Remember that Movie "Babe"? They had these chapter cuts with the little mice and a title card? Well;

***cut to title card and cue the mice***

"A Terrible Day"

They beat us. The frakking Nemesis beat us. Not "We lost" but "Got Beat". The score was 1-5, which in hockey is quite a shellacking. Truth is we actually played pretty hard for the whole game, but sometimes that simply is not enough. This will put us into third (THIRD!!!???) place 2 points behind the Nemesis but a crucial 2 wins behind them. Those ties are gonna come back to bite us standing-wise. But we still have 6 games to go. Plenty can happen.

I myself played forward this time. Back on the left wing with the Canadians, "Backhand" Boyko and of course, The "Ah-Nye-Hilator". Unfortunatly, the night had an ominous start; the "Ah-Nye-Hilator" had forgotten---of all things---his helmet. Now this sort of thing does happen. I myself forgot my Cup once, which is a rather vital item you might say. Fortunately, Pavel was able to loan me his (extremely, extremely tiny) spare. As luck would have it, I also didn't come down with the clap or anything, knowing Pavel's social life :) Anyway, the Ah-Nye-Hilator took off for home to get his noggin armour, wearing his full kit otherwise, excepting the skates. Glad he didn't get pulled over on the way being that would be an odd thing to explain to a lawman. He got back in time for the second period.

The first period was a real battle. Back and forth we went and nobody could seem to get an advantage. The Nemesis really came to play, and I think they had it for us, especially being we scored the game winner against them last time with less than a minute left on a spectacular shot by Garrett from the left point. This was turning into a very physical game as well, just as I like it really. They would end up with 20 minutes in penalties to our 4, although we couldn't seem to leverage the five-fold difference into any freaking goals.

Just as the period ended, the Ah-Nye-Hilator" arrived and Captain Curtis moved back to the "D". Again, the battle was joined and again we held on. But about 5 minutes in they score off a scrap in front of the Tree (that's Trey "The Tree" Cain--our goalie. He's 6-6 and about 300 lbs BTW). Then less than a minute later, Garrett gets a nice little bounce pass from his point off the wall to me, I manage to get it to the Ah-Nye-Hilator, and he does a splendid little deke from left to right in front of their goalie and puts a nice little backhand right in. We're in this baby!! Sadly, less than 40 seconds later, they respond again and we're down 1-2. I started to get a bad feeling about this. about three minutes later, it got worse. They took a shot from about 4 inches off our redline and somehow it threads the needle and goes in without touching a damn thing. (For those not familiar with hockey, the redline is basicly the goal line extended outside the actual goal. To score from there is almost impossible even without a goalie in the way. It's like throwing a football through a hula hoop---lying on it's side. It was a great shot)So the AK Bars was down 1-3 and we're heading the third.

By this time the game was getting really fiesty. Pavel elbowed a guy in full view of our bench and the guy goes down; no penalty but howls of protest from the other bench resulting in unsportsmanike conduct calls and much bedlam. I myself had a guy clamp is elbow over my right hand and hang on like a drowning man, a clear holding penalty; left uncalled, alas. But even on a 5-3 power play we couldn't score. Things were not going our way at all. On a shift of ours about midway thru, one of their guys comes in down the middle, I was covering Davey's point, and Backhand and the Ah-Nye-Hilator converge on the guy mid-ice. He gets thru and past us, but only just. He's about 2 strides into our slot and I'm trying to maul this guy from his right side. I've got my stick inverted with the blade down and I'm hacking at first is stick, then his legs, and by about his 4th stride I'm actively trying to hook this guy below his knees to get him freaking fall the hell down. Meanwhile Backhand and the Ah-Nye-Hilator are wailing away from the other side but somehow; SOMEHOW...he puts it over the Tree's right shoulder. We battled to the end but they put one more in for good measure. We lost. We're in third place. I wanted to kill something.

But pretty quick I got over that. I try to take things philosophically, and I guess the thing I try to remember is that the fact is everybody loses from time to time. The trick is to not act like a loser. And the thing is, you really do have to lose to realize how amazing and sublime and awesome winning really is. Otherwise, you think that winning is your birthright, something you're owed and deserve, when in fact it is not. Winning, at hockey and in life really, is about a lot more interesting stuff. Stuff like effort, and heart, and comradarie, and ab out a zillion other things that matter so much more. But it's not free, that's for sure.

I'm not being blase about it. I HATE losing and it really really sucks and pisses me off. But I have confidence in myself and probably more importantly--my AK Bars teammates. We've got a tough opponent coming up; the surging Ice Gators. We beat them 6-1 on Opening Night and I think they will be coming at us looking for payback. But we're playing at the Colliseum. I love playing at the Colliseum. And our ever growing fan base (ok; mostly wives and girlfriends that I affectionately refer to as the AK Bars Hottie Corp) look awesome in that huge space! So next week will come soon enough and I think we're gonna be ready to take it back at them.

I'll end this one with this little funny bit. I skated over to the goal after the handshake line to chat with the Tree and just, you know, say the stuff you say at that time and one of the refs was standing there getting ready to move the goal out of the way for the Zamboni. I say to him,

"Man those guys REALLY play DIRTY over there"

and he laughs and goes,

"That's what they were saying about YOU guys"

to which I say with as straight a face as I can muster up,

"Well...I know that we play dirty--or at least I try to, thats the best part! I'm just saying is they are. What WE do doesn't matter to me! I mean what do I have to do to get a penalty from you guys??

We laughed.

See you all soon

-Kai #10 AK Bars