The Summer Season is off to a good start

Our first game produced a tie sticking true to the average Hockey-Life score 7-7.

In what was a really fun game to watch, the line of Chris Alpaugh, Rob Devries and Zayad Osman shone brightest with beautiful tic tac toe passing. It took them a little over half the game to figure out how to turn their dominance into goals though. If they can continue their form this week, you can expect their numbers to double.

Chris Alpaugh scored in bunches and Robbie Devries assisted on almost all of the goals. These two have picked up right where they left off at the end of the Winter season. You can expect to see them battling it out all season for that points lead.

 The only thing that stands in their way is the line of Cris Cervoni, Dan Tigert and Marc Corbiel. Who used their Left Trigger tactics and "vision control" ala NHL 12 to find the score sheet multiple times.

Game 2 will be something else that's for sure.

Thursday night produced a similar result, a 7-6 win in what was the debut of new Hockey-Life jerseys. The Philly Orange prevailed over the Broadway Blueshirts. This game had a little bit of everything including a comical performance from Shawn "line change" Herman - who may have hit the sauce a little too hard prior to the game.

Please keep in mind that we have been hit by the injury bug with quite a few players being sidelined. If you know of anyone who is looking for some ice time, send them our way. Contract spots are almost full at this time so snatch em up while they're available or just sign up as a spare.

Let's keep it up out there, two great games to start the season. Looks like we're going to have quite the summer on our hands.

Summer is here

We have the Summer seasons both starting up this week. Tuesday April 17th at 9:15 marks Game one for the Tuesday night guys and Thursday April 19th at 9:45 is game one for our Thursday crew.

You can click on the Schedule link to see the full list of games for both nights.

A special thank you goes out to everyone who took part in the Winter season. It was a great way to spend Saturday afternoons.

We had 5 different goalies play for us during the winter but at the end of the day, there were two that played the most games. Jordie and Jorge were the main tenders we had and they did a great job all season providing some classic moments. It came down to the wire but Jordie just
barely edged Jorge.

Jordie Margison - GP 20, GAA 7.30 with 9 Wins.
Jorge Goulart     - GP 21, GAA 7.43 With 7 Wins. ( and 1 assist - BOOM! )

Ryan Wigle took the Overall points title with 69 points. Followed by Rob Devries who had 67pts and Chris Alpaugh 64pts. This was a close race down the wire.

Wigle also took the Goal scoring race and it wasnt even close. Ryan lit the lamp 40 times in 15 games played. The closest challenger was Adam Klimowicz who tallied 33 times in 24 games. This was a no contest.

Our playmaker title is shared this season between Shawn Herman and Rob Devries, both registered 42 assists on the season. Pretty impressive.

Cris Cervoni had a Career season, he really broke out this year and caught a lot of attention for his over the top celebrations. The thing is he was putting in work too. Cris registered 30 Goals, 31 Assists and takes home the bragging rights of winning the most games this season with 11.

The spares race was pretty close too, Brad Amberley had a pretty good hold on the lead until Darcy Thomsen came back from a concussion and fired it up. Darcy finished the season with 45 points while Brad was right there with 43.

March 17th, 2012

Our St.Patricks day special turned out not to be so special. Team Green destroyed The Throwbacks by a score of 11 to 5 to win the series.

Ryan Wiggle tallied 2 goals and 3 assists. He was matched by Marc Corbeil who also had 5 points. While Amberley and Darcy battled it out for "Super Spare" status, both recorded 4 points leaving each of them in the running.

 

The defense for Team Green was key. They shut down The Throwbacks and really limited any scoring chances. Herman also chipped in with 3 apples and a Geno. While Zyad who it seemed was playing everywhere had 2 goals and an assist as well.

Team Throwback wasn't quite able to overcome the short bench and fell victim to some sloppy line changes along with bad defensive zone coverage.

Lobo lead the team in points with 1 goal and 3 assists. Cris Cervoni found the back of the net twice and Adam Klimowicz had 1 goal and an apple.

At the end of the day Team Green just played a better all-around game. They did a tremendous job in frustrating the Throwbacks on every approach.

Tight Series!

We have another good old fashioned Hockey-Life series on our hands. It seems that no matter what the teams are, they always battle it out down the stretch.

This time around is no different. After a Game 1 blowout that saw team Green top the Throwbacks 8-3, things have evened up a little bit. Trying to avoid an early sweep the Throwbacks stormed out of the gate in Game 2 taking a 5-2 lead late into the game. If not for some last minute heroics from Ryan Wigle, the series would have gone to Game 3 tied at one a piece. Wiggs netted two late goals, one of which was the game tying goal. The Throwbacks would have to settle for a draw after out playing Team Green for most of the afternoon.

Game 3 started off with a rush from the Throwbacks that almost saw them score off the first drive. Adam Klimowicz kicked the puck up to his stick off the faceoff and walked into the zone releasing a wrist shot on net. Cris Cervoni jumped on the rebound and the two swatted away with Green jerseys draped all over them. Jordie managed to shut the door and keep the score at 0-0.

The game play was much like that of Game 2. The Throwbacks controlled possession early by keeping Team Green hemmed in their own zone. Jordie made some big saves when called upon, the prettiest had to be when Throwback D man B.Micks found himself all alone at the side of the cage with nothing but twine starring back at him. Jordie dove across the net and deflected the puck over the net with his paddle. A real beaut of a save, that left Micks cussing more than usual.

When the Green team did break out, they were being swarmed by a tight team defense from the Throwbacks. Lunnen was making all the perimeter shots look like a walk in the park, but he also made some great saves one on one with Wigle. The biggest save came late in the game when Vince MacDougall was awarded a penalty shot, Lunnen stuck out the pad and made a crucial save as Team Green was really starting to pour it on.

Following a common trend in this series The Throwbacks were starting to look a little gassed. Team Green capitalized on this as they attempted to mount another comeback. Shawn Herman had 2 assists in the game bringing his season total to a second best 38. Robbie Devries leads the league in assists at 39. Darcy Thomsen played his first game back since suffering a concussion, he had 1 goal and 3 assists putting him in first among spares with 41 points.

All this wasn't enough... Adam Klimowicz registered a Hat-trick while Chris Alpaugh had a Goal and Assist. Cervoni, Micks, Carter and Carducci all chipped in with goals, leading the Throwbacks to an 8 - 6 Victory tying the series at 1-1.

The Points race is looking to be a tight one as we finish off the season:

R.Wigle     - 62
R.Devries    - 62
C.Alpaugh    - 60
A.Klimowicz    - 57
C.Cervoni    - 56

Let's see if we can finish this off on Saturday.

Cheers

February 25th, 2012

A whole new Series

With new teams made up, the boys were back at it for Game 1 of the "throwback" series. The two teams were divided into as many original members we could find VS all the new guys.

Well ... the first game was a complete gong show. The "new guys" took it to the Throwback team pretty bad. Exposing them defensively and shutting the offense down pretty easily en route to an 8-3 Win.

Robbie Devries had 1 Goal and 4 Assists, catapulting him to first overall in the points race with 58 Total.

Ryan Wigle had 2 Goals and 3 Assists  which leaves him one point behind Robbie at 57. Wigle is still holding on to first place for Goal scoring, having found the back of the net 34 times this season.

Brad "Amberley Down" had 1 Goal and 1 Assist as a spare, which officially puts him in the lead for the "Super Spare" category with 38 Points in just 10 games.

Congratulations go out to Junior, who got his first official win this year while contributing 3 assists.

We can't forget to give Tyler a shout out, as he ended his goal drought potting 1 Goal and 2 Assists. It felt like an eternity since he had a geno beside his name. Way to go little buddy!

Marc Corbeil, who scored 2 goals and added a helper, was overheard saying that this series is going to be over fast with a repeat performance in-store for game 2 ... but he also said that the Leafs would win the Cup this year after acquiring Rick Nash.

Next game goes on Saturday, March 03, 2012. Yupp, it's already March. See everyone at the Bunker at 3:30.

February 18th, 2012

Grand Finale with special guest.

Prior to the face off for game 6, Hockey-Life was paid a surprise visit...

Local radio station personality "Taz" was in the building along with a crew from FM96.

Taz challenged the two teams to a shootout. With the winning team getting 15 tickets to go see the movie premier of the newest Hockey based comedy "Goon". A video of the shootout should be posted on the FM96 website at some point this week. Most of the shooters attempted some sort of trick shot. We saw a between the legs Marek Malik style goal, a caped mini stick attempt and the classic sliding hand pass as well. One Vince Carducci didn't seem to get the memo, he walked in and fired a shot five hole ... guess he really wanted those tickets.

At the end of the day the HockeyLife team beat the London Hussars to secure the tickets. The atmosphere on the ice was tremendous, and it really felt like an Allstar competition of sorts.

It was a real pleasure to be a part of this. Shout out to FM96 for hooking the boys up. See everyone at the show on Wednesday!


After all the excitement we still had a game to play, with both teams looking for that series clinching victory.

With league leading scorer Chris Alpaugh out of the lineup, the question was would the top line for Team Jordie be able to continue their pace. Inserted into the lineup was Brad "Amberleydown" Amberley and the line once again produced most of the teams scoring. Amberley registered 4 goals and 5 assists, Robbie DeVries had 3 goals and 5 assists while Adam Klimowicz chipped in with 2 goals and 3 assists.

Vince MacDougall once again found the scoreboard, potting another timely highlight reel snipe top cheddar. This goal was the turning point, as Team Jorge had just scored 3 unanswered at that point and were really looking like they were ready to make a comeback.

Cris Cervoni once again pulled a great celebration out of his bag of tricks. After scoring his only goal of the game, Cervoni skated out to centre ice and did a Swan-like slide on his stomach. He looked like he may have been injured on the play as he hit his chin off the ice during the slide but he was fine.

Marc Corbeil had 2 goals and 2 assists for Team Jorge, while Junior had 1 goal and 2 assists. Ryan wigle added 1 goal and 1 assist.

Team Jordie held on to take the game and series by a score of 10-6. This was one of the longest series' we have ever played at Hockey-Life and actually the first one where the goalies picked teams. Those guys seem to know what they are doing. They picked two very even teams. Also, both Jordie and Jorge played some of their best hockey, you can really see that they are in mid-season form now. That means it's only going to get tougher to score on these guys! That's scary.

See everyone at the show!

If not see the rest of you next Saturday when we start our Throwback series.

The end is in sight

It has taken 5 games for us to get 2 wins out of these teams. On February 11 2012 Jordie backstopped his team to a tight 8-7 win.

Cris Cervoni scored early in the game and showcased his new celebration by paying tribute to a young Teemu Selanne circa 1992.
In other words ... he went all "Duck Hunt" on his glove.

Cervoni was out dueled by his main competition though. Chris Alpaugh had himself a pretty good game (2g, 2a) and now sits 2 points ahead of Cervoni for the overall points lead. Alpaugh 54, Cervoni 52, Wigle 50. Cervoni, and Wigle will get a chance to leapfrog Alpaugh on Saturday as he will be out of the lineup with "family life - like symptoms"

Game 5 was a classic back and forth game again. The goalies were tremendous at both ends of the rink and didn't allow too many rebounds. The general feeling on both benches was that another tie had occurred - this was backed up by the mathematical skills of one Mr.Borek. After a recount, it was discovered that in fact Team Jordie earned their first "W" of the series.


Team Jordie was once again propelled by the first line which accounted for 4 goals and a total of 11 points. Jorge's boys were a little more balanced with all but one player registering at least a point.

All we need is one more win from either team and we can put an end to this monster of a series that has been going on for over a month now.

Some people may have a little more incentive to get a win here as the season progresses. Only one contract Hockey-Life member has yet to record a Win on the season. It's only fair to note that he hasn't played the whole season and actually only has 6 games under his belt since being called up from the rookie league but Marcin Gluchowski will be eager to get the monkey off his back this Saturday.

See ya'll at the Brookside Bunker, that glorious ice sheet awaits...