SUNDAYS #6 vs. A FEW GOOD MEN:

(vol. 24S, no. 6; newsletter by k.r.)
This week's sports pages were full of headlines: Mario retires, Kobe scores 81, and Federer wins the Australian open. Big deal. They all missed the big story of the week: Ferraro returns to the Coastal Pirates line-up. OK, so it was a 9 p.m. start and I could see it pushing the filing deadline, but still this shouldn't have been a reason for such an oversight. To help his transition back into black, he had eight teammates with him and Harris in the cage as usual. Keith, Kevin and Joe Baio manned the blueline, while Chris, Wildman, Dan DiPierro, Scott LeMatty and Glenn joined him up front.

The Pirates opened the scoring in the 1st period after Glenn beat the keeper on a blast from the right circle (assist to Kevin). Unfortunately one of the good men on the Few Good Men answered right back on the next face-off to even things up 1-1, followed by another good man notching a tally on a breakaway to give them a 2-1 lead. After about three posts, the aforementioned Jimmy Ferraro finally tied things up 2-2 before the 1st period came to a close.

The final period was “The Kevin McLaughlin Show” — as he would get five of his six points in this frame. The game was tied 3-3 before the Pirates finally woke up and took control of the game. Wildman and Keith would also post goals in the series of four unanswered tallies that began at the 14:00-minute mark. The sixth Pirates' goal was great to be involved in: Keith broke out of the defensive zone and headmanned the puck to Jimmy in the center of the rink, who then moved it to the left wing where Kevin picked it up and skated into the zone; meanwhile, Keith was streaking down the right side and Kevin hit him with a pass that he directed in to double-up the score at 6-3. (In hindsight, I guess I should be asking myself what both defensemen were doing on the rush ... but it all worked out.)

Though a nice size crowd witnessed our third win of the season, the Pirates will have to see if they'll be competing against the Seahawks and Steelers for attendance next week as the league has yet to decide if games will be postponed for some football game (check the website for the latest news). This “Super Bowl” as they call it, will probably get more headlines ahead of the Pirates as well, but what can you do — you can't control the media. Just ask Monica Lewinsky. Till next time ...
date of game: 1.29.06