Patch, the hero

So team Gunnison Brewery pulled out the championship. Pretty excited no doubt. The Final was top notch, heading into overtime and then a double shootout (8 shooters in all). We ultimately won 4-3 (3 shootout goals to 2). Obviously in a shootout the goalie bears a lot of the weight on his shoulders and Patch stepped up to the moment (WARNING: this may be a cliche rich post).


So hockey gives out three "stars" of the game to each game's most valuable players. This was featured effectively in Segas Genesis' NHL '94 (my greatest achievement was scoring 22 goals in one game with Pavel Bure, ah the good ole days).


Star 1 - Corey. Corey plays defense but we encourage him to switch to offense when he has a good chance to score. All year long he has been aggressive but for one reason or another was having trouble scoring goals. In the playoffs, however, the floodgates finally opened. Corey scored a hat-trick in the final. This is pretty impressive considering he accounted for all of our goals in regulation.

Star 2 - Erica - Erica was our last shooter for the first shoot-out. Her chance came up as we were down 2 goals to 1. Thus, she had to score to push us into the second shoot-out. No goal, game over. Before the game I guess she took a couple of shots and was a little giddy to say the least in the locker-room, not inspiring a ton of confidence. I would have assumed by the end of the game she would have sufficiently sobered up, but before her turn to take her shot she was sitting on the bench sort of shaking her shoulders dancing a little bit. She seemed like she was just chillin out to Dylan playing in her head. Naturally, she was up for the moment, scoring the goal and sending us to the second shootout. Honorable mentions would be Mike and John. Mike scored our first shoot-out goal, which was big because it answered our opponents' first goal. John, ended up scoring the game winner in the second shootout.

Star 3 - last but certainly not least, Patch. Patch played solid all game long giving up a couple goals during regulation to one of the leagues best two players (don't worry, Patch had his revenge by stoning this guy in the shoot-out). The third and game tying goal was a little frustrating, it was a turnaround, blind, back-handed shot that found its way into the corner of the goal, Patch didn't see it until it was too late. Regardless, his true heroics came in the shootout. After stopping our opponents' best two players he gave up a solid goal to the same guy who scored the blind backhand (as a side note this guy skated in so slowly on his shootout try that it nearly drove me insane. I think it was effective. Everyone else pretty much skated up at a good speed allowing the goalie just to react to what was happening, this guy, on the other hand, let everybody at the rink think and think and think before finally shooting a quick wrister). The second goal (leading to Erica's heroics) was a nice shot matched with a bit of tough luck, Patch got his stick on the puck but the puck still hit the top of the net. In the second shootout I liked our chances a little bit better. We had already stopped their best two players (probably 2 of the 3 best players in the league) but even though they were tougher up top we definitely had more depth. I had a good bit of confidence in our shooters 6 through 8 whereas I was pretty sure Patch could lay down the law on their shooters. As it worked out, our second shooter scored (John) giving Patch the opportunity to win the game with a save (had he not made the save we would have had a chance to win with our last skater). Naturally, Patch came up huge and we won it all. Pretty good stuff. Not sure if Gunnison Valley Hockey League (GVHL) Intermediate championship is bettter than Team Gibson Newport Beach "C" League Hoops championship but it's definitely up there. Plus it leads me to the following consideration...

Am I the greatest team player in GVHL Intermediate hockey history? Short answer, probably. Although our team lost one game, I wasn't there due to the flu bug I mentioned before. So not only did the team I was on win the championship, but I never lost a game. Considering, unfortunately, this will very likely be my last winter in Gunnison and probably the last time I play hockey (just when I was developing some mad skills) I will likely end my career with one season, one championship, and no losses. The fact that I was as good or better than maybe one guy on the team seems largely irrelevant in light of these other facts (please pick up on the tongue and cheek here).

Our team championship picture made the local paper, I'll try to get on that and put the picture of the picture on the blog. Basically Gunnison Brewery has reached KROQ status and is world famous.


(how I spent my week with the cup - we went on vacation)