Tell Teal Heart

Poor attendance has routinely proven to be the biggest game-changer this season, with a number of teams taking hard L’s due to a short (or even empty) bench. No team has suffered the slings and arrows of absenteeism quite like Teal. Most teams have missed an average of 1-2 players per week, not including goalies. Teal has EIGHTEEN missed player games in six team games (an average of three players shy of capacity any given week), and that is not including their original captain, Leah Gonzales, who played just one game before bowing to injury. With just one win coming in, and with Ian Crooks, Joe Malki, Justin Ker, and Trice Harvey all out of the lineup, it would take a minor miracle for Captain Zach Siemer & Company to avoid another humiliating loss, let alone for them to overcome Orange and double their season win total. Enter: Luke Wolmer, our intrepid POTW, and likely savior of Teal’s sad, sinking season. Wolmer converted a Will Heinl pass at 4:20 in the first, and a Chris Malki helper at 2:51 to stun Orange and set the scene for a truly remarkable upset. David Schlatter responded for Orange midway through the second (Rob Gaudio), but Captain Siemer restored Teal’s two goal lead minutes later (Wolmer and Chris Malki). It was Wolmer again to extend the lead to 4-1 early in the third (Chris Malki and Siemer), then Heinl making it 5-1 from…who else…Wolmer and Malki. A Gaudio from Schlatter strike made it 5-2, but Heinl’s second (from…yep…Malki and Wolmer) was the final straw on Orange’s already broken back. The shocking 6-2 win moves Teal to 2-4-0, and while not out of cut line peril by any means, they sit primed for a legitimate playoff push against all conceivable odds…simply incredible. The loss is a particularly rough one for Orange, who now slip below the cut line themselves, with Teal now holding the total wins and head to head tiebreaker over them. Both teams have juicy games on deck after the holiday break, with Orange facing on-death’s-door Pink, and Teal looking to continue their ascent against standing neighbors to the north, White. The outcomes of those games will no doubt shape the lower half of the playoff landscape.

Captain Jeannine Stuzka’s Gold were Week Eight headliners, but in the P Diddy, Trump, San Jose Sharks sense of the ‘honor’…for bad/very bad reasons. With White handing the ‘Handlers’ a third straight loss to drop their record to 1-4-0, the second half of the season would likely need to be reciprocal (or close to it) to preserve any playoff hopes at all. Sometimes the schedule breaks in your favor, and sometimes it sends your wounded animal of a team into the den of a fierce predator. Captain Jeremy Copp’s Olive entered Week Nine play as one of only two unbeaten teams, and they would leave as the last team standing in that regard. Broken record here…it would be another Olive effort played out on the stout back and shoulders of ‘The Silencer’, Silas Perks. Gold outshot Olive 6-1 in the first period, and 21-7, overall, but neither goalie would yield in the first, and a lone Ralph Feuer goal at 8:09 in the second (Jon Zygelman) had the underdogs fearing that even one would be too much to overcome with Perks patrolling the pipes at the other end. My statistician has just informed me that this was not only Feuer’s first career SDFHL goal, but his first ever point! CONGRATULATIONS, Ralph! Zygelman doubled the lead with an unassisted effort early in the third, and when one isn’t enough for a Perks-backed side, two certainly is. Alan Razoky rendered that second goal vital (Brennen Abel & Andrew Wong), slicing the lead in half with his first goal/point of the season (!). Perks (20/21) and friends would hold the rest of the way, though, with Jason Lee tucking his first of the season into an empty net to seal a 3-1 Olive win, and push Gold that much closer to five free Sunday evenings. It doesn’t get any easier for Gold after the holiday break, with a very tough Black on the books. Olive will face perhaps the toughest challenge to their spotless loss column this Sunday in a showdown with 4-1-2 Red.

The only team who has it worse than Gold to this point in the season is Captain Janine Ulloa’s Pink. Already at 1-5-0 coming in, the least punchy of bunches were absolutely in must-win mode coming into a match with Captain Chad Goins’ Grey. Goins’ group came in with the ‘sample platter’ record of 2-2-2, with their last two games coming against the combatants in the previous game…a 6-0 trouncing of Gold, followed by a 1-1 tie with Olive. Pink’s only win coming in came at the expense of a struggling Teal side…a team that actually beat Grey back in Week Six. So…there was hope on the Pink bench as the opening faceoff dropped, and a first career SDFHL goal for Matthew Ulloa at 7:51 in the first (Kaela Martin) (CONGRATULATIONS, Matthew!) had Pink pumped. Alas, much like my typical bedroom performance, that would be the only pump of the night for Pink. Vance Morra continued his hot hand with his fifth of the season at 6:12, Kyle Snyder followed with the first of three on the night less than thirty seconds later (Morra & Janice Darlington), and Tom ‘The Other’ Darlington (Chad Goins) made it 3-1 Grey after one. A scoreless second was a relief and source of renewed hope for the desperate underdogs, but the lopsided shot count (27-9 through two) had even the most optimistic Pink player hoping the dam wouldn’t break. It broke in the third….Jeffrey Henderson unassisted, Snyder from Morra, Snyder from Henderson, J-Dizzle from Snyder and Morra, and Justin Stege from Captain Goins and Snyder….a five goal spate to wash Pink away (likely for good), 8-1. Jon Cima (13/14) collected the win for Grey, who improve to 3-2-2, while an absolutely besieged Nick Vacchio (29/37) did his best (the man is not a miracle worker) for a Pink team that has honestly seemed doomed from the start, and now seem doomed to finish in dead last.

With the heavyweight bout between Brown and Red looming in the late game, Black versus Purple made for the perfect undercard. Captain John Boddy’s Black came in looking to bounce back from a very lopsided loss to Brown the week prior…their first of the season, while Captain Sev Brown’s Purple was riding high off the synthetic sense of satisfaction that can only come from stomping Pink. While both teams look to be on playoff pace, a win would secure a space in the upper reaches of the standings, and with the likes of White and Teal beginning their midseason climb, points are paramount. Sean Bathgate got the party started for Black with his first of the season at 6:28 in the first (Sadie Hellstrom & Mark Scelfo), but Jon Salt equalized later in the period (Captain Brown). The second period was a veritable scoring bonanza, with the two teams exchanging blows in a wildly entertaining orgy of offense. Pat Gladstone batted home her first of the season on a chaotic series from Geoff Downes to Captain Boddy to the post to her stick to give Black a 2-1 lead, but Purple responded with two goals in a 1:15 span…Joe Nguyen from Kaitlyn Brusso, and a solo Salt effort to turn the tide in Purple’s favor. Downes followed with a pair of goals over the next two minutes to wrest the lead back for Black…the first from Gladstone and Bathgate, and the second from Sadie Hellstrom. That second dose of Downes damage would serve as the game-winner, with Captain Boddy’s solo empty netter serving as the only mark on the scoresheet in the third. Always a bridesmaid, Nick Vacchio (18/21) secured the win for Black in Ryan Loughran’s absence, leaving Don Tran (13/17) and Purple to suffer the 5-3 loss and drop to an even 3-3-0 on the season. Black will look to continue their playoff build in Week Ten against a scuffling Gold, while the Purple v Brown throwdown will serve as the next installment of The Battle Of The Salt Bros™…don’t miss it!

Captain Joel Gattey’s Red steamrolled their way to a 4-0-0 mark through the first four games of their season, but hindsight shines a spotlight on this achievement, and the cracks in the case for excellence are evident. Their first win…a 5-2 romp over Gold, the second…a 4-1 strut past Teal, the third…a 6-1 punchout of Pink, and the fourth…a 1-0 squeak past a Salt-less Purple. The combined current record of those first three teams…4-15-0. So, while Red was winning the games they should win, subsequent ties with Black and Orange showed that the pundits yelling ‘PAPER TIGER’ might not be wrong. Captain Kyle Prior’s Brown has also benefited from its share of soft opposition, having also racked up wins against the Triangle Of Sadness™ (Gold/Teal/Pink), and otherwise having benefitted more often than not from their opponents’ poor attendance. So…an intriguing matchup between two teams that look great in the standings, but may well just be ‘pretty good’. While you can never (ever) count on Alexis DaCosta showing up for a game, the absence of both him and Tim Vick gave the betting edge to a fully-staffed Brown as warmups wrapped. Mark DeGraffenreid would put that advantage in writing at 6:15 in the first (finishing a beautiful passing play from Shawna Hamon and Zach Salt), and a scoreless second kept this tilt of titans tense going into the third. Tony Thinh converted a DeGraffenreid feed into five hole glory to make it 2-0 early in the third, but when Jordan Pynn answered with a solo effort at 2:32, there was still time for this game to be claimed by either side. A late tripping penalty to Nick Vacchio made the odds longer for a Red redemption, and Zach Salt’s powerplay punctuation mark (DeGraffenreid & Andy Strathman) put things out of reach for good, 3-1 Brown over Red. Cory Brin (22/23) earned his ‘Beat Sean Kelly’ scout badge in the win, outdueling the living legend who stopped 21/24 in a tough loss. The 1 and 2 DeGraffenreid effort, and Salt’s 1 and 1 keep the dynamic duo in the gold and silver podium places with twenty and eighteen points, respectively. While it is still too soon to say that either of these teams is a Cup favorite, they are both surely destined for the playoffs…perhaps a juicy rematch awaits.