Alright so, last night got completely out of hand. And I am going to 220% blame the referees for that.

We lost the game. Plain and simple. We played the first place team in the league, Ye Olde, and we got our dicks kicked in, 6-1. I am not blaming the refs for our loss by any stretch of the imagination. But I will blame them for being higher than two canaries piloting a Boeing 747. How do I know they were baked like Pillsbury Crescent Rolls? Well, besides their general disinterest for making any calls, their virtually-shut blood shot eyes, and their complete ineptitude to handle any mildly stressful situation- they told us. Before the game they were talking about how high they were. Hey, it’s legal now. I think. Or something. And even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t care if they were fried deeper than KFC chicken- but you still have to do your job. And your job is to make calls and officiate a game, you can even do it poorly, but you have to actually do it.

Now look, Ye Olde has been in this league for a long time. They have won the championship a couple times- they are a “chippy” team. I use the word chippy because I don’t want to flat out call them dirty, but they definitely toe the line. They whack, slash, hit, slew foot, talk shit, and lose their temper when they don’t get their way. And for the whole first period this is what happened. They lead the league in penalty minutes and no one is surprised. And in the first period the refs let EVERYTHING go. From slashes, to hooks, to icings, offsides and everything in between. You could SMELL a fight coming from a mile away. They needed to make some calls, and we were definitely in the refs ear about it. Nothing changed, then the second period started and the wheels completely fell off.

I will say the closest the game ever got was 3-1, and that’s all on us. But in the 2nd period we had one of our players (not naming even nicknames in this one) take a very dirty shot from behind, he got up, dropped the mitts and fought the other guy, plain and simple. Punched him in the head until he was visibly bleeding. The other team wasn’t even that mad because the shot was so dirty the kid deserved to be fought.

Did the refs attempt to break anything up? No. Did they make a single penalty call up to this point? No. Did it take someone getting hit from behind and another kid bleeding from his head to make a call? Yes. Did it take the two completely skull fucked high-ons over 15 minutes to actually figure out who the penalties were on? Yes. It was a disaster. An absolute mess. It takes a lot for hockey not to be fun for me, and this definitely sucked ASS.

From this point on, the refs decided that anyone who said anything to them throughout the game was going to get a penalty, no questions asked. This is where your boy really started to shine. About halfway through the game our player got called for chirping the ref. 2 minute penalty, which Ye Olde scored on. I was on the ice for it. Skating by I said “bang up job” to my bench. Not at the ref. He hits me for two minutes. This is when we can confirm the train came completely off the tracks. This two minute penalty escalated into a 10 minute major, into a one game suspension, into a two game suspension. I’m not going to get into any details of the words that were exchanged, but I may or may not have mentioned to him that he was too high to do his job. And may have noted he could have been doing a better refereeing the game.

Did I lose my tempter at 11:30pm on a Thursday night during a men’s league hockey game in Hazel Park? Yeah I did. Am I particularly proud of the way I acted? No, not really. But I also don’t regret a god damn thing. Nothing pisses me off more in non-competitive adult hockey than fucking losers trying to get their whacks in because their hockey dream died a long time ago and they hate the life they currently lead. And what drives me even MORE insane, is when refs let it happen because their too fucking stoned or lazy to blow their whistle because they want to get home 10 minutes earlier.

I GET IT. You don’t want to ref shitty beer league teams till almost midnight during the week, I wouldn’t want to either, but that’s why I never signed up to be a ref. In hockey it’s easy to tell what kind of game you’re going to have from the first five minutes, and this one REAKED of chaos and they just did nothing.

I feel like this article was more of just me getting all of last night off of my chest. So I appreciate the 6 or 7 of you who stuck around this long. The Necks go into Thanksgiving break with a 3-6-1 record, sitting in 9th place out of 11 teams. Those are the facts, but they won’t tell our story. Last night we got our ass kicked, but the fire is alive and well. We stood up for ourselves physically and verbally, and we will be ready to split wigs when we come back.

I’ll end with this poetry from Mistrial: Should you have yelled your way into a two game suspension, and should have *name* punched that guy until he bled from his head? Probably not, but that’s not what beer league is about. It’s about taking it that extra mile. Look, we lost, BUT *name* bagging that guy and you telling that ref what we’re all about was a season turning point. On our end of the year championship VHS that will be a big scene. Serious music. Player interviews about it. The Works.

#SYNO 🦒🍾

–Frank