SUNDAYS #2 vs. BLIZZARD:

(vol. 13S, no. 2; newsletter by j.c.)
Your Brain, Your thoughts, Your Fears, Psychology, Psychiatry. A few chemicals and electrical impulses fire (or fail to fire) inside your cranium and in your neighbor's and the actions and forces of the world take place. Hate, happiness, violence, fear, sex, buy, sell. Is this letter a prelude to a war protest? Is this a commentary why we should crush terrorism to prevent global Anarchy? Nope, this is the much-delayed Pirate newsletter from our third game (the second game was postponed) of the new Sunday season. Now I know you are saying “This is 10 yards beyond the Brian Newcomb scale of irrelevance” — but hang in there ...

The Pirates were coming off a Finals loss that we should have won. Many Pirates, frustrated with their play, wanted to change positions when Rusty stepped in and calmed the team down a few weeks back. We then started the season playing Team USA; we won that game 5-0, and most of us put the disappointing Finals loss behind us. We eagerly awaited our second game which was canceled due a record blizzard — not the team the Blizzard, but the actual winter weather phenomena.

Between moving tons of snow and not skating for 13 days, the Pirates timing could be expected to be “off” for our next game. But now back to Psychology-Impulses-Psychiatry ... which I will call PIP for short. Sometimes you feel you are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders and you just feel like giving up; sometimes a bad day or mood can be contagious. Other days you run into a Blizzard.

The Pirates came out flying and controlled the puck in the Blizzard zone for some time, generating lots of scoring opportunities, but were unable to convert. There was a quiet optimism that we were going to “light up” the Blizzard which have always given us trouble. Then the Blizzard finally cleared their zone and fired a shot from their side of center ice — an attempt to clear the puck; it wound up sailing across the goal line and that is when Psychology-Impulses-Psychiatry became a factor. Now some people might read into this as assailing our substitute goalie “Pip,” as Brian might do in his newsletters. Mr. DePippa had some off-moments, but that's not at all what I'm talking about because, in fact, our Psychology-Impulses-Psychiatry in our heads is what beat us!

Because I drive an hour down to play, I don't like to quit or presume that we are going to lose — even if the score is 10 to 1 (which fortunatley it wasn't). With two good passes you can get down the length of the rink in :15 seconds, therefore you have a chance to score. That means you have a chance to score a few goals in a minute or two and can get back into any game. DePippa did just that and he got it together and made saves later in the game (including a tight 2nd period). We were good enough to beat the Blizzard that night, we just let some brain impulses convince us that we weren't. There is no way you can win if you don't believe in yourself and your team. There is no way that your legs take the extra step to get a loose puck or to back check and stop the opponent's offense if 2:00 minutes into the game you give up mentally and think we have no chance of winning. And that's what we did.

And now back to the “real” newsletter ...

T he Pirates did get more scoring chances and Ralz, Wildman and LeMatty all tallied goals. And even with a bit more than 1:00 minute remaining (and trailing 5-3), we almost scored with our extra skater; unfortunately, I sent a bad pass right to the Blizzard in our zone and they iced the game. See what I mean? PIP is contagious!

The tone of this letter sounds (and maybe is) negative, but I am not down on anyone or the team, I just want us to think positively abd believe in ourselves and cover for each other when we are out of position and talk to each other on the bench about what we are going to do. If we do those things, we can beat anyone.