No snow or rain or plague of locusts was in the forecast today. It was a nice, overcast 12 degrees; perfect for roller hockey once again organised by Mitch Detta. The parade of rookies and returnees continued today with the addition of James Hewlitt (cousin to Lee and Graeme Orr and the oldest rookie in seven years), and young firebrand Garrit Krbyla. Returning for their second-career sessions were 2010 rookie Andrew Likness and Wednesday’s standout, Ryan Bateman. Mitch and Lee would be back along with Kyle Grenier, and returning for another season in net was Golden Joe Leonard.

Grenier would be making his 2011 debut in goal backing the youthful combination of Garrit, Andrew and Mitch against the line of Ryan, James, and Lee. Game 1 was all Mitch as he scored the first four goals and fed Andrew on the fifth en route to a 5-1 win. Joe certainly helped with what may be the BUSH save of the year on a tic-tac-toe play that ended with Joe reaching back with the stick to take away a goal from Lee right on the line (he’d have a few that he’d pull off the line today). Team Kyle came back with a 5-1 win of their thanks to their superb passing. Game 3 was more fought more closely but the net driving of Ryan and Lee and defence of James won it 5-3 for their crew.

Exasperated, Kyle gave up on goaltending and swapped out with Ryan. Ryan wouldn’t get his two shutouts again today, but would prove that he wasn’t a one-hit-wonder, either, backing Kyle, Lee and James to a 2-1 series win over Joe, Andrew, Garrit and Mitch. The two very even teams worked well together and goaltending was more of a factor in this game. While Mitch and Lee battled it out for the scoring lead, it was perhaps easy to forget that Garrit was creeping up on the rookie assist mark. He also scored his only goal of the session on a massive boomer from centre that blew by Grenier top-corner. James would send this series to its end with the winning goal and then call it a day.

Ryan swapped out of net for Garrit, but that didn’t stop Garrit from racking up four assists in the final four games to set a new rookie assist record. In a battle of oldtimers (Lee-Kyle-Joe) vs. young guns (Mitch-Andrew-Ryan-Garrit), it was decided not to use subs, and was played 3-on-2. Surprisingly, it worked quite well; the most even series of the day, in fact. Andrew and Ryan played their best hockey of the day here with 11 points in the final four games, and Grenier used the first two games to pull himself back into the session scoring race (not to mention grabbing his insane 40th straight 15-point session). The games went by quickly with the extra room on the rink and five very skaters. Ultimately, the young guns would take it three games to one; all three of their wins coming 5-4 against the hungry two-man team. Garrit featured twice in memorable plays: his amazing Game 7 behind-the-back save combo is hard to describe in print, while one of the scarier moments in BUSH history happened in Game 10. None of the goalies had employed masks today, and the hardest slapshot of the day from Kyle Grenier nailed Garrit directly in the nose and sent him straight to the ground. Amazingly, he shook it off after a minute or two and the game resumed.

No slouches again today. The new-look BUSH is producing the fastest style of play we’ve seen in Burton Hockey and is very fun to watch indeed.

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It was a two-horse scoring race for most of the day once Ryan took his stint in goal. Mitch and Lee were neck-and-neck all day with huge goal totals, and it came down to the final 3-on-2 series in which Lee was on the 2-player team and thus got more chances to score. Ultimately, he would notch a career-best 23 goals with nine assists on 81 shots to Mitch’s 18 goals and eleven assists and 80 shots; all of these were career highs for Mitch, and it is certainly time to say he has arrived as a top presence. The race for third was quite tight; both Kyle and Ryan played a series in goal but were high scorers outside of it, while Andrew improved as the day went on and figured heavily on the scoresheet in the final series. Kyle would ultimately grab 24 points to Ryan and Andrew’s 22 points each (both easily career highs from Ryan and Andrew in their second sessions). And we certainly can’t go without mentioning Garrit’s 12 assists on the day in his rookie session, a new Burton Hockey rookie record (and four of them from goal!) In goal, Joe battled hard all day and despite some hiccups (swinging wildly between .850 and .760 at times) finished at .787 with 133 saves. For the second session in a row, however, the top mark went to Ryan, this time with .815. He is certainly proving to be an elite dual threat in his young career. Kyle was below his usual self at .771, and Garrit survived that horrible puck in the face to finish at .630.

Here are the game scores:
Kyle James Lee Ryan def. Joe Garrit Andrew Mitch 1-5 5-1 5-3
Ryan Lee Kyle James def. Joe Andrew Garrit Mitch 5-3 2-5 5-3
Mitch Andrew Ryan Garrit def. Lee Kyle Joe 5-4 1-5 5-4 5-4

Faceoff Statistics:
James Hewlitt 2/3 (66.67%)
Ryan Bateman 11/17 (64.71%)
Mitchell Detta 12/19 (63.16%)
Lee Orr 23/44 (52.27%)
Kyle Grenier 7/16 (43.75%)
Andrew Likness 17/41 (41.46%)
Garrit Krbyla 0/3 (0.00%)

It was a BUSH/VRH doubleheader again today, so once we get the VRH stats in this weekend, we’ll have our regular season and all-time stats summaries for you, as well as what will prove to be a rather earthshaking change on the rankings.