I got mad. I told myself before this year started I wouldn’t get mad at the refs during the game. But last night I got really mad. I got so mad after the 300 Footers scored their 3rd goal and put the game pretty much out of reach, I threw a minor temper tantrum by screaming FUCK as loud as I know how and jammed my stick into the water bottle area and knocked them down.

Embarrassing? Eh. I’ve done way worse. Frustrating? Understandable? I think my teammates would back me on it.

The 300-Footers are hands down the best team in the league. If I showed you their roster and told you to start googling names, you’d find some NHL careers spanning over 10 years. Not kidding. Sure, they are mostly in their 40’s, but if you’ve played in the Show, you are skilled as fuck, almost forever. They are good. But so are we. And the team that faced the 300-Footers last night was a lot different that the team that faced them week one of the season and lost 5-2.

Last night we lost 4-1. And while the deficit was the same, yesterday’s game was wildly different than the first. In a great back and forth start to the game, the Longnecks came out buzzing, quickly displaying the talent we always knew we had. Legs are coming back to form, and we’re starting to play more as a team…with that said, we did drop to 2-0 deficit in the first. Goalie was out again. And we had a different sub goalie than the night before. He played well enough for us to win. A theme you may seem throughout this write up is that I will mention the officiating more than a few times, and their decision making is what eventually led to my minor temper tantrum I noted above.

I never blame the refs. I hate excuses. When you lose a game, it’s never one play. It’s never two plays. There are always things you could have done better to put yourself into a better position to win. But I am going to tell you facts- their first goal was clearly offsides. Plain and simple. Blown call made it 1-0. Their second goal was pretty flukey, caught our goalie off guard and shockingly found the back of the net on a blind turn around shot from one of their forwards. That’s how we got to 2-0 after 1.

The thorn in our side is out offense. That goes without question. We have played 5 games and have 9 goals. Which is almost staggering to look at. We have the lowest amount of goals in the league by at least 4, and for reference, the 300-Footers had 21 goals going into the game.

While the first was very back and forth with timely goal scoring by the 300’s, the 2nd was undoubtedly our period. We scored our goal off a breakaway from one of our subs, and while the goal was a beauty of a breakaway going from left to right sliding the puck under the goalies pads…it was not the story of the 2nd. The story of the 2nd was the goal of ours they completely missed, and the goal they blew dead way too early. Yep. 2 goals, completely missed by beer league referees who were probably stoned and/or disinterested in getting in the right position to make the correct call. The first goal miss came from an absolute piss missile of a shot from Muskie, who is playing with a carnal aggression these days. He came down the left wing and fired an absolute rope toward the goalies short side, it hit the taught part of the net and flew right out, and the goalie covered it. We celebrated. ref pointed to the side dot- no goal. It all happened so fast and the ref was just in a horrible position to make the call, and again, made the wrong one.

The next was unforgivable. Scramble in front of the net, puck clearly loose, ref blows the whistle as Mr. Hustle was in the middle of burying the puck. Biscuit is in the back of the basket and he has to waive it off because he decided to blow the whistle the second he lost site of the puck for being in a shit position once again. When the goal was called dead, Muskie and I began yelling at the top of our lungs. Not real sentences, it was mostly a jibberish collection of swear words and confusion. We might as well have been speaking in tongues. So after all that shit I mentioned above, we now have a score of 2-1, 300 footers. With 2 missed goals for us and an offsides goal for them.

With about 5 left in the 3rd, the 300 Footers scored again making it 3-1. That is when my tantrum ensued. In between all this poor officiating chaos, we hit posts, got robbed and outshot them 2-1. Energy was all time and even though the final score was 4-1 after they got an empty netter on us, I was proud of the boys.

Very proud.

Every single guy in the locker room wants to win, and win we will. We’re too good and we want it too bad for it not to happen. We’re 1-4. We’ve lost two the best team in the league twice with the second game losing under controversial circumstances. Whalers game– should have won. Firehouse Pub- unacceptable loss.

We’re 1-4. But we’re a 1-4 team you won’t want to see come March. Put the house on it. #championshiporbust

Game Notes:

• Animal House and Frank took the same teaser last night, TCU -.5, and PHI/NYG over 37. TCU lost us both the bet
• Asian finally decided to show up. We meant to bench him but actually forgot. I still have no forgiven him for his no call, no show
• Almost the entire team went to a local watering hole after the game, the largest team post-game attendance to a bar we’ve ever had. We were only missing 2 guys.
• The Longnecks only have 9 goals for this year, and one of them scored by a sub. Of the 8 goals scored by Longnecks only 5 total players have scored: Mr. Hustle (3), Ha-ppy (2), Vulture (1), Asian (1), and Frank (1)
• No defensemen have scored for the Longnecks
• Goalie will return to action next week
• Ha-ppy missed this game due to going to the Red Wings….he also threw money on the Maple Leafs. He won his bet, but that still saddens me
• Last nights tab at the local dive was upwards of $250 dollars, filled with mostly beer pitchers and every single fried food and dipping sauce that the bar offered. Not kidding. We’re all paying for it today.

Until next week.

#SYNO 🍾

– Frank