WHY? YTV? Y? TV?
2004-02-23: Mighty Pirates 1 vs. YTV 8

The 8-1 score hardly tells the tale. The fact was, it was an ugly game from beginning to end. And except for the score, it was hardly one-sided. There was ugliness on both sides, and plenty of it. But, somehow, there was a real feeling that the Pirates were up against the neighbourhood roughnecks, and pure reason was just not going to work this one out.

But, let's start from the beginning. The Pirates had 13 guys, as usual, though they were without the services of Rob Kwinter, Brian Vandenberg, Blair Dimock and the still-injured Vito Mola (please come back soon and bring some sanity to this madness!). The intent was to go with three full lines and two sets of defense, and Richard Bingham decided to shake things up a bit with the lineups. Now, if memory serves correctly, John Mutch, Jim Jezioranski and Jonathan Gallivan were centers, and Nick Perri and Les Klein, Kapil Khatter and Dave Turner and Auby Mandell and Dave Turner were wingers. Defense started out with Richard Bingham, Shaun Leggett, Michael Levine and Peter Toth. Matthew Lella as usual manned the net.

But that lineup did not last long. Maybe the boys in yellow were somnabulating, or maybe they just did not hear the opening whistle from the referees, but the YTVs came out skating and somehow managed to pop a goal within the first 18 seconds! In fact, by 1:04 into the game, the score was 3-0. Actually, by the time two minutes and fifty seconds had passed, the score had run up to 5-0. So, who was this team with the ugly monster on their jerseys? Well, the facts about this team are in fact incontrovertible. There are two distinct teams playing under these so-called colours. This is a team with 20 names on the roster (and who knows how many not listed...), and both the outcome and the tenor of the games depends on who comes out. The sad part of it is that the ones who came out last Monday missed the YTV special on bullying, forgot about the fact that it is not whether you win or lose but rather how you play the game, and in some cases just forgot to grow up (or did not yet have the chance to do so).

But the Pirates were not blameless. Indeed, Richard Bingham was called for his first penalty just seven seconds after the fifth goal was scored, and it was a pretty serious bit of body contact against the boards. Frustrations were rising in the ranks and it just got uglier from there. Three minutes and 13 seconds later, he was ejected from the game for a second double body contact penalty against the boards. That resulted in havoc in the Pirate lines, as attempts to realign the team with two centers were in turn thrown off by a virtually endless series of Pirate penalties that lasted much of the game, sixteen minutes worth in total - some of which were ran concurrently. YTV of course managed to run up a pretty good string of penalties as well, totalling sixteen minutes as well. And while the Pirates felt that the refereeing was hopelessly one-sided, the fact was that the game was horrible on both sides. There was nothing that anyone could be proud of in terms of play or attitude.

Observers noted after the game that when the Pirates are forced to play teams that are far above their skill level, they do tend to lose it, and end up taking silly penalties and racking up the time in the sin bin. But surely, the Pirates are a much more mature team than that, and certainly should not sink to the level that YTV dragged them to. This is play unbecoming of a team with a venerable history as rich as the Pirates. So let's leave the attitude and the whining behind and play in a manner befitting people who know how to play as a team and realize that IT IS JUST A GAME.

And to give the YTVs credit, their team rep did offer up a flag of truce of sorts in an email to Jonathan Gallivan that suggested that they realized that things got out of hand on their side as well. As your team rep, I would suggest that we not let that happen any more, no matter how justified we feel about our righteousness. In the end, we are happy to play hockey, but we all have day jobs to go to the next day, and no one wants to encourage behavior that could really result in someone getting hurt.

Next up are the Zig Zags at 8:00 p.m. on Monday at RINX 2. Show up, play hard, and keep your cool. That is the only way we will have fun doing this (and that goes for you, too, Klein!). In the meantime, the Wednesday Night Pirate Skate™ continues.

GO PIRATES!!! VIVA LOS PIRATAS!!!

Howie