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WEDNESDAYS #7 vs. GERIATRICS:

(vol. 4W, no. 7; newsletter by j.c.)
Coastal Pirates showed up with seven skaters and one gimp (me). our lines were completely shaken and it was like we were playing our first game as a team together. The 1st period started we were tentative, but the play was even until the Gerry's scored a goal off a deflection. We came back and scored two goals which were nullified by the refs, a quick whistle and not seeing where the puck was. That took the wind out of our sails (which wasn't much because of the short bench).

The Gerry's added another goal late and we were quite frustrated, we had been passing and carrying the puck well, just not getting shots off, or unlucky deflections put our shots wide. Some nice passes just missed and we could have a few more.

Glen Chambers smartly called time out after the second goal late in the 3rd(I think 3:00 mins left), but I blew my first (and hopefully last!) coaching decision and said to pull the goalie with a minute left. It was 2-0 and I wanted to get a goal first, but that was too conservative. (I forgot that we aren't the NJ devils and need time to score two goals). We pulled the goalie at 1:04 left, after a Gerry's icing, we controlled the face off, but another Gerry deflection off a point shot backed us up in our zone. We protected the empty net, broke out of our zone, and Scott Miller blasted a shot that beat the goalie with 36 seconds left. The center ice face-off was a scrum and the puck wound up in our zone. With :16 seconds left Rob A. from our goal line hit me with a pass at our blue line. I had peeked before Rob's pass, (and obviously the clock...) and saw four of our guys open (two on each boards) on the Gerry's blue line, but turned toward our net to take the pass and then backhanded the puck up the middle to the twoGerry's defenseman instead of the boards where Scott/Jim/Glen and Chris were. With a good pass at the end or pulling the goalie with 2:00 minutes left, I think we could have had a tie to make up for the bad ref calls. Just another reason not to take any prisoners in the playoffs.