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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: Pirates Squander Goalie's Gold
2012-01-09: Mighty Pirates 2 at Road Warriors 3

The Mighty Pirates (4-8-1) could not take advantage of a stellar performance by netminder Sturgeon on Monday night, falling 3-2 to the Raceway Road Warriors (5-5-3). After a promising start to the game that saw the Bucs out chance the Warriors, your heroes ran into mounting penalty trouble — a full twelve minutes assessed — and lost control of the game to the hard playing Warriors.

To be fair, after a string of well refereed games, this one was a travesty of inconsistency and outright wrong calls but then some games go that way. The Warriors adroitly took advantage of the Pirates first and fourth penalties, tallying two Power Play goals on deflections.

The Pirates opened the scoring late in the first when Mutch deflected J. Klein's point shot for the first score but the Pirates first penalty quickly followed as well the tying goal. The Warriors manged their two other scores while the Pirates juggled lines on the penalty kill and watched their puck control game scuttled by the Warrior forecheck.

Meanwhile, the Sturgeonator quietly went about staying square to the puck and being big in the net. Sturgeon found the puck in traffic, played a great game down low in spite of the Warriors' big body net presence, and demonstrated the quickness of his glovehand, robbing some in close chances that looked like sure things.

Phillips got the Pirates to within one on another deflection, tipping Tassone's point shot over Warrior goalie Hartin's shoulder.

But that is as close as the demoralized and disorganized Pirates would though, again, Sturgeon made sure it would not get any worse by stoning the Warriors with another brilliant save on a late game breakaway. In spite of pulling the goalie for the extra attacked in the dying minutes of the game, the Pirates folded under the Warriors forecheck. With the forewards looking for the stretch pass and too far from the beleagured defense, the Pirates were unable to get out of their zone. Game over.

On a bright note, stalwart Jezioranski is giving the fans what they want, steadily closing in on 200 points and making the whole thing last by taking it one point at a time.