The Season Finale

After 32 weeks of hockey, we end our inaugural season this Wednesday. This season ends with some great memories and on this Wednesday night, the final match ups are played.

In the 5th place game, the much improved Irwin's team will play the talented Puck Hawgs. Both these teams did not have a game last week and should be fired up and ready to play. "We hated not playing last week", said captain Beede of Hawgs. "You should have seen how angry Lisa got at Joe when he said we don't get to play." The picture below of Lisa & Beede was taken by a fan right after the team was informed they were not going to play last week.

Although I understand the player's frustration, we still need to remember to keep out emotions in check. Even newcomers to our league like Adam Krultz (of Hawgs) was in shock. "I know they're my teammates, but a trade to another team may be the right move for me", stated Krultz. "I know I'm the best player out there and I'm sure someone wants me."

The Irwins team also comes into the game having missed last week. Several players traveled to Europe to play in an International event. This was a charity event to raise money for goalie Daniels in an effort to upgrade his gear. "He doesn't have much padding and I'm sure it hurts when he gets hit", observed teammate Wheeler. "He doesn't even wear pads in the 'you know where' region". Here we see a team photo of the Irwins players making the trip to Germany.

Left to right: Dave Lasnek, Gary Halloway, Ryan LePera, Bill Goodman, Michael Johnson, Jim Goeke, Rob Wheeler & Todd Daniels.

The match up for 3rd place pits Voodoo versus Alien. Here we have 2 teams that actually felt like they had a shot to get to the championship game and were quickly shut down by the #1 & #2 seeds. The Voodoo game was relatively calm since Matt Whitaker decided to keep his hands to himself. The Alien game last week was as close as can be, and even went into a shootout. An incident did occur between 3 players, but over this past weekend they settled their differences in a friendly game of underwater hockey.

Pictured: Brook Current (#11 in Red) fights for the loose puck as Dan Bishop (dark suit bottom of pile) attempts the steal, while Ben Paoli (#8 in Red) comes to his teammate's defense.

The final game has none other than Cup o Kryptonite playing Red Alert for the Fleming Cup Championship. 2 of the finest captains take their teams to the ice at 9:45 to determine the best of the best. At the beginning of the season, there was debate on what to call this championship and the idea of the "Barista Cup sponsored by Starbucks" was quickly nixed by Johnson of Cup. The name was too close to Battista and although Matt hopes to one day open a Starbucks franchise, he wasn't prepared to have them sponsor the event.

Red Alert has prepared for this game their entire season. Although this is their first season in the ABC League, it is not their first year of playing hockey together. This is actually their 3rd year as a group and they have previously played in the Sioux Falls Competitive National Development League and the Minneapolis Elite Semi-Pro League. This Wednesday, they also debut their 3rd edition Red Alert video game. "I think we are proud of the game this year. I'm sure all the kids will love it" proclaimed Curran of Red Alert. "I'm happy that they used Dave Swift on the cover as he's deserving of that honor."

So, no prediction, no humorous comments, no surprises on this, the final blog entry for the 2009-2010 season. Just a professional writing trying to shed some informative light on what we refer to as adult hockey. Good night & good luck.