christmas.