Halting the skid

After missing two games due to Vegas and a scheduling conflict, I returned to the Sharks lineup on Tuesday night to face-off against the ever so classy Ghetto Superstars. Chow was on vacation and so the always serious never dangerous Chow Dang Chen line was again separated for the third straight game. In my departure, they managed to get points each though, hmmm.

The Sharks sported the home White jerseys and the Ghetto Superstars hit the ice wearing black jerseys. I kind of expected something flashier from a team with such a flashy name. Dropping down a tier, I had no idea how good the Ghettor Superstars were, they did get kicked out of the tier higher then us, but were they too good to play in our tier? We would soon find out.

The Ghetto Superstars struck first as they scored on the powerplay after a very weak hooking call on one of our players. With the absence of Chow, Captain Eric centered my line. A few shifts in we found ourselves deep in the opponents zone, with Dang parked in front of the goalie, Captain Eric circled behind the net and fed it to his open back hand. Dang made no mistake and buried the puck past the opposing team's goalie. Where was I? I was drawing the defense away from Dang by dangling back, way back.

Dang later tells me that during open ice time, he practiced this exact play with Chow, where he parks right in front of the goalie. I'm going to call him Holmstrom from now on.

Still in the first period we took another penalty on what looked like a fairly clean hit to me. The Ghetto Superstars were again able to capitalize on the powerplay as they didn't even need the full two minutes to score.

The second period was pretty even, we weren't able to square up the score, but they weren't able to pull ahead either.

Then came the third. Have you ever peeled off packaging tape, then noticed you only peeled off half while the other half is still on the tape, then while you try to peel off the other half that's still stuck on the tape, the half that was peeled starts sticking to itself, and then everything just goes to hell in a hand basket? Ya we had one of those third periods. A break away, inability to clear the puck, and odd man rushes led to three straight unanswered goals by the Superstars from the Ghettos, putting us into a three game losing streak.

Randy the goalie was pissed after the game, it wasn't his fault, we were in the game all the way up until that stupid packaging tape started sticking to itself. Damn packaging tape, stupid Christmas presents wrapping, where the hell's the scotch tape.