The Cuppa Joe Grinders

Okay boys, I missed the last game(s) and its a tight turnaround between the next two so here’s your PRE-GAME post for Friday’s match voisus the Insufficient Funds.

Overall we’ve done well against these guys but there is a disturbing trend  in the works.   In September we shmoked these guys 6-2. Then we faced them again in November ad squeaked away with a win scoring two in a 2-1 win. But then the new year came and met them on january 29th when they won by a goal in a 3-2 game.  Is the pendulum swinging their way?  Are they due for blow out against the Grinders?!  Me thinks we have been taking them for granted and now have to come out full force looking to putting them away.

So…. right from the opening face-off… take a good, long, hard look at the opponent and make that decision that you will over come.

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do NOT follow that url. NSFW

A wise man, Yogi Berra, once said “you can observe a lot by just looking.  Well I don’t have that advantage for this game, since I wasn’t there I can’t accurately report on anything.  But I can make some wild assumptions that will undoubtedly be at least partial truths.

A) We made an attempt to stay out of the box and found the the other team to be good sports about it.

B) Some of us mistook lack of penalties to mean lack of aggression.

C) Shaun really wanted to take the beer cooler but couldn’t because he had to leave quickly due to…..why? Why, Shaun do you rush out so quickly? Stay, relax, have a couple of beer.

D) Gord floated at centre and blamed his back.

E)Andy flailed down the right wing, got slashed, hooked, mauled, elbowed, and got beat about the head and shoulders with a burlap bag full of soggy  dishcloths, but still no penalty was called.

F) Bob rushed at an inopportune time and yelled at the wingers to get the point.

G) Santa and Tidy remembered the water bottles and reminded everyone about just how reliable they are.

H) We scored an own goal.  Sorry Peter.

I) Frank kept it all in perspective by reminding that we are one division away from women’s hockey.

J) Guy retorted, “Yeah, one division behind”

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Speaking of behind……

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An oddly polite yet sometimes aggressive bunch of Cougars took control of the Joe’s on Tuesday night.

(SEO note:  Keywords in the previous sentence will do well in search terms, only to sorely disappoint the users that land here expecting something a little more risque. We’ll have to do our best to satiate their desires with the end graphic.)

No, Courtney Cox was not involved. Just a bunch of over weight middle aged men clinging to their last vestiges of youthful activities they can still perform (not so well). About once a week they get out and play a little hockey. More often than they have marital sex. This game took on an atmosphere you may expect, one of competitiveness but good sportsmanship, as the oddly polite Cougar team took advantage of the Grinders own goals and penalties (sound familiar? I may just cut and paste from previous 83 entries)  to settle the game 3-0.

Actually let’s try that…. Here’s excerpts from Dec 1, 2007 versus the Cougars…

• We came out with a short bench, 10 skaters. It went without saying, keep the shifts shorts and stay outta the box.The tempo of the whole game was rather lax, so we could have been in there. And in fact we were for the first period. we made it through with no scoring from either team, but we realized that if we were going to make an impact we had to step things up.

That was about right!

October 14, 2008:

• The Grinders were clicking and getting many quality scoring chances, including at least two posts, but simply couldn’t get the puck past a hot goalie .

April 22, 2008

• The effort was big, the beer was cold and the smokies were hot; what else could you ask for? A win, maybe, but alas it was not in the cards. Gord set-up two wingers with saucer-like passes at point blank but to no avail – who were those wingers anyway? The Cougars got their first goal on a power-play.
  

March 28, 2008

• Peter plays a text-book game, making glove-hand saves, pad saves, sprawling saves and saves off his own defensemen.
  

March 24th, 2008

• The Grinders played a hard game with a few unlucky bounces that sank them, but there was a solid effort by Everyone, and I mean everyone including non-Grinders to make this game the best it could possibly be.

April 16, 2007

• Regroup at the bench. Troy is tired; Kuznak gives us the gears about getting some shots on the net. He’s right, at my count we’re at seven shots heading into the third. We’re down two goals and the frustration is starting to kick in. Puck drops in the third – me and Tanchak are out to kill off the remaining seconds in Geib’s minor, and we have Frank and Bob on the point. It goes well. Shortly after the Atoms pot their third goal and the Grinders’ spirits are crushed.

It’s who we are; long-shifting, penalty-taking, bad-lucking, no-scoring Grinders.   You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, so they say.

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But you can make them salivate at the ring of a bell

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The game started out just fine with the grinders hemming the All Blacks into their zone for most of the first period.  The shortest period. Playing with three D and a full front 3 lines the Grinders were passing, skating, forechecking. Nothing wrong with these later games. 9:45 doesn’t phase us old-timers. It may not have been the fastest game we’ve played and their may not have been numerous scoring chances on either side (if you believe the stats sheet, the AllBlacks had 10 shots on goal and we had 5.  Apparently it was too late for the score-keeper to be awake for a large portion of the game.  At least he took his head out of his text book long enough to update the score clock when he heard a whistle). This mis-stat does an injustice to the way Peter played. Two own goals and a screened tipped high popper were of no fault to the keeper who played a great game that night.

The start of the second looked promising as well with PSP doing the most of the work (as it should be) and Trainor standing in front of the net (as it should be). PSP fed a perfect pass to the stick of Trainor, who then proceeded, for the first time in 4 games, to “think”.  He decided to “fool” the goalie and go short side. It’s just that kind of sharp minded offense prowess that has Trainor so far up the standings in total points.

…And then we got old. The clock struck 10:15, and halfway through the second period the All-Blacks potted their first of the night.  The Grinders started taking too many men penalties, which was understandable since some team manager posted the line-up BEHIND us on the wall, expecting us to actually turn around and see what our assignments were.

Passes went astray, checks went unchecked, ad the game got choppy.  If not for a few Grinders; Tidy with his new-found youthful exuberance as he enters retirement, Andy with his usual organic energy, Troy minus his 35 pounds (when did that happen!?), and Jay and Triggs showing off that they actually had hockey skillz.   Perhaps they could try to teach the rest of the adult-learned players some of these skillz. As Santa did!  Late in the third as he was defending our net he decided to show Trainor just how it was done. No hesitation and definitely no thinking involved, Santa buried the puck with authority in the back of the net, turned around and shouted at the forwards on the bench: “Thats How its Done!”

Andy did his best, ringing one off the crossbar in the third in an attempt to get us back in the game. And the line of Gord, Frank, Newts had the shift of the night keeping the puck in the All-Blacks zone for the entire shift ad banging away at the front of the net, but alas, to no fuition.

The game ended, the teams departed and the best part of most Grinders games commenced, the locker room banter. Which goes to show that in Hockey, sometimes the best action isn’t always on the ice.