Week of November 2, (Game 1) – Ho hum (yawn), Blame the Girl won again, what else is new with this team as they remained undefeated after seven games played. Can any team step up and beat this team? Not based on the results seen so far this season. Blame the Girl, behind the monster efforts of Jon Pickard and Tony Medeiros, easily defeated the Golden Oldies team by the score of 6 – 3. Talk about two teams heading in different directions, the Golden Oldies team is listing and taking on water, losers of four straight. It doesn’t help that for the second straight game, Golden Oldies was missing half their team.
As they continue to do every week (except one) in the first period, Blame the Girl scored first and scored early as Tony Medeiros scored 2-goals less than thirty seconds apart three minutes into this game, set up by Colleen Sedille and Jon Pickard. Lucky to be only two goals down in this game, Joe Mancinelli got his team back into this game, scoring with thirty seconds left in the period, set up by John Kelleher and Luigi Derenzes.
Taking advantage of that momentum from scoring late in the first period, the Golden Oldies started to pressure the defense of Blame the Girl to generate some quality scoring chances. This sustained pressure paid off as Mauro Colucciello scored three minutes into the second period to tie up this game. However, this would be short-lived as Blame the Girl’s Dominic Defrancisco, set up by Pic, scored to put his team back in front to stay. Two minutes later, Pic scored his first goal of the season to increase the lead for his team.
In the third period, Gary Goodwin scored his team’s third unanswered goal that put this game out of reach with another one of his “excuse me” goals (excuse me as in not doing anything with your hands or stick to score, but, just have the ball hit off your leg and go into the net). Golden Oldies scored with just over four minutes to play; however, playing 4-on-4, Tony Medeiros completed his hat trick as he was set up by Pic’s third assist of the game to close out the scoring.
Week of November 2, (Game 2) – Don’t look now but the White Lightning team is making a move up the standings after an early season slumber. For the second week in a row, White Lightning won, and in the process defeated a team that was closest to them in the standings, as they beat Cuckoo’s Nest by the score of 3 – 1 to jump up into third place in the standings.
In the first period, seven minutes in, Cuckoo’s Nest struck first as Nick Romano scored out front as he was set up by Rick Cassano and Angelo Deluca with some strong cycling play.
The second period was where White Lightning took the lead and started to control this game. Derek Shaw first scored with three minutes to play in the period as the ball was kept in the point by Steve Oppedisano and Derek scored off a rebound of a Scott Young shot (once again a measly assist recorded for his pink stick bag challenge and not a goal). With thirty-two seconds left in the period, Derek scored again, this time on an unassisted goal.
The third period was played back and forth by both teams, who each generated some quality scoring chances only to have goalies Jeff Deharo of White Lightning and Scott Rosato of Cuckoo’s Nest turn these shots aside. The game remained close and was in doubt until Niko Vramis scored with under two minutes to play to seal the victory for White Lightning.
White Lightning appears to have turned around their season with their strong play of late, especially by the defense and the goaltending (both of which were MIA in their prior five games played). For Cuckoo’s Nest, not having Joe Shannon playing was a huge disadvantage and X factor in their losing their third straight game.
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