Our cover team this week is our cover team for all the wrong reasons, but a closer look at their first four games proves that they are really just getting squeezed (and not in a good way). Worse, it’s partially an inside job. Week One…a 2-2 with Blue (with no Strathman or Gottfried). Week Two…a 2-1 loss to front runners, Teal (no Gottfried). Week Three…a wild, last minute 6-5 loss to Purple (still no Gottfried). Captain Tran’s clan lined up in Week Four with no Jacobsen, no Tomaszewski, and…you’re catching on…no Gottfried. Matt sustained an ankle injury just before the season kicked off, but that ankle has been hamstringing Orange since, leaving them without their best defender, and one of their best all around players. Every team is going to have attendance dings, especially in the summer, but Orange will either need some good news from the Gottfried estate, or a replacement player ASAP if they hope to salvage this season. Yellow was without Marc Lapointe and Brennan Abel, but they still had plenty of firepower to find a win in this one. Mason LaGrossa cashed in his first career SDFHL goal at 5:12 in the first to make it 1-0, Yellow…CONGRATULATIONS! His proud papa served up the lone assist on a Scott Wieland strike a few minutes later to give Yellow a two goal edge heading into the second. Captain Josh Tran answered for his team very early in that middle stanza, kicking off a seesaw scoring streak that lasted just a few minutes….Vankoughnett unassisted…Strathman from Captain Tran….Wieland’s second from Vankoughnett and Jim LaGrossa…Andy Strathman from Justin Stege. If you’re scoring at home (which, why would you be…this has all already happened), that’s a 4-3 Yellow lead going to the third. Captain Carl gave his team some breathing room, then choked any remaining air out of Orange’s windpipe with the game-winner at 9:23 (from Jim LaGrossa), and the hat-trick-capping insurance tally at 8:51 (from Mason LaGrossa). Captain Tran represented the last gasp for Orange (from Pat Gladstone), but their was not enough time, energy, and scoring prowess in Orange’s ranks to draw any closer. Jon Cima (13/17) collected his second career win, keeping his team in it long enough for them to secure their second straight. The 6-4 result is the first Orange loss by more than one goal, but a loss is a loss, and this is their third in four tries. As noted in all of the preamble above, they will really need to find their winning juice soon, or die trying…
Captain Sev Brown’s Purple, and Captain Ian Crooks’ Black entered Week Four with two points each, and with teams piling up on top of them. It’s dog eat dog in the depths of the standings, and two hungry dogs made for a hard-fought, and very entertaining game (according to the capacity crowd of six…including refs and scorer). Captain Crooks got the ball rolling for his team late in the first with his second of the season, but Purple responded with three unanswered to take (what appeared to be) total control of the match. Fittingly, it was Captain Brown with the first response from Purple. With due respect to Sev, this was a quintessential ‘garbage goal’….but, they all count the same on the score sheet. Enter Zach Salt…who had flown in on a private jet to miss as little of this game as possible. Salt put Purple ahead with 0:45 remaining in the second (from Luke Wolmer and Erin Plone), then Plone tucked home one of her own on a nifty tic-tac-toe play from Trice Harvey to Salt to Plone to give Purple a 3-1 edge. Enter Tomáš Jankovic, who wove through traffic and delivered a sublime backhand back door pass to Rich Shane to cut the lead to one less than a minute after the Plone strike, but then tied the (scoring) knot from distance with a solo effort. That would be all the balls finding holes in Nick Meglich (21/24) and Chuck Bender (24/27) as both teams strove for two points, but settled for one a piece in the 3-3 tie. The result keeps both teams just north of the cut line, with Purple in a slightly better position with a tick in the win column. Both teams will need to find more in the tank in the second half if they expect to make the playoffs, let alone make playoff waves.
Meanwhile, just south of the cut line, Captain Sean Bathgate’s ‘Puffy White Shirts’ looked to even their record at 2-2-0, and move into a safer position in the standings with a leapfrog win over Grey. Grey proved too big a frog to leap on this day, but they were just a tad (pole) better in another great Week Four game. Chris Malki put the ‘Shirts’ on top at 9:16 in the first (from Will Heinl), and six minutes and six seconds ticked past before Kalen Hunter would respond for Grey. Emily Bennington wrested the lead back for White less than a minute later (from Brandon Olsen and Chris Malki), but the scoring seal was well and truly broken then, as Hunter brought Grey level again at 1:51 (from Dan Soar and Rob LaVigne), and LaVigne gave Grey their first lead at 1:03 (from Bao Nguyen). The second period was relatively quiet, but it started with that scoring spout still open, as Chris Malki cashed in the 3-3 equalizer at 8:58 (from Heinl, again). Captain Sean Bathgate’s first…*checking*…CAREER goal (CONGRATULATIONS!) at 9:27 in the third (from Malki and Heinl) started to look like it might also be his first game-winning goal, as the clock wound into the final minutes of play. It was Leah Gonzales who would rewrite that Hollywood ending at 3:12 (from Soar and Hunter), and it Janice Darlington (from Hunter and Soar) completing the one-two femme fatale knock out blow. The 5-4 loss was another tough result for an overworked and underrated Nick Meglich (20/25), and nothing more than a faux feather in Ian Crooks’ cap (10/14) in a fill-in role for Matt Henderson. Bathgate’s bunch will need to find the scoring punch they showed in a 7-4 win over Yellow in Week Two, or start hoping for some Meglich Magic™ to pull them out of their lower decks digs. Their faceoff with two point twins, Blue, is as big as a Week Five game gets on the playoff implication scale. The win moves Captain Zach Siemer’s Grey to 2-1-1, good enough for third place with five weeks to play.
Winning isn’t everything, but it’s all Captain Tyler Winstead’s Olive know how to do. After opening the season with two awe-inspiring wins (SEVENTEEN goals, people!), Week Three saw them shuffle quietly past White, 2-0. The scoring stayed in low gear, but the slow drive ended in the same small, seaside town…Winstead Winville. The ‘Girl Power’ spilled over from the last minutes of the middle game, as Wendy Enright broke a scoreless tie with her first of the season at 7:41 in the second. The lone assist on what would be the lone goal of the game came courtesy of Kyle Snyder. Snyder’s ridiculous scoring pace through the first two weeks of play has slowed to something approaching human. His eleven points (7 and 4) still have him sitting in second on the scoring charts, but the back to back shutouts posted by Don Tran (14/14) and his team seems a clear indication that his defensive contributions are at least as vital as his offensive prowess. The 1-0 loss was a tough one to swallow for Captain Rob Gaudio’s Blue, considering their precarious position in the standings, and considering that Olive’s one goal came on just nine shots. Chuck Bender (8/9) absorbed the loss in Chris Tran’s absence…one of THREE games Bender backstopped in Week Four! With the win, and the result in the late game (spoiler alert), Olive remain the only perfect team at 4-0-0. It will take a lot for them to miss the playoffs, and they are maybe one win away from convincing me that they are definitively the team to beat. Blue needs points…badly. A win over White this Sunday might be just the turning point they need. A loss to White, and it’s a different kind of turn, altogether…
Two of the three remaining undefeated teams in the league put that mark on the line with Captain Geoff Downes’ 1-0-2 Red taking on Captain Ryan Karns’ 2-0-1 Teal. What might have been billed as the battle of the heir apparent to the goalie throne (Silas Perks) versus the once and future king (Sean Kelly) was still a thriller with Don Tran in Perks’ place. It was Tran who would yield first, with John Boddy putting Teal in front at 1:40 in the first (from Captain Karns and Nadia Connolly). Captain Downes answered just nineteen seconds into the second (from Mark Ennsmann), but Alan Razoky responded with just four remaining in the middle third. David Schlatter solved Silas again at 9:25 in the third (from Joel Gattey and Vinny Santora), but as the old adage goes, and as the Black v Purple game earlier in the evening proves, ‘a two goal lead is the worst lead in hockey’. Christopher Fiore cut that lead to one just fifteen seconds later (from Ennsmann and Downes), but that one goal lead did not treat the leaders any better. Maureen Ruchhoeft capped what was apparently some sort of unofficial league ladies’ night, bringing Red back level with 1:52 to play (from Jon Salt and Kevin Dinino). In maybe the most bizarre bits on the score sheet for this one, Salt was booked for ‘elbowing’…a very rarely called infraction…called against a perennially PIM-less player. The 3-3 tie kept both teams lossless, and both comfortably in the top half of the league ladder. Sean Kelly (25/28) was certainly busier than Tran (15/18) in this one, but both were sharp and steady enough to see their respective teams (well, Tran’s foster team, to be accurate) through another undefeated week. Both teams will look to extend that streak against ‘lesser’ opponents, with Red taking on dead last Orange (0-3-1), and Teal tackling 1-2-1 Purple.