[FrogMan]

Game #5, home vs Husky-3

Felt confident going into this game. Yeah, that Husky team had beat Pointe-Lévy-2 5-3 the previous week, but looking at who they'd played against and with a record of 1-3-1, I felt they were a team with could fight with.

Sam was a no go because of his foot, as was Max because he was working. One I didn't foresee was Alex Fo calling the game off just a couple hours before gametime, also due to work reasons. A start time of 12:30 really isn't too good for kids who are 15 to 17 yo. Three out meant we'd be playing with exactly 6 forwards and 4 defensemen.

I have yet to mention affiliates atlhough I did sign three last week. Thing was, they are all from the same Bantam A team and they were playing only an hour after us, so not available to me. At the time, I still needed to scout the other two Bantam A team for a few more valuable affiliates to help us out in case of need.

Game started ok, guys skating hard at first. We got called for too many men on the ice, a stupid penalty that occured when David jumped a bit too early as his player was coming to the bench for a change during play. They scored within 25 seconds of the start of the penalty. Stupid costly penalty.

We had the upper hand for most of the rest of the first period but couldn't convert and was only at 2:14 in the second period that we finally tied the game. We kept buzzing around their net but just didn't direct enough shot toward their goal. That was a shame because their goalie really wasn't much.

They took a 2-1 lead at 8:15 in the second period and then pretty much killed us with a second goal only 20 seconds later. Down 3-1, we kept fighting hard and spent good chunks of time at their end but never were able to score. Instead, after 3-4 shots toward, but not always on their goal, they would come to our end and a couple more times they scored on either weird shots or on a defensive breakdown on our part.

Not that it mattered but that was one badly officiated game. It's the second time this referee has done one of our games and he's got some of the weirdest logic. Body checking isn't allowed but body contact is, hope it makes sense. But when I asked him why he didn't call a penalty when one of their players put his hand on the back of one of my player and led him into the board pushing him forward, he said their player didn't take advantage of the push. But GEEZ, he pushed the guy head on to the board!!!

And then, after Loïck got checked into the board, a play for which the ref raised his arm to call a penalty, he also called one on Loïck, saying he tripped the other player after the body check. Damnit ref, my kid was sprawled on the ice, it's certainly not his fault if the other player stepped on the blade of his stick!!!

A frustrating game to say the least...

Final Score:
Commandeurs-1: 1
Husky-3: 7


You look at the score and you think "dang, they got destroyed!!!" but it really wasn't so. I kept rehashing that game and seriously, had we been just a tad more opportunistic, had we scored when we put all the pressure in the second period the game would have been completely different. But we didn't. It was 5-1 before they added the last two goals with lest than a minute to play.

The one positive thing out of this game was that our kids weren't festive in the locker room after the loss. They knew they could have done better, or at least that, even though a loss isn't the end of the world, I felt they would rather have had a win.

That result kinda made me sad for a few reasons. My parents, Andrew's grandparents were at the game before they'd come to our house to have dinner for my birthday on Saturday evening. I would have liked at least for us to keep it close. Oh well...

To add to the frustation I was feeling, later on that evening Pointe-Lévy-2 went on to win 9-6 over Rapides-1, a team I thought was a sure shot to finish around the top of the standings. And we struggle to keep up with a 14th place kind of team... Had I overvalued our team? Would we ever be able to finally score goals??? Lots of questions were starting to creep up in my head...

Next up for us was a game against the girls team on Sunday. Even they had held their own, losing "only" 4-1 against Rapides-2, another team I thought was a pretty solid one, at least a one I thought could put more than fours on the girls..

FM