It was a cold Tuesday morning in mid January when Nathan Robson called my house. The temperature was a balmy 2 degrees and I had just woke up. Nathan wanted to go down to Burton and clear off the rink figuring there would not be much to do, I moaned and groaned about it being the f*cking winter then finally gave in and told him to pick me up on the way down. We arrived to find a layer of slush on top of 2 inch ice coverage, we cleared off the slush and left the ice for the next day when we had more numbers and better tools to remove the ice. Wednesday would be much of the same as Graeme and I arrived to find Shem, Nathan, Kyle and K.J. working furiously to prepare the surface. After about half an hour half the rink was clear so we decided to play sideways on the rink to get in a decent number of games.

Brothers O'Connor would take to the nets today and Game One pitted Kyle and Shem with K.J against Graeme and Nathan with Seamus. The tight nature of the rink was to the advantage of Graeme's long reach as he and Nathan used some good passing plays and Kyle's disinterest in the small rink game to take the first game 5-2. It was decided there was not enough room so we shoveled out another corner to play on a diagonal for game 2. The new rink made for better play and the scoring went back and forth until we were knotted up at 4-4. During one of the delays when the ball went out onto the ice, K.J managed to sneak out of his net all the way to the other end of the rink and awaited a pass from Kyle on the side of the net. The ball would be cut off by Seamus and he would stickhandle down to the other side and managed to get a shot past K.J. but Kyle was able to stop the ball dead on the goal line. Kyle would respond by dangling the competition and the goalie to find a wide open Shem at the side of the net for the winner. After this game it was decided to clear out a bit more ice, but once we started it became clear that we had passed the point of no return and decided to finish the job and go back to playing full rink. The full court rink would open room for Grenier and he would take full advantage to point out, setting up three of Shem's goals and scoring two himself. The O'Connors both had trouble adjusting as this game would see 7 goals on 25 shots in the 5-2 series finale.

Series two would be a switch of Kyle for Graeme. It started out the way the last game ended as K.J. and Seamus managed to let in the first 4 shots of the game, leading to a 3-1 Grenier lead. Graeme and Shem would fight back as the goaltenders started to find a bit of a groove and eventually tie it up for another O.T. game, but once again Kyle would be too much as he took a pass from Nathan in the corner to score his fifth goal of the game and second-straight point-out. Legs were tired and ambition was small but we managed a final game. Seamus would start well here and led by another 4 goals by Kyle they would jump out to a 4-1 lead. Then the unthinkable would happen, Nathan fired a shot wide and Kyle would send it out of the corner, only to have K.J. pick up the ball in front of his net. Dropping his glove hand, he made a move around Nate and charged towards the net. Graeme would provide a screen; Seamus pushed Graeme out of the way only to have K.J. rifle a shot top shelf where Grandma hides the cookies. Kyle quickly potted the game winner for a 5-2 victory, but the story was not his two straight 5-goal games, or even 3 straight point-outs, but the goalie goal by K.J that brought the house down against his older brother (just 5 months removed from a broken leg, no less). A great start for BUSH in 2010 as we try to keep pace with the early onslaught from VRH.

Thanks, Seam! A solid five-game session in interesting rink conditions to start off 2010 for the BUSH crew. Grenier returns as his dominant self, scoring a mammoth 17G and 21P on 73 shots. Tying for second are Graeme (8G-5A) and Nathan (6G-7A). Of course, the big story was K.J.’s goal from the goaltending position, joining Joe Chwachka (scored on a breakaway back in 2000) and Lorne Bilinski (scored on a slapshot from the opposing goal in 2006). Save percentage-wise, it was far below par, but considering the events of the past half-year, we’re just happy to have him back. It does have implications, however; it puts him just behind Troy down to second in all-time goaltending. Seamus’ .827 today wasn’t quite enough to wrest the all-time title, but it keeps him right in contention for the mark.

Here are the game scores:
Kyle Shem K.J. def. Graeme Nathan Seamus 2-5 5-4 5-2
Kyle Nathan Seamus def. Shem Graeme K.J.5-3 5-2

With Thursday’s session being uploaded, we’ll save the Season and All-Time statistical summaries for that write-up, but this does alter the SDF and GDF slightly as this session gets added to Sunday’s VRH session to complete the ranking. Most notably, Kyle remains ahead of Lee instead of falling to third.