Freezing Muskies 4, Freezerburn 0

That was fun. As long as I can find an injury insurance policy for Dave, we'll be in great shape.

Seriously though, we already have much higher potential than last year's team. Attendance was spectacular (13 Muskies, including 5 newones, and 1 absence). Our system of rapid substitutions went well,although be careful about taking yourself out of the middle of a play. Need more quick communication on the who, when and where of substituting.

One old weakness that resurfaced: Too many yellow shirts chasing after the ball at the same time, hence not enough spreading out forman-to-man coverage. Not enough in-your-face coverage of their best shooters. Elite teams will eat that for lunch.

PENALTY: Pat, our Sunday referee, is also the league commissioner, sohe's bound to be more strict. He smacked me with a two-minute penalty for "carelessness" when I whacked a girl in the shins while trying to make a shot. I was not happy with my control throughout the game, but atleast I was playing the ball, and the girl didn't care (and that's what her shin guards are for!). Freezerburn still failed to score on the power play. Nor did they score late when we went with a 3 boy/3 girl arrangement.

SEASON GOAL COUNT: Dave: 3, Jean: 1

SEAN'S SAVE PERCENTAGE: 100

ROOKIES OF THE WEEK: Jaime, Courtney

INSTANT DOUBLE-HEADER: For those who stuck around: Red Army 8, Freezing Muskieburn 2. Jean had another goal.

The Great Muskie Logo Contest 2006

Thanks to everyone who worked hard and submitted ideas for the new Muskie logo. Now for the hard part: We have to choose just one.

The first thing you'll notice is that most of the submissions are very similar. Most designers went with a similar theme, taking one of my original suggestions. Perhaps I should have made this a committee job instead, but the last time we did this there were only two submissions.

Another option: girls and guys could go with different logos, since it may be necessary to do two separate screenprints anyway.

So please select your first choice and your second choice and send them to me in an email. You can also make constructive comments here.

Caveats: 1) Almost every designer said that their logo was a rough draft and changes can be made. 2) The final logo will probably be a black-on-red screenprint.

OPTION 1



OPTION 2



OPTION 3



OPTION 4



OPTION 5



OPTION 6



OPTION 7



OPTION 8



(Just kidding.)

Playoffs: Cooter's 11, Muskies 0

I wouldn't bother feeling too bad about last night's playoff drubbing. Cooter's does that to everyone. They've been on-and-off Monday champs for at least four years. Their other scores this season: 4-0, 10-1, 7-0, 1-6 (an actual loss, to the Rink Rats), 7-1 and 5-1. And most of their opponents finished in the Top 7. I'm not sure why they find it interesting to play in such a mismatched league; they're probably Yankee fans too.

Granted, I was hoping that we would not give them their best performance of the season. My plans to stack up on defense didn't really work out. Cooter broke through our D-line all the time, and by then it was all over. Luck always went their way, while our [Paul's] best shots bounced off the posts. When you're good, you create your own luck. In the second half they only scored two or three times. Did we improve, or did they get bored?

I like CSC, the league we're in. I like the playing environment, the quirky rules, the smaller rinks and the soft boards. But despite 100 teams in seven divisions, they've combined the high "A" level with the low "B" level, creating an incredibly broad range of team quality.

We finished the regular season 13th out of 20, which a team of mostly rookies and sophomores should be proud of. But looking at all the blowout scores throughout the league, it seems like CSC should separate the A and B teams. Brian suggested we find a new league next year, but if that's not viable, maybe we should just try a different night, one with fewer Cooterite dynasties.

Random stats

- Good sign: Our record of 2-4-1 is identical to the Muskies' first kickball season.

- Dave remained the scoring leader with 4 goals, despite playing only twice. Brian, Scott, Jaki and I are tied for second with 3 each. Dave had 2.0 goals per game played; Brian was a distant second with 0.6.

- Not a stat, but getting the tar kicked out of us four times has made us better. If we had faced Cooter's a few weeks ago, it may have been worse than 11-0.

This isn't over. We leared tonight that a bonus game is in our future if we ask for it. Details to come.

Muskellunge 5, Meconium 0

The other team started the game one man short, and only one of them had shoes. "Hey Holly," I said. "Keep stirring that barrel -- we don't want the fish to freeze."

For once, we got to be the dominant team, playing a mostly offensive game and almost giving goalie Sean the night off. It was nice to be able to use teamwork and strategy without getting bulldozed. Hopefully we can use what we learned next week. I thought it worked well to have a boy on defense and a girl forward.

We quickly went up 5-0, starting with Kevin's first two team goals. Then came the moment: The first-ever girl goal in Muskie history. Holly was the lucky girl, with a Scott-style long-distance luck shot from the center line. Kudos!

Not to be outdone, Scott went ahead and delivered the knockout punch, so to speak, slicing open a Meconium girl's face with a slightly high stick. Blood poured all over the ice, freezing in a morbid puddle for all to see. I was standing right there and at first I thought he slit her throat. The rest of their girls escorted her to the hospital for stitches, and the game was effectively over. Best of luck to her.

Side note: Now how do you feel about getting a helmet and facemask? That's what I thought. Go to Play It Again this weekend; you might find something serviceable in the used bin. The only reason I haven't gotten a mask is that my cranium is huge and I can't find anything used, so I'll have to buy something new for $100. In the meantime, I'm tempting fate. Think about it.

With the game aborted, Jaki, Holly and the ref joined the other team, and we played a surprisingly competitive and robust 20-minute scrimmage that ended 2-2. That included a Jaki goal for the other team, so maybe it was like 3-1 Muskies.

Ever a gentleman, Dave's brother Paul held back from doing much real damage, preferring to give the rest of us the glamorous work, but still showing off such snazzy moves as his "hand-pass to yourself" and his magical "keep away" ball control.

GOALS (first half)

Kevin: 2
Jaki: 1
Holly: 1
Paul: 1

Second half goals that didn't count:

Simon: 1
Scott: 1
Jaki: 1 (for the other team)

We finish the regular season with a 2-3-1 record, and this win catapults us to 13th place in a field of 20 -- not half-bad for a rookie team! My best guess is that this means we play the 4th-place team -- the storied Bunny's Muni's (4-0-2) -- for the first round of the playoffs next week. Stay tuned for confirmation.

Bandits 9, Muskies 1

Well, wasn't that fun?

We are in a freefall, too inexperienced and simply unable to put it together. The other teams get better as the season progresses, but our growth chart seems to stay roughly flat. Each of our three losses has been to a team that entered the game with a worse record and came out with a better one. If these are the losing teams in the league, who needs the winners? And how did we manage to win that one game 7-6? If anyone can remember, let me know.

The thing is, we can't even get any shots on goal. We scuffle around like flailing monkeys, temporarily clearing the ball into the offensive zone, then watching it come right back. Scott, again with our only goal of the game, did it on a totally lucky shot from center ice that the goalie waved at weakly. But you know what? You know that giant mesh tent over there? At least he sent a ball vaguely in the direction of it!

We did this, what, three times? I don't know whether it's great to be Sean, because he gets a lot of save opportunities and racks up a nice percentage (for broomball), or whether it sucks to be Sean, because the experience is basically like being stoned by a gang of construction workers on meth. (This reminds me of the story of the the girl goalie from Cloquet who did nothing but get pelted all night, racking up a goddess-like .954 save percentage and losing 0-1 all the time, but always kept a good attitude.) I do know one thing: We pretty much don't deserve him.

Ah, but Dave's injured. But could Dave have single-handedly turned 5-1 and 10-1 losses into wins or at least ties? Now if anyone could do that, it's him, but I'm not sure our record would be any different if he were healthy right now.

So anyway, with Jenny out with the flu, we still didn't get to have a girl sub, so we were on defense for the whole game once again. I switched places with Liz for a few minutes, and that seemed to help a little, until she got golfed in the face pretty severely, making her especially attractive to Angelina Jolie fans for the next few days. When Liz got back on the ice, she came damn close to a goal of her own at one point.

Then the part that I feel pretty bad about in my recovering-Catholic way. I somehow fell prostrate against the boards, fighting for the ball against a Bandita. I finally cleared it after four hacks, and tried to get up. But she was standing in between my legs, so I half-consciously, half-clumsily took her down while getting up. I think there's a line between rough and dirty. Down 8-1 and pretty roughed up myself, I was trying to make something, anything happen, so I chose not to tiptoe around her. She didn't like that, so she whacked me in the shins, twice, drawing a penalty. What do you think, was I wrong? Go ahead and criticize me at will.

We've got one more game in the regular season, and it will be our greatest challenge yet: A team that is 0-5 as of last night. A real meeting of the minds. Let's have some fun, try to win a game and end the regular season on a note. Perhaps even a high note.

And thanks for playing with the Muskellunge. It's been worth it for me; hopefully also for you.

Winter schedule (updated)

Our season schedule has been updated, with the postponed Jan. 2 game moved to Feb. 6. All games are on Mondays at the Icebox.

Dec. 19: Muskies 4, Sofa King 4
Jan. 9: Rink Rats 9, Muskies 2
Jan. 16: Muskies 7, Sweepers 6
Jan. 23: Newmanators 5, Muskies 1
Jan. 30: 9:40 p.m. vs. Bandits (1-3)
Feb. 6: 6 p.m. vs. meconium all-stars (0-4)
Feb. 13: First round of playoffs, TBA. (Brian gone.)
Feb. 20: Final all-night tournament, if we win on Feb. 13.

Notes:

- Here I go again: Our two remaining regular-season opponents have a combined record of 1-7. What does that tell us? Nothing. But at least we'll have a fighting Muskie chance.

- If we win the next two, we can get decent seeding for the first round on Feb. 13, which is set up as a 16-team tournament. Right now we are No. 15 (out of 20) but we have a chance to get up to No. 8 or 9.

- If we get to Feb. 20, I'll consider that a bonus. But Brian will be teaching Mexican schoolchildren about broomball on Feb. 13, so we'll have to figure out what to do then.

Newmanators 5, Muskellunge 1

Ouch. Consider us Newmanated. Nothing really worked tonight. It is clear that we Muskies really have yet to find ourselves as a team without Dave. This performance made our 7-6 win last week look like a lot of dumb luck by comparison. This probably serves as some kind of lesson about going into a game overconfidently.

We started off telling each other that we wanted to improve on defense and limit the other guys' shots. But that doesn't explain how we lost 5-1 to a team that was 3-8 over the last 13 months. It doesn't explain how we have consistently given up an incredibly high average of 5.5 goals per game despite very good goaltending. It doesn't explain how three of our four opponents have had their best offensive games of the season against us. And it doesn't explain how we only managed one score of our own -- a season low.

Back to the drawing board...

Play of the game: Scott scored our sole goal by practically sliding into the crease. It was beautiful. We couldn't get any shots off in the conventional manner.

Dave of the Week: Eli was incredibly fast out there in his broomball debut. Somebody get this boy some D-Gels and hospitalization coverage, stat!