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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!

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Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
2006-02-20: Mighty Pirates 3 at Suicide Wings 3

Last night John Mutch laced up the skates for the first time in three weeks and scored three unanswered goals for a natural hat trick with some help from linemates Mola and Sager. Unfortunately, the Mighty Pirates were a little short on the bench and came up short of the win on the ice as the class of the division eventually came back to tie the game 3-3. In fact, the Suicide Wings' first and third goals were hugely embarrassing to the Pirates, scored by open Wings standing alone in front of Lella without a yellow shirt in sight. Sorry Matthew. And sorry John for squandering your fine performance. That was shame.

But it's no shame to tie the 14-1-5 division leaders unbeaten in their last 16 games.

Bingham, Dimock, Klein, Kwinter, Mandell, and Perri all didn't show up for reasons ranging from the medical to the unknown leaving Captain Mola six forwards (Turner-Gallivan-Leggett and Sager-Mutch-Mola) and a three man defense corps of Cooper, Jezioranski and Matusek. From the opening faceoff the defensive unit stepped up an aggressive attack on the puck resulting in an inordiante amount of time spent in the Suicide Wings' zone. Time after time they exhibited keen foresight and some pretty nifty eye-foot coordination to keep the puck in the Wings' zone. The forwards pressed the forecheck in the netural zone and enjoyed abundant scoring opportunities until Mutch broke over the blue line, faked a shot to freeze the goalie, moved latterally and then unleashed from the top of the circles for his first goal of the game. Mutch coninued to lead his line with dogged backchecking and smart forechecking, forcing turnovers and making steals to keep his line perpetually attacking. Sager and Mola chipped in with two assists apiece.

Unfortunately, the Turner-Gallivan-Leggett line suffered the ignomity of squandering their brethen's hard work, surrendering all three of the Wings unanswered goals, in spite of the lines equally dedicated effort in pursuit of the win. Turner stayed on assignement and ruled his boards at both ends of the ice, while Gallivan showed off his wheels to get in on the goalie a few times, one time ringing a hard wrister off the crossbar. Leggett had countless opportunities and was gently chided after the game for having nothing to show for all of it.

As hard working as the whole team was, as incredibly smart as the defense unit played, the Mighty Pirates ran out of steam toward the end of the second and the Wings didn't. The Wings also didn't panic and stuck to their game, eventually wearing down the Pirates, winning a few key one-on-one battles, and tying up the game. Their third goal was almost a blessing for the Pirates who seemed almost more resolved to not let the game slip away once it was tied. The game was played out with a renewed commitment by the Bucs and the point preserved.

So we're back to the perenail saw: sometimes a tie feels like a win and somtimes a tie feels like a loss. Blowing a 3-0 lead felt like a loss but tying the division powerhouse felt like a win. So sometimes tie feels like a tie.