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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.

A Very Special Guest Howie Report!
2005-10-03: Mighty Pirates 5 vs. Loch Monsters 1

The Mighty Pirates always expect a good game from the Loch Monsters and they got one this Monday. Much like their ancient adversaries the Southex Griffons, the Lochs have had a history of "having the Pirates' number". They have outplayed teams that then beat the Lochs — but they could jump on a Pirate slip-up to slip one by us better than any other team. Still, the MPs love a challenge. And the Lochs are always up for it.

With less than 20 minutes to game time, the Captain was calculating the lines knowing for certain that 4 players would be absent, including the fan favourite Mark "Jaromir" Sager. And what is a Pirate game without someone yelling "Shoot, Shoot, Shoot" in your ear? It's missing something, that's certain! Then, news that former Captain Bingham had to prepare for a course, and thus would not attend the short bench either was relayed — to rounds of much speculation, mostly about the need to actually prepare for such a thing. But, there are those who wonder what he'll look like when he does attend. When Klein & Mandell are away for extended periods of time, they often return with presents. Stay tuned.

Anyway, as good as the Captain is, there are only so many ways to deploy 9 skaters. Cursed with being able to play every position well, power-forward Leggett was asked to join Matusek & Dimock on defense — and they all stepped their games up to handle the job quite well. Certain that Jezioranski was soon to arrive, the assignments were made: Mola and Turner on the left, Mutch & Gallivan centers, Perri & Jezioranski on the right. With a short bench and a strong opponent, the message from the Captain was "pace yourself" and, of course, "play your man". The classic Pirate downfall of "unjustified overconfidence" was nowhere to be seen.

The Lochs came out hard, as they are fond of doing, trying to capitalize on a pack of sleepy Pirates. Perhaps it was the rush hour traffic, perhaps it was number of hours since lunch, but a wee bit o' scrappy started to creep into the game. The refs did a good job of settling things down and the last half was the better portion. Summer Pirate Matusek got the 1st & 2nd goals for the MPs. The first was a well screened shot from the blue line. With the stellar Lella between the pipes, the 2nd was the GWG. Most of the game was played as a 1 – 1 match, always exciting.

The L.M. goalie played very well and gave his team a great effort. His defensemen seemed to forget the old Loch maxim of one-man-back thus allowing the Pirates far too many shots. The Pirates played good positional hockey and didn't leave Lella all alone for too many shots. OK, well, a few, whatever.

As for the Lochs, they have undergone some personnel changes recently, including acquiring veteran Steve Bignall, a former Summer Pirate. As Steve will tell you, it's tough to beat the Pirates at "scrappy". To beat them, just run 'em around in circles for awhile, draw them out of position and then capitalize on the mistakes. With a short bench, we couldn't go off, bionic knees or not, so we played our game as outlined by our Captain.

In typical Pirate fashion, sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. In either case, we head for Wings & Beers. But, this week it worked and we put the 3rd "W" up in 3 games. Great refereeing, solid opponents and 6:10 o'clock ice that is actually frozen when the game starts. Ya can't beat it, I tell ya!

In addition to the short-bench victory, the MPs celebrate Gallivan entering the exclusive MP "100 Club", only the 3rd Pirate ever to acquire 100 points. The MPs applaud his creativity on the Ice and the Web!

And finally, one last piece of advice from The Captain: with a holiday Monday bye next week, there's plenty of time to wash your gear!