On Track

The big Winners Bracket showdown was first up on the Week Three playoff docket, and I’ll just pretend you missed the box score that was posted on Monday, and the headline above, and keep you in rapt suspense while I regale you with the details of the battle between Captain Joel Gattey’s Red and Captain Kyle Prior’s Brown. The spoils of regular season success rendered Red’s playoff resume rather pedestrian coming in, with ho-hum wins over #7 Purple and #6 White, while Brown was still swelling with confidence after escaping with an overtime win over #5 Grey, then handing #1 Olive their very first loss…ever. Brown had a more empirical reason to believe they could beat Red, having bested them 3-1 in Week Nine of the regular season, while Red hoped that two key missing players in that first meeting (Alexis DaCosta and Tim Vick) would be difference makers in the rematch. It was Red on the front foot first, with a strange medium range Jackson Tomaszewski wrister somehow finding a path through sticks and legs and into the back of the net behind Cory Brin at 7:12 in the first. Alexis DaCosta, one of the aforementioned ‘key missing players’ when these teams first met, indeed made his ‘key’ presence felt, accounting for Red’s second goal at 8:56 in the second (Craig Russell), then padding the lead to three with his second of the game at 7:48 in the third (Joel Gattey). A goal is a goal is a goal, but with two of the three Red tallies rating VERY far from ‘museum quality’, Brown felt the convergence of tough luck frustration in their end, and the flummoxing futility that comes with trying to solve Sean Kelly at the other. Mark DeGraffenreid finally did just that just sixteen seconds after the second DaCosta conversion (Chuck Russell & Maureen Ruchhoeft), but that would be the only blemish on another sparkling Kelly slate (27/28), as Red held back Brown’s desperate late push to lock down the 3-1 win and punch their ticket to the promised land. Brin (16/19) suffered the loss in his return from an unplanned kitten rescue mission the week prior, and Brown now find themselves down with the rest of the riffraff in the Losers Bracket. They will take on the winner of Olive v White, while Red enjoy a bye week and await the lone survivor…

The first knockout match of the night came next, with the two lowest remaining seeds squaring off in the form of Captain Ryan Karns’ White, and Captain Leah Gonzales’ Teal. You read that correctly…Teal’s OG ‘Lady Tealsdale’ was finally back in action after missing all but ONE of her team’s games to date. While it seemed unlikely that her return itself would be enough to inspire the bottom seeds to victory over a tough and determined White side, fans were hopeful that they would be treated to a the kind of thriller that the first meeting produced. I’m certain it’s a repressed memory by now for those in the Teal ranks, but White rallied from 0-2 down in the third period to stun Teal back in Week Ten, with the game-winner coming with just 0:42 remaining. That…is…brutal. It was White who found themselves up 2-0 in this one, with Carl Vankoughnett doing the honors on both counts (the first from Kevin Dinino at 3:45, and the second from Kerri Sevenbergen and Arnold Gonzales at 2:57). Teal would fashion their own two goal rebound this time around, with Justin Ker converting a Chris Malki helper at 2:29, and…yes, folks…Captain Leah Gonzales making her return triumphant, indeed, with a very pretty equalizer (from Joe Malki) to knot the score at twos going into the second. Vankoughnett was sent off at 2:26 in the second for a rather vicious slash, but Teal proved powerless on the powerplay, surrendering a (rather spectacular) short-handed end-to-end gut punch from Josh Wirt (Captain Karns). Joe Malki drew Teal back level with a solo effort early in the third, and the scene was set for another tense, thrilling sprint to the tape for these two rivals. Nope…it was actually extremely anticlimactic. Three goals in LESS THAN A MINUTE…Dinino from Wirt and Mark Nagy, Vankoughnett’s hat trick capper from Nagy and Dinino, and a solo second of the game from Josh Wirt broke the game wide open for White, and a rocking and reeling Teal would never recover. Perhaps my most loyal front page reader, Matt Henderson (20/23), secured the must-win win for White, while Chuck Bender (16/21) and Teal backed out the playoff door they backed in with the 6-3 loss. White now boast the heaviest playoff scoring hammer with ten goals over three games, but their next opponent, Olive, happens to feature a hammer-proof pipesmith in the form of Silas ‘The Silencer™’ Perks. It’s an intriguing matchup, and whoever survives will face a rested and ready Brown for the right to throw down with Red in the Final.

Captain John Boddy was not in the lineup when his Black band took on Olive in Week Five of the regular season, but an early Geoff Downes Silencer Shocker™ had his team well in line for what (in hindsight) would have been one of the most courageous coups of the season. Instead, Shelby Shattuck tied that game with 3:31 to play, and the teams would shake hands after a 1-1 draw. At season’s end, Black would count themselves among the ‘lucky few’ to nick even a point from Olive, finding themselves in the cozy company of just three teams to manage the feat. Captain Boddy was back for the big rematch, but Dan Jurgens, Marc Lapointe, and Ryan Loughran were out, and while Shattuck was not available to reprise her heroine role, Olive’s leading scorer, Aaron Cooney, was set to make his debut in the second game of this season series. Momentum can be a powerful force, and Black was banking on it paying dividends for them in their second straight do-or-die match. Their 4-0 elimination of Purple restored their spunk and spirit after a disappointing opening loss to White, and the emotional return of Bao Nguyen to the lineup had oddsmakers leaning towards an inspired upset. Perhaps no team was more upset coming into the week than Olive, having suffered their one and only loss to date to Brown the Sunday prior. No one knew how Olive would rebound from a loss, but we were all about to find out. Black came out firing, racking up nine first period shots to Olive’s two, but the top seeds are no strangers to being grossly outshot, and Jason Lee found fortune in one of those two shots to put the favorites in front 1-0 at the 1:20 mark (from Jon Zygelman). The lopsided shot totals hit laughable levels in the second, with Black blasting EIGHTEEN at Perks and Olive mustering just another pair in response. A 27-4 shot advantage in the first two periods of a game would normally translate to at least a three or four goal lead, but Perks is just on another planet. Sean Bathgate did manage to solve the Silencer™ at 4:48 (Brendan Jew & Geoff Downes), with what I was not remotely surprised to hear was a very quick and very precise snipe. So, one goal a piece going into the final fray, with Black swarming and mounting pressure, but Perks putting the ‘live’ in Olive, as always. I can hear the echo of Black hearts breaking as I type, but after dominating Olive for two full periods, Jon Zygelman scored at 9:20 to put the top seeds back on top (Chris Fiore). With any other goalie, a 2-1 deficit is not a death sentence, but the knowledge that two goals past Perks had happened just TWICE to that point in the season (both courtesy of Brown), and knowing that a tie game would only extend the match to an unwinnable shootout…this goal was devastating for Black. The shot totals were relatively even in the third, as Olive entered into protect mode to preserve their slender but sturdy lead. The clock wound down to crunch time, and Black’s final push produced nothing but two empty net goals for their opponent (Zygelman and Lee), drawing the shroud over Black’s playoff corpse, 4-1. Olive move on to face White, with the hopes (nay, expectation) that they will then have a chance to avenge their only loss in thirteen games in the Losers Bracket finale against Brown. It’s VERY hard to bet against Perks, but anything can happen in playoff hockey…