A Near Perfect 11
2003-12-29: Mighty Pirates 4 vs. YTV 1

Legend, or maybe that's Les, has it that in the distant past, when the Pirates were young but not yet mighty, they sat in the waning minutes of calm in the dressing room listening to the fading hum of the retreating zamboni and the mounting roar of the crowd and counted with despair the meager number of bodies draped in the black and yellow. It is at this time that the mytho-poetic buccaneer-bard, Darin B(l)arney, rose to his feet and accurately quoted The Bard in a bold attempt to rally the fighting heart of the heroes:

If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
...

It's been forgotten whether your heroes stormed out onto the ice and onto victory or not and the sublime moment of the rallying speech has never again been sounded with such passion. But the speech was not recounted in full and it goes on to end like this ... at least it did this past Monday:

And buccaneers abroad and laid low with wobbly knees
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here
And hold their manhoods cheap while any skates around
That ground YTV under our blades upon the ice of Rinx2 this day.

Okay, maybe you MIAs don't have to hold your manhood cheap but damn did you miss the sweetest hockey I can remember the Mighty Pirates every playing.

Okay, the details. First, let it be known that the Mighty Pirates brain trust (read the three guys who showed up first) decided the team should dress in yellow and once and forever dispel the myth that we play better in black. We win in yellow. We also loose in yellow and occasionally tie.

Former Captain RB then rolled out the lines in the absence of Captain Mola as follows: Leggett-Jezioranski-Perri and Gallivan-Mutch-Khatter up front and defence pairings of Dimock-Levine and Bingham-Toth. Tim Sturgeon took up position between the pipes. The team was out on the ice as soon as the zamboni was off and took advantage of the full, if brief, warm-up period.

The referee dropped the puck and then the Mighty Pirates spent the next 32 minutes of stop-time dropping YTV. In a perfectly matched battle of 10 skaters against 10 skaters, the Mighty Pirates outworked, out chanced, outthought, and thoroughly outplayed their opponents. In fact, goalie Sturgeon claims to have not seen a shot until halfway through the first period.

When YTV did make it out of their zone the defence usually chose to stuff the puck back in from the neutral zone. The odd time they got over our blue line, the defence usually took the puck away and sent our forwards breaking up ice. Which is not to say that YTV rolled over on this night. In fact they deserve our admiration for never ceasing to probe our incredible defence but, the few times their attempts did coalesce into a scoring opportunity, Sturgeon was there and never so brilliantly as his third period lightning glove save.

Some of the high points of the game:

• Leggett-Jezioranski-Perri apply "the best defence is a strong offence" theory and spend most the game cycling, yes cycling, the puck in YTV's zone (with loads of help from the D) but cannot put the puck in the net until the final minutes of the game when Perri gets in on a feed from Jezioranski and patiently holds the puck, holds the puck, and holds the puck until he gets the YTV net minder to lie down for him so he can have the top half of the net to himself for the fourth and final goal.
  
  
• Leggett-Jezioranski-Perri get to sit on the bench and watch Gallivan-Mutch-Khatter score three goals and make it look easy. (This line actually represents our rookie haul for 2000 and we should really have played them together sooner. Sheer genius.) Gallivan opens the scoring after Khatter, under pressure from a YTV forward, hands off to Mutch, who quickly spots the streaking Gallivan and then laser-guides a pass under both YTV defenders' sticks to the now wide-open Gallivan and ... beautiful ONE-TIMER off the desperate but hopeless blocker of the YTV goalie. 1-0
  
  
• Mutch follows up with another game-winner in a totally PRO break-out play. Bingham throws a crisp cross-ice pass to Toth, who quickly spots Gallivan cruising like a shark beyond the centre line. He takes the pass on the boards at the YTV blue line and naturally hits Mutch right on the tape as he pounds up the middle and fires another bullet past the net minder on the breakaway. UNSTOPPABLE! 2-0
  
  
• But they're NOT DONE! Net minder Sturgeon shows stellar puck-handling skills in getting the puck over to Dimock, who finds Mutch on another express run and sends him in all alone ... but, some good YTV defending and a nice save has the puck slide behind the net; BUT in a game like this you gotta know that Mutch wins the race to the puck and sends it back out front ... a YTV defender blocks the pass to Gallivan, but in trying to shoot, Gallivan just barely taps the puck forward enough and Mutch, in perfect position at the side of the net, slides it past the sprawling goalie just over the line where the ref — in the right place for once! — was there to make the call! 3-0

And in a game where everyone's performance was masterly, Johnny Mutch gets the 1st star nod for his work at both ends of the ice. Everyone is on Sudafed® for the next game!

The defence is unnervingly composed breaking up most of the YTV attack in the neutral zone and never panicking in front of Sturgeon but picking up loose pucks and skating and passing the puck out of our zone. Dimock shows up in spite of being sick and helps to anchor the defence and even digs down for two beautiful end to end rushes giving fits to YTV who cannot understand why they can't nail this guy to the boards. Another couple of feet of ice and the MPs would have been way up. Levine makes batting down YTV passes in the neutral zone look like anybody could do it if they were bored enough. The left wingers of YTV cringe in fear every time their defence rifles the puck around the boards in anticipation of Bingham's body crushing pinches executed with merciless precision and a major contribution to keeping YTV bottled up in their zone. And Toth, ever hungry for the puck, adds to his growing point total with perfect outlet passes and booming point shots. Has this guy every lost a battle in our end? The back checking of both forward lines was excellent though admittedly not required to be a huge component of this particular game.

Unfortunately, this one was not video taped and you can't bottle such stuff but hopefully everyone there is going to keep a little feel good from this one for a long, long time.

There is always a downside so what is it this time? We have to play these guys again next week and lest my rapturous report on the game mislead anyone not there, we worked like dogs for thirty-two minutes and in the process probably pissed-off a team that has traditionally had the upper hand over us. Next week should prove to be particularly hairy.

Happy New Year,
from the Howie-Les report (w/ thanks for assistance in writing this to Jonathan Gallivan)

Go Pirates!