Fellow Gentlemen of the Gold and Black!
2003-11-03: Mighty Pirates 5 at Zig Zags 6

No more speculation, no more back-room negotiations, no more second chances! The preseason is over (some Pirate fans would say, "Good riddance!" because: a) the outcomes of most of the games were not happy; b) the fact that their heroes only got to play four games instead of the traditional five; c) they were disappointed by the poor turnout by the Pirate regulars who seemed to have treated the preseason as an optional workout; and d) were sick and tired of the stop-and-start nature of the first four games, with a three week layoff between games) and from now on, they all count (okay, the first four games also count, but not in our hearts and souls!).

So, with that in mind, it was no surprise that the Mighty Pirates came out of the locker room and stormed onto the ice to face their perennial winter and summer rivals, the Zig Zags. Though Captain Mola, still sidelined with his debilitating injury could not make an appearance to cheer on his squad, Immediate Past Captain Richard Bingham stepped in and arranged the lines for the momentarily rudderless buccaneers. With Matthew Lella ably planted in goal, he named Blair Dimock, Shaun Leggett, Peter Toth, new call-up (and returning Pirate) Brian Vandenberg and Bingham himself to anchor the defense. Three full forward lines were made up of: John Mutch centering Jonathan Gallivan and Les Klein; Jim Jezioranski centering Nick Perri and Dave Turner; and Rob Kwinter centering Mark Sager and Kapil Khatter.

The boys surged onto the ice, and within the first minute, Bingham emailed a pass directly to John Mutch's stick, and #14 made it count, driving the puck past the surprised Zig Zag goalie. Charged up by that heart-lifting feat, the Pirates set themselves into perfect Pirate Brand Hockey® mode, following the flow of the game, making clearing the puck out of their end a top priority, following up energetic charges into the Zig Zag zone with furious back-checking on the return, focusing on defense and taking advantage of scoring opportunities when they appeared. Though one Zig Zag managed an end-to-end rush halfway through the first period to tie up the game, the good guys responded less than two and a half minutes later with another score, again by John Mutch on a lovely give-and-go from Jonathan Gallivan. And as if to punctuate their sense of accomplishment, Gallivan followed that up just 29 seconds later with a break-away goal that was engineered by Shaun Leggett's seeing-eye pass straight up the middle that threaded its way through several sticks and pairs of legs to find Jonathan's stick just across the Zig Zags' blue line, and the goal that followed was a foregone conclusion!

Alas, the Pirates have good habits and bad habits, and they often save the bad stuff for the second period. With a two goal lead and the score 3-1, the Pirates somehow in unison decided that they really did not have to play Pirate Brand Hockey® after all. Perhaps they misunderstood the exhortations from the bench about remembering Wednesday Night Pirate Hockey™, and instead of the perfect passing plays and loose but energetic play that the references were meant to recall, they just remembered being very, very, very tired. Everyone seemed to stop skating hard to the puck, dropping back to cover the defenseman on a rush, forechecking and backchecking, and they seemed to forget the very painful fact that hockey games last three periods. In a matter of what seemed at once like a blink of an eye and an eternity, the lead vanished, as the Zig Zags scored three goals within a minute and twenty seconds in the middle of the frame and waltzed into the third period with a 4-3 lead. And their goals were not shining moments in hockey history - rather, they resulted from a lack of energy and desire on the part of the Pirates to want to own the puck. The goals were mostly end-to-end rushes and the period was best defined by that moment when the puck lay at rest on the ice an equidistant ten feet from three Pirates, all of whom watched with detachment as a Zig Zag skated between them all and took the puck in for yet another shot at the virtually defenseless Matthew.

Like a punch-drunk fighter who shakes it off for one last round, the Pirates regrouped for the third period, and a charging Peter Toth carried the puck up from the Pirates end and fed Rob Kwinter for the tying goal just 33 seconds into the period. And then, with 6:52 remaining, Gallivan took advantage of a power play situation and notched his third point of the night by feeding an unassisted goal past the goalie, taking the Pirates up 5-4. But the Pirates did not seem to want the two points that a victory would mean. Matching individual heroism with team sloppiness, the Pirates allowed the Zig Zags to explode from the face-off and score the tying goal just 17 seconds later. Still seeing the chance of a victory within their grasp, but approaching that opportunity with uncharacteristic recklessness, the Pirates again abandoned their accustomed style, and tried to rush the puck up the ice on an individual basis, rather than utilizing the teamwork that their fans love to watch. And that lack of control resulted in the unthinkable as, with the last minute of the game approaching, the Pirates tried three times without success to clear the puck from their zone (where were those forwards who were supposed to be guarding the defensemen at the blue line?) but did not succeed, and with 1:02 left on the clock, the Zig Zags potted the go-ahead goal, the one remaining point that the Pirates could have garnered from a tie became more and more a fleeting wish.

So what happened? The reality is that this song has been sung many times before in these lines and others (e.g. cf the Howie-less Reports and Captain's Logs of games past), and it is best summarized as: