SUNDAYS #5 vs. DIRE WOLVES:

(vol. 12S, no. 5; newsletter by h.s.)
The “Pirate Curse” is alive and well. For those of you to young to remember what the “Pirate Curse” is, you may have to ask one of the old-timers who lived through this phenomenon game-after-game in Eatontown. Quite simply, it is the ability of the puck to find its way into our net with 1:00 minute (or less) remaining in a game. Because I am writing this particular newsletter two weeks after the event, I have the benefit of hindsight — or is it foresight? — and I already now that in Game #6 vs. Zombies we'll suffer a similar fate. But enough of the past (or future) and onto the game ...

After edging the Jags B to begin this season, we dropped three games in a row (much of the credit for that, of course, goes to Wednesday-nighter TPOC, who sidelined our Art Ross and Maurice Richard Trophy winner for much of this spell). We decided to shake things up a bit and brought Scott LeMatty back to “D” along with Mike Farrell and Wednesday-nighter Keith Richardson. This freed Ed “Scooby” Southworth and Roger “The Rabbit” Weiss to roam the other side of the blueline for a change. This strategy paid-off big in the 1st period as we jumped out to a 2-0 lead (goals to Farkas and Ralz, with assists to Chris, Wildman and Scooby).

It looked as though we could be on our way to a comfortable victory for a change, but our scoring dried-up in the 2nd period and neither team could add a tally during the 15:00 minutes.

The Dire Wolves jumped back into the game in the 3rd when they scored twice halfway through the period to make it a 2-2 game. But with not too much time remaining, blueliner Mike Farrell fired a long shot on a feed from Wildman and got us back the lead, 3-2 . But just when things were looking pretty good, with just about 1:00 minute or two remaining, the Wolves tied things up on a long shot that hooked just inside the outer post.

And the “Curse” lives on ...