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| January 8, 2002
By Phat Plastered
Day Four At The NATS...
In Pros I Saw To Large Mounds of No Rebounds in Goal... God Save Us All
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CPH Mites win, Blades Bantams win, LV Women's are the Golden Girls, Easton Gals take Platinum, D1 is Rocket City, and It’s the Cats in Pros...
The Day Champions Were Made
Day Four
January 6, 2002
Sunday
Another big morning start.
The day Champions were made, started with the PeeWees and Squirts earning their way towards Tuesday, while five other division were wrapping up. Obviously: many critical games were played.
ATOMS
The tykes just started. No surprises.
MITES
The best semi final was the AKS v. Blades. Scott’s tadpoles went up three early and the Blades then stopped their attack and began a methodical chipping back procedure. To be honest, in the end I thought I counted a few too many players… but so be it. Doesn’t take away from a poised OCB squad who added two Las Vegas finds, and guess what, one has the last name of Zucker. Seriously, Jason seemed to work well with his new team and the OC Blades mites went on to the finals against the CPH Velocity.
In round robin, these two teams met and tied.
In the finals, it was tied going down to the wire and then in the end the Velocity popped in two and CPH, Cairns, St Cyr and Moran’s lads earned the first win of their young life together as an organization, and it seemed appropriate to be done by the young dudes.
SQUIRTS
Just started. No surprises.
PEE WEES
OC Blades 88 rolled against a hapless Rollin Ice Patriots, beating them by a six goal or thereabouts spread. Irish's top seed also looked tough in early going. The Pats, however, came back and played a critical must win game against a tough Castle Stars, and beat them by two. The Pats started up three in the first minute or two of play before they starting leaning on Travis, #73. This was a game where the Rice Bomb, Travis, was unstoppable until he missed the final empty net shot (just kidding, great game boy).
Hyper Empire 87 took on the Nike Rockets, and ran away with the game with Nike cameras rolling, 8-2. Sorry, not much good footage for Nike in this game. Hyper was hitting all cylinders and simply looked unbeatable in that game, according to the coaches and fans watching. Hyper later played Excalibur, a first year team, and kept rolling, earning an 8-0 win in the first period. One of the favorites are sending notice early that to beat them you better play above your game.
OC Blades 87 eeked out a 2-0 WIN AGAINST Chris’ LaVerne Empire (Scott A. has the Empire 88 team). But hey, they won. Another Irish top seed wins.
Detroit’s Venom came in and rolled early against the Irvine Raiders, going up three. Then, Detroit gave up a lot of penalties and played the second penalty in the penalty box. Irvin chipped back two, but it wasn’t enough. Venom goes on with a win, 3-2.
No surprises in Pee Wees so far. Will it stay the same or get all upsetitis like the Bantams?
BANTAMS
Bantam Semi finals were played at 9:50 am and 10:35 am. OC Blades finally seemed to get their offense going to cast off the Outcasts, who were the OT Cardiac Kids of the day before. No magic today. Great run by the Outcasts. Empire Snipers went down early to a very well trained and disciplined Ontario Canada Tour Mavericks team but registered a great come back to send it into OT. Mavericks rushed the net first, and came up empty. The second rush showed gold, as a tap in sent the Mavericks to the Finals against the Blades.
Blades were favored in the finals, but not by much. No odds makers here as the Bantam Division had so many upsets it was hard to see who or what would end up winning.
The finals saw two equally matched teams in the Blades and Mavericks punch and counter punch in one of the best played, and fastest skated Bantam games on record. Both teams already having earned a spot in NARCh, this game was played for pride. Both teams showed class and pride.
Player of the day in Bantams? Two actually. The Blades goalie, Peterson, was the Secretary of Defense and stopped nearly ever scoring chance sent his way. The stopper, though, was the play of Blade Morejon #33. At every point that the Mavericks started to get going, Hit Man Morejon came in and stopped the Mavericks by body play, tying up their forwards, diving, and sliding his way, all to get his team the first OC Blades Winternats victory of 2002. The boy defined the term “impact player” today.
Blades win by a goal? Anyway, it was close and a great see saw game.
D-1 FINAL
Daryn’s Goodwin’s Rockets, who have now won four of their last five major tournaments, are rolling and looked great in their final game against the Snipers. The Rinkside Rockets are simply superb and a joy to watch. The team to beat. And, if you want to beat them, start recruiting heavily… In the stands one person was heard to say, “Do they have a weak link?” And the response was, “Yeah, but he just got a hat trick.”
WOMEN’S GOLD FINAL
Las Vegas got its first win with a late rally and a come from behind win.
WOMAN’S PLATINMUM FINAL
CPH went up early, but Team Easton outlasted last year’s NARCh Gold Champs in a hard fought game that included a really keen goalie fight and WWF Wrestling take down by a Easton gal against a charging CPH defender.
PRO FINAL
This game was stellar. Team Seal Weenie, I mean Tour Team West, played Team USA, aka the Mudcats. This game also had Jenner in net playing for the Cats, and Bonvie playing for the West. Both these boys are huge. One pro player commented to me, “when they come out of the net you can’t see the #$%@% net.” I have named Bonvie and Jenner the “Twin Towers,” or my favorite, “The Large Mounds of No Rebounds.”
The Godzilla’s were attacking and eating Tokyo right before our very eyes.
The game was another see saw battle. Chad Siebel (sp!-how can I get a pro’s spelling wrong!) was simply the go to impact player of the game. He was everywhere doing everything and you could see from the moment he stepped on to the rink he was going to donate his liver, spleen, kidney and a few other unneeded organs if necessary to win this game. The game had West up by one in the last minute of play. The West pulled their goalie and tied it. OT seemed almost certain when a missed assignment resulted in a Mudcat break, Bonvie went down, and CJ Yoder scurried on around the West’s large mound of no rebound and tapped it in the winner with two seconds left.
COLLEGE
College was in action. A lot of great games. Tomorrow is going to be the Semi and Finals. Michigan State still looks good…
Day Six
January 6, 2002
Tuesday
The End of It All Begins…
Atoms start us off at 8 am. It will be a day of play offs and finals.
Squirt Play offs at 8:45 am and 9:30 am.
Pee Wee Quarterfinals at 9:30 am, 10:30 am, and 11 am.
Atom Final 11:00 a.m.
Junior Quarterfinals play at 11:45 am, 12:10 pm, 12:30 pm and 1:00 pm.
Squirt Semi Finals play at 1:15 and 1:45 pm.
Pee Wee Semi Finals play at 2:00 and 2:30 pm.
Junior Semis at 2:45 and 3:30 pm.
3:15 pm Squirt Final
4:25 pm Pee Wee Final
5:35 pm Junior Final
RUMORS AND PROPAGANDA:
No word on NARCh finals yet, and quit asking me. I don’t know.
Lots of personnel changes going on in the sport, and a lot of good things on the horizon… Stay tuned…though I must comment that C2C is a nice place to work…
The COMMENT OF THE DAY:
After one game, a coach dressed down his players and asked them why they were not standing up for their fellow players. The coached asked one player what was going to happen if one of their player’s got picked on, and that player said he would defend him and come to his aid. On down the bench the coach went until he came to one player. He asked him, “And if So-and-So gets picked on what are you going to do?”
The player grinned and said, “I’m going to stand there and laugh.”
Then, “Just kidding…”
The response was and uproar of laughter. I won’t tell you the team or the player who made the comment, but just think of a small town in Massachusetts.
I promised an article on Michigan. Sorry, I got a little distracted at the Roulette tabels... I'm still working on it.
Finally, to my little guy…
GET WELL CARD TO ETHAN CHARLES…
To the EffMeister who finds himself battling a bit of the flu, and in the doctor hotel getting all the fluids and rest he needs. I hear Mom is letting you on the internet to follow your father’s antics.
To Mini-Irish: Daddy loves you and will be home soon.
 
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