Tornadoes: A Real Life Hockey Dynasty

[heybrad]

You've gotta have a hockey team to follow

With the NHL gone for the forseeable future, I've decided to help fill the hockey void with my own dynasty. I've played roller hockey for over 10 years now and I've always wanted to chronicle a season.

I'll start with a little background. Approximately 15 years me and about 5 friends were sick of playing park basketball and softball. We wanted to try something new, so we headed out, got skates and sticks and started playing at a local park. We stunk at first. We got better as months went by, playing many pickup games at the park. We had actually thought we were fairly good and heard about a league in Whittier. Leagues were pretty sparse back then, so we headed over and signed up. We promptly got killed. We werent used to the full size rink. We went 0-10 in our first season. But we kept playing and continued to improve.

I stopped playing for about 3 or 4 years due family stuff (kids and moving around). As I mentioned earlier, I've played somewhere around 10-12 years and in that time we've won some titles, had some ugly seasons, been in some fights and I would say I've just about seen it all.

The team I play on is called the Tornadoes. We had a friend of our who is a fairly good artist, design a logo for us and we went out and had custom jerseys made. Picture the Maple Leafs but with a killer looking tornado instead.

Our season started last night (Sunday). Later tonight, I'll give you the rundown of our first game and some insight into the players on our team.

More to come...

[heybrad]

Later tonight turned into this morning, but I'll document Sundays game now before the details become fuzzy.

We had the 9pm game on Sunday night and we were opening the season against the Mavericks. The Mavericks have been the bottom feeders of the league for the last few seasons, but we noticed during warmups they had picked up a couple of new players.

1st Period
We came out flat and the Mavericks came out diving. The first 5 minutes were spent in our defensive zone and then the penalty calls started. We were whistled for 2 tripping penalties within about 30 seconds of each other and they were both fairly garbage calls. So now the Mavericks had a 4 on 2. They qucikly took advantage and made it 1-0. That seemed to at least jolt us into skating harder as we spent the rest of the period dropping shots on their goalie, but he played solid and the period ended 1-0 Mavericks. During the break we talked strategy. It was simple. Shoot high and shutdown #1. He was the newest Maverick and he was pretty good.

2nd Period
We jumped on them quickly to start the period. Our star player (Dave) basically shredded them coast to coast and went top shelf. Tie game. That seemed to loosen everybody else up as we spent most of the period controlling play. I had a few shots from the point, one of which I cant believe they couldnt bury the rebound. The goals started piling up and we soon were leading 5-1. The highlight goal was one of our forwards (Brandon) stealing the puck, putting moves on 2 defensemen and faking the goalie out of mask to score. We had a mental lapse at the end of the period. As we were skating the puck out of our zone, our 2 defensemen were coming off for a change. The puck probably should have been further out before they changed. As me and my defensive partner were jumping on, the puck was stolen and with a clean 2 on none, the Mavericks scored. The period ended with the Tornadoes leading 5-2.

3rd Period
Its not a good idea to run up the score in these leagues. We face the same teams a number of times and you dont want to embarass anyone and you also dont want the league constantly evaluating your roster for promotion. The league is a little quick in moving teams up or down. Its happened to us with varying degrees of success. Anyway.... the plan for the 3rd period was to just play solid defensive hockey and shut them down. We were playing great until about 5 minutes left in the game. Then we got careless. The passes up the middle began to start, skating with the puck instead of clearing it, which of course lead to turnovers and then the Mavericks started diving again. We had two more penalties called on us which led to another 4 on 2. Our goalie was playing solid though and was frustrating the hell out of #1. The guy practically had an open net on a rebound, but our goalie dove back and made a glove save. The guy skated off shaking his head. We scored one more goal to finish on top 6-2.

Overall, it was a good performance, but hard to judge based on the team we were playing. We play next Sunday at 5pm.

As I'm writing this, I'm noticing plenty of things I'm forgetting to tell, so I'll jump in here during the week and add things as I remember. I'll probably also add some great moments in Tornado history as we wait for the next game.

[heybrad]

In an effort to keep this going until game time on Sunday, I think I'll give you a little insight into the type of player that I am.

I play defense and have played defense for most of my playing days. I've always been a fairly smooth skater although not incredibly fast. My expertise is that I can be counted on to always play good positional hockey. You're not going to catch me pinching when I shouldnt be and I rarely leave my defensive partner alone causing a 2 on 1.

I have a pretty good slapshot, although the older I get, the further apart my goals are. In my younger days I could drop a couple of goals a game, but being much older and slower, I dont take the chances that I used to. I know my role and its to stay at home defensively.

Another advantage I have is that I'm a fairly big and solid guy. Its fairly common for the other teams to try and station somebody right in front of our goalie. My job is to clear them out. This can lead to some interesting times. Most of the players understand that its a game and contact is expected and they actually respect you more for doing your job properly. On the other hand, we have some a-holes, who feel they can plant themselves untouched and if you try and move them, the slashing begins and fights have broken out. Again, being that I'm a fairly big guy, most players dont screw with me and we just battle it out and play the game.

Later on I'll give some of the "Great Moments in Tornado History."

[heybrad]

I've been holding off on adding this, but I wanted to give the website to the league. This is the standings page where you can see how the Tornadoes are doing. The league is pretty slow at updating this and they arent very accurate at listing the goal scorers for each team. You might notice that even though we scored 6 goals, only 2 are listed from one player on our team. I'm not sure why they cant get this right. They have a score sheet from every game.

Anyway... heres the link: Coast 2 Coast Hockey (http://www.coast2coasthockey.com/brassRSS.htm)

Check it out. We are on top of the standings currently.

[RPI-Fan]

Cool, nice work!

Intramural gym hockey has begun - there's a new opponent in our league who was much better than the team they replaced from last year. We won our opener 5-2 - fortunately this year I'm not playing goal and am able to get on the floor and make some plays. I scored a goal (slapshot from the point was saved through traffic, but I was in PERFECT position on the doorstep for a tap-in), and assisted on two others (first assist was nice... picked up the puck behind the offensive zone net, faked a wrap-around, and flung a quick backhanded pass through the slot back to the point for a low wrister that found it's way into the net. My other assist wasn't anything special - just sent it back to our big shooter from the point and he put one past the goalie.

Keep up the great work heybrad!

[heybrad]

Bump....

This died with the board crash, but I'll be updating today. In the meantime feel free to checkout the league website here (http://www.coast2coasthockey.com/brassRSS.htm) where you'll notice that we are undefeated. The website is updated through the Nov 14 game. We played last night against a team right behind us in the standings and came out on top 5-4.

I'll provide some updates on the missed games later today.