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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.

Blocker Side! Blocker Side!
2005-10-24: Mighty Pirates 2 vs. Condors 2

If you wanted, you could go to Canadian Tire tomorrow and buy a goalie for your hockey net. He would consist of a piece of cardboard attached to the front frame of the goal, painted to look like a goalie, with five holes in it that would allow a puck to pass through. It would of course also bear the likeness and uniform of a well-known feared professional goalie such as Hasek, Belfour, Theodore - or Lella! Of course, the number of goals you would score would depend on the size of the holes and your own ability to direct your shots. What would be missing from your experience when compared to a real game would be the movement of the goalie and the scrum in front of the net.

Well, last Monday night, the Pirates faced the Condors, and the Condors may as well have had a modified cardboard goalie in net, with all of the holes filled up! Only by shooting often enough at the target were they finally able to bash some holes in that protection to allow a couple of goals to be scored. And by the end of the game, the Condors would have had to pony up to buy a brand new cardboard goalie, because every square inch of the surface would have been dented, pocked, marked, damaged and ultimately battered by shots - albeit fruitless - off the sticks of your heroes.

What a game it was! Forget the past history of games between these two clubs - five previous Pirate victories meant nothing. As is the case when True North really does its job balancing the divisions, the outcome of every game is up in the air and dependent upon who shows up to play each game. And that certainly is the case in the Monday Dry Division so far this year. On Monday, the Pirates came to RINX 3 with their defensive squad decimated - Matusek, Dimock, Bingham and Klein were all scratches! Captain Mola scrambled to rebuild the blue line, and went with Cooper, Mola, Kwinter and Jezioranski to play back. The seven forward positions were filled by Mutch, Gallivan, Turner, Sager, Mandell, Leggett and Perri. Matthew Lella stood in goal, and Klein (victim of a freak squash-related injury) stood on the bench yelling (a role to which he seems naturally suited after years of coaching his kids' hockey teams).

The game was surprisingly even from the start. The entire first period passed without a goal being scored or a penalty being called. The action however was fast and furious, with both sides moving to the attack in turn. Most observers noted however that the Pirates seemed to have the upper hand, executing good break-out plays, penetrating deep into the Condors' zone and peppering the goalie with shot after shot. However, Condor stand-in goalie Law managed to block every shot he saw, expertly and with lightning speed. He smothered some and redirected others, and there were concerns that his pads would eventually wear out from overuse and subject him to personal injury!

It was in the second period that the flow started to change. With just 41 seconds gone, a scramble in front of the Pirates' net resulted in a fabulous save by Lella, but the rebound hit a Condor stick and bounced into the air, then hit Captain Mola's back (or backside - eyewitnesses differ on the details) and dribbled past Matthew for the first goal of the game. Vito's attempts to convince the referees to credit him with the Condor goal fell on deaf ears. The Pirates were forced to push a little harder - and they did, but all efforts continued to be in vain, as the Condor goalie was acrobatic in his successful attempts to keep the rubber from bending the twine off Pirate shots. The ratio of shots on goal between Pirates and Condors had to have exceeded 3:1, and the amount of time the puck was controlled by each team was likewise lopsided. Nevertheless, the second period ended with the score 1-0 for the Big Birds. There were also rumblings on the bench and from Klein about the shifts being way too long, which did not allow the Pirates to push their advantage against the Condors with fresh legs. Too many of the rushes to the pucks were way closer than they would have been with quicker shifts for the forwards and defense.

Finally, shortly after the puck dropped to start the third period, Matthew Lella himself came out of net and over to the Pirate bench after a whistle and yelled, "Blocker side! Shoot on his blocker side!" And sure enough, the guy furthest away from the action picked up on the one weakness being displayed by the Condor goalie, and moments later, Leggett shot just there after receiving a gorgeous feed from Gallivan in front of the net, who in turn had been set up for the two-on-one by a clearing shot from Vito. With renewed energy, the Pirates continued to pepper the opponents' net, and with 4:25 remaining in the game, Jezioranski and Gallivan teamed up again for a quick one-two and powered the go-ahead goal through the uprights. But the game was by no means over, some Pirates' wishful thinking notwithstanding, and some sloppy play in their own end, including an inability to clear the puck over the blue line, and some lackadaisical efforts by the forwards to cover the men on the point resulted in a strong pass across the mouth of the Pirate net and the equalizer into the mesh on a one-timer, making the final score 2-2. The Pirates were able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and then put victory right back into those jaws. They settled for a tie and a single point, and now find themselves tied for second place in the standings with the Suicide Wings, and trailing the red-hot Ice Cats.

And guess who is coming over to play next Monday night for the (killer) 11:10 p.m. match in RINX 2? The Ice Cats, of course. This is the opportunity for the Pirates to show what they are made of. A win puts them back into first (alone or in a tie), and a loss could consign them to the middle of the pack, just one mediocre team among many. Where will they find the fire in their bellies to make this one a game worth writing about? Be there to find out - and of course help solve this year's biggest Pirate mystery - does Bingham exist?

Howie