With the 37" of snow we got last week, the C League hockey games were cancelled. Many thought we still should have played, while others felt like travelling was not a good idea. Although the opinions on this were mixed, the one unanimous feeling everyone had was how will we ever know how those games would have turned out.
As Mikey & I sat around my house last Wednesday, wearing our Blackhawk one-piece pajamas, watching The View & talking about our next game's strategy, we decided to play some NHL 2K13. "Wait a minute...." you may be saying, "That's not out yet." My connection in Japan gave me an early release copy of it (which has the Sedin Brothers holding hands while kissing Luongo on the cheek as the front cover). As we played, I mentioned how realistic the players abilities & personalities were on this game. How cool would it be to have a video game made in the likeness of our C League? At this time, Mikey jumps up almost knocking over my butter replica statue of Tony Esposito and proclaims "I can make that happen!"
As most know, Mikey dropped out of MIT (or mitt as he calls it), after 1 semester due to it being way too easy. So his genius computer skills kick in and he starts reprogramming the game! We invite Nate Brand over (pictured above) to help us simulate the player's actions using state of the art laser, flux capacitor device with a full 1.21 jiga watts of power. After approx 30 minutes of upgrades and simulation, we had the ABC League game programmed. This would allow us to simulate any game under any condition using our player's skills & quirks. We took into account every detail that was related to a player's ability including things like:
Mark Dylo's inability to pass
Tim Close not being able to stop on left side
Tony Hansen's gigantic 5 hole
Pete Anthan's tough defensive play
Nick Sindelar's goal scoring effectiveness
Rod Bragg's slapper from the blue line
Jason Wolf's aggressive back check
This was the easy part, the trick was to get the intangibles. The NHL games have things like stamina, strength & speed, but we took it up a notch and gave our characters life. In our league, its these variables that make or break a team, such as:
Scott Blomquist playing the position of center no matter what position he's at
Ryan Smiley's attendance
David Green showing up to arena when his game starts
Tres Hewlett injuries
Justin West hanging out at the red line all game
Dan Koenig's shift length
Gene Kelley's random firing upon his own goalie
Whether or not Rob Wheeler shows up early to have a beer
Matt Johnson's caffeine intake & yoga instruction for the day
Pat Houlihan's firefighter work schedule
Battistas TOI being 57 minutes
Nick Dawson's time in penalty box factor
Now that these were all in place, we could tell the game console to play out the games for last Wednesday as they would have happened, and the results were AMAZINGLY accurate!
Puck Hawgs (5) Vs. Kryptonite (4)
Kozak scores the Hawgs first goal as he wins the opening face off, skates back behind his own net, plays keep away from not only the other team, but his own team as well for 3 straight minutes and then proceeds to go coast to coast, knocking over Nataliya in the process to score a goal. Dustin Gordon scores goal #2 for the Hawgs in the 2nd period after receiving a perfect pass from Kavan, who was actually trying to trip Kundel of Kryptonite, but hit the puck instead. Sindelar shows up to the game with 4 minutes left in the 3rd to score the next 2 goals which includes the game tying goal.
Kryptonite comes out hard after Kozaks opening goal heroics. As the play is in Kryptonite's end, Brad Dean stands next to Hawgs goalie Hudson at the opposite end. As Dave Green looks up, he sees a wide open Dean full ice and fires him a pass. In what appears to be the most blatant off-sides play ever made on the face of the planet, the call is missed by referee Hickey and Brad fires in a shot to score as Hudson looks on stunned. The next goal is a great tic-tac-toe play between Johnson, Pedersen & Toigo. As all 3 raced for a loose puck in front of the Hawgs net, a full collision happens causing each one of them to receive mild concussions. The impact of this crash also caused the puck to ricochet around them and into the net. The goal was credited to Pedersen as he was the only one that could remember his name. Huyck & Barker teamed up for goal#3 as Huyck toe dragged around Dave Gannon and fed a beauty of a one-timer to Barker. Kryptonites final goal came from Paoli. As his teammate Gugat skated down the ice on what appeared to be a great breakaway opportunity, Paoli slipped in behind his teammate, lifted his stick stole the puck and fired high blocker towards a confused Hudson. As Paoli rode his stick like a horse in celebration, his team turned their backs on him for 2 minutes as a sign of shame.
The game winner came from Lisa Schumacher on what could be the strangest play ever seen. During her shift, the Kryptonite team sensed weakness and felt like a full line change was appropriate. The entire line skated off and jumped the boards to get off. The next line to jump out for Cup was Hill, Close, Edgington, Dean & Schnieders. These 5 players however don't jump over the boards and only use the door, but it was stuck. Rather than jump this one time to save a break away, they fiddled with the door for 72 seconds. During this time Lisa shot on the goalie 8 consecutive times, getting her own rebound each time, until Blaine was fully exhausted and couldn't stand anymore letting in the game winner.
Red Alert (9) Alien (2)
The simulated came took into account that I would have missed that game. Although the Alien defense is strong, its no match for Red Alert's offense without me. Rod Bragg scores a hat trick and even spilt Adam Lowell's stick in half with his 3rd goal. Curran picks up a goal in this game as his kid distracts Shane Bast in net by throwing slices of Swiss cheese at the glass directly behind the goal. The Battistas are held scoreless while West gets 19 breakaway opportunities utilizing his patented "wait at the red line" approach and capitalizes on one of them for a goal. Swift & Hobbs both contribute with 2 goals each to bring Alert's total to 9 while Hansen plays stellar in net. Tony faced 73 shots from the Alien crew (could have been 23 more shots, but Mikey's attempts 3 feet over the net didn't count in this total). Knipper fires his killer snapper from next to his own goal in an attempt to knock his own teammate Blomquist over but misses him and put it on goal and in the back of the net. Fascian scores the team's 2nd goal after being brought down from behind on his breakaway attempt. Henson of Alert (probably their weakest player), lost both of his skates blades and still had enough speed to catch up to Fascian while running barefoot on the ice to bring him down.
Although the XBOX 360 game simulation is guaranteed accurate at 99.999% of the time according to Mikey, one occurrence that happened was a bit strange. As Haynes of Alien skated past Jim Kent of Alert, he started challenging Kent to a fight. Kent was in shock and decided to get off the ice as he didn't know what the problem was. Out of nowhere, Haynes goes airborne and knocks Kent onto the ice and proceeds to put him in a Peruvian Necktie hold telling him that he better "tap out". Both benches clear in an attempt to break up the tussle, and it finally takes Keller of Alien to put a Spine Crank on Haynes to get him to release Kent. Strange.
Irwins (4) Voodoo (3)
Whitaker comes into the game off his "high" of being inducted into the WWF Intercollegiate All American Vegetarian Hall of Fame Inductee ceremony and outs his team on the board early with a goal in the first. With 10+ shots each, Wolf, Lewis, Toomey & Ambrose can't find the net a goalie Daniels plays well. Smiley of Irwins shows up in the 2nd period, only to skate one shift and mysteriously vanishes. Holloway gets called with a "too many men" penalty but tries to argue that Chad Beyer from his team doesn't count as a player on the ice. The 1-0 lead by Voodoo in the 2nd gets extended to 2-0 as Whitaker puts in his 2nd of the night. He makes a spin-o-rama move around Potthoff and made it look easy. Taking this lead into the 3rd period, Lasnek of Irwins gets a breakaway opportunity only to have Zorich of Voodoo throw her stick from the red line like a javelin and jam him in the back of the head. Although dazes, Lasnek attempts the penalty shot only to skate past the goalie Reeves and never gets a shot off. When he got back to the bench and the team asked what happened, he replied "I like banana bread and yogurt for while I watch Friends reruns". Dave was then quickly taken off the ice and treated for a concussion. Midway through the 3rd, Koenig decides that 2 1/2 straight periods of ice time was enough for him to need a change to he shifted with Whitaker. Irwins did a line change as well, which left Whitaker all alone with Daniels. As he shot the puck blocker side, Daniels deflected up in the air and Matt got his own rebound and batted it in. The hats came out of the stands from the 1,346 in attendance. With only 7 minutes remaining, Goodman of Irwins fires in a laser from the point to break the shout out. 2 minutes later, Hanke takes a great pass from Johnson and proceeds with the wrap around to score the team's 2nd goal. The game tying goal comes from Maxwell after Anthan poke checks the puck away from a selfish Giunta who wanted to score another for Voodoo. Maxwell's goal ties the game with only 2 minutes left. With both teams content with going to a shootout, each team look to just dump the puck. As the puck hangs in Voodoo's end, Whitaker attempts to ice the puck but it starts heading towards the net. The brilliant and quick thinking Daniels, jumps out of the way and lets the goal go in. This being Whitaker's 4th goal, it does not count and he serves a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. As Rech, Place & Wheeler cycle the puck on the power play, a quick shot from Goodman is re-directed by Wheeler for the game winner with only 11 seconds left.
So as you can see, these simulated games are so accurate & real, it would not be fair for me to use it for future predictions. After all this recap, I'm spent and make the following predictions for this Wednesday.
Kryptonite (6) Alien (5)
Puck Hawgs (9) Voodoo (3)
Irwins (5) Red Alert (1)
Have fun!
