2nd Best Game of the Season

since nessa and deva missed the pilots game saturday night, i've decided to post a nice little game summary for them. as i'm sure they discovered from the echl site, the game was freakin' awesome. i still say that the shootout win against gwinnett earlier in the season was the pilots' best game of the year, but saturday night against columbia was a close second. surprised much? i was. i went into this weekend thinking that the pilots would manage to lose their remaining 4 games. they pulled out one last good effort for me, though.

i'll start out by saying that the pilots actually put the puck in the net 8 times, even though the final score was 6-1. i guess that means that brown is, like, the worst goalie ever. anyway, two pensacola goals were disallowed, both times because the ref said he blew the whistle before the puck crossed the goal line. i was ok with it the 1st time - it did look like brown had the puck covered before a pilot (sorry don't remember who) forced it in the net. but the second time a goal was disallowed was total b.s. there was absolutely no reason for a whistle then, and no one in the building heard one. it was a beautiful goal from steven later, and everyone was hellapissed that it didn't count. we were trying to figure out why the ref would have blown the whistle then, but we couldn't come up with a reason. it wasn't a hand pass, not hit with a high stick, no penalty was called, the puck didn't go anywhere near brown before it went in (so there is no way the ref could have thought he had it covered), as far as we could tell, there was no reason to stop play. but all the same, the goal didn't count. it didn't matter, though. the scoring was plenty abundant all night long. oh, and traylen played his best game since he's been with the team. he only allowed 1 goal on 26 shots, and he made some really great saves. it got him 3rd star credit.

the other guy who had a really big night saturday was little dallas steward. he had two goals, an assist, he punched a guy in the face (took a roughing call for it), and he had the most beautiful open ice hit... and he didn't fall down, but the inferno guy did. after he scored his 1st goal and made that hit at center ice, i pegged him as 1st star of the game. then he scored his second goal to clinch 1st star credit. after stewie scored the 2nd time, they played "all the small things," and chad and i cracked up. he was like, "i can't believe they played that." it was fantastic.

oh, and jacquo finally scored another goal at home. it was the 6th goal, so it was just, like, icing on the cake, but i was still happy. he also had the hardest check of the game... of course. who else hits? well, i guess stewie did that game. but anyway...

sunday's game wasn't nearly as good. it started off ok, but the guys looked tired and slow. the pilots took a 2 goal lead, but it was pretty obvious from the way they were playing that it wasn't going to last. so, late in the 3rd period when they were down 3-2 and on a power play, dupont decided to pull traylen (it seemed like a good idea at the time), and columbia scored a short-handed empty netter. then they put traylen back in, and rankin scored his 2nd goal of the game. maybe if they hadn't pulled the goalie, things could have been different. as they were, the pilots lost 4-3 in regulation. oh, yeah. busniuk got in a fight. not only that, busniuk started the fight (and who could blame him? that guy kept holding him, kept holding his stick, pushed him down, never got called, so buzzy felt he needed to take matters into his own hands). he got his ass kicked, but who would've thought that busniuk would fight? it was entertaining, in any case.