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After extensive contract negotiations, the Mighty Pirates organization is extremely pleased to welcome back Howie for another season of insightful, amusing, and extremely addictive commentary! Yes, Howie tells it like it is!

You'll find links to each and every Howie Report right here after each game.

The Howie-Les Report
2005-09-19: Mighty Pirates 6 at Tigers 1

Captain Vito Mola went down in the 2004/05 season in the middle of goal scoring streak and a point per game performance. He spent the rest of that winter season and almost the whole summer season running the Mighty Pirates' bench, filling water bottles, and generally encouraging his brethren to greater on-ice feats. But you know all he wanted to really do was get out there and do it himself. Dimock went down just a few games before Mola and the Mighty Pirates lost their most dynamic breakout passer and one helluva defenseman. Ah, what sweet things the new season returns to us ... you've obviously read the front page so what more praise can I heap on these guys? But I am getting ahead of myself ...

Missing Les Klein and the Prodigal Son, the Mighty Pirates rolled out the lines of Mandell-Perri-Leggett, Sager-Mutch-Mola, and Turner-Gallivan-Jezioranski along with the defense pairings of Kwinter-Cooper and Matusek-Dimock.

The game began in typical fashion with the Tigers, consisting of mostly a measured testing of each teams defence with little open ice and a lot of hard fore checking and back checking on both sides. Eschewing the finer details of the contest, it took until six minutes had elapsed before the Mighty Pirates were able to score when Dimock made a daring pinch to cut off a clearing attempt up the boards, fought the puck through traffic and fed Mola who let loose with a boomer from the high slot. But the period ran out with only the single tally, and then the Tigers evened things up early in the second just after a penalty to the MPs expired that had the MPs hopelessly out of position and running around in their own end leaving stalwart keep Lella at the mercy of three of Tigers who banked the puck in off the lunging goalie.

Three minutes later Mola and Dimock went back to work, with some help from Sager, with Mola scoring two goals a mere fourteen seconds apart, with the second goal being the play the night as Dimock again made a steal at the blue line as the Tigers tried to breakout, danced between two defenders, and then slid a beautiful pass to Mola waiting at the hash marks. Mola made no mistake in one-timing the pass along and keeping it on the ice. (Lampert is not a goalie you beat with obvious moves or plays.)

The third period saw Captain Mola complete a natural hat trick and notch his fourth goal on a breakaway. Mola did it every which way last night, from in close, out far, one-timers, dekes, you name it. It was an awesome performance. And with just thirty seconds remaining, and short handed, the MPs put out two guys with more wheels than the Tigers could handle. Gallivan stole the puck behind the goal line from a harried Tiger defender and skate out and around Lampert, avoided the poke check, and swept the puck around and into the net. Twenty seconds later, still pressing in the Tigers end, Jezioranski got control of the puck in the slot and beat the Tiger keep low to the stick side and that was the game.

Of note in this match, other than Blair and Mola racking up the points, was the debut of Cooper and Matusek(2 A) as Winter Pirates. Together they constituted half of a defense corps that helped control the flow of the game and played a flawless game in both directions. All four defencemen have the team really excited about the season. Lella appears to have returned to his position between the pipes in fine form despite taking to the ice for the summer and skating as a forward. He made numerous key saves and handled the puck well under pressure as the referees refused to blow a whistle on a play unless a Tiger was actually touching him. Captain Mola seems to have crafted forward lines that all contain some skill, speed, and grit. Each line should be able to hold its own at both ends of the ice against any team.

The future looks bright.