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Twizzler unraveled by rival

Before Sunday's game, Twizzler had trouble squeezing his head into his helmet. By the end, he was struggling to extricate it from his backside.

The rookie rearguard, who's quickly established himself as a solid starter since defecting from the defunct afternoon game, struggled early and never recovered. losing his first showdown against his mentor, Nibs, 20-13.

To be fair, though, he wasn't the only player on his team who struggled. Against a lineup led by speedsters Kid and Scrappy, Twizzler's flat-footed defensemen were completely overwhelmed in the game's earliest moments, barely getting control of the ball let alone creating scoring opportunities of their own. They were down 5-0 even before they got a decent shot on goal.

"I actually thought the teams were fairly evenly matched, but we just didn't move as well as the other team," said the Colonel, who suffered the ignominious defeat on his birthday. "They buried it when they needed to."

"They got that quick lead, and we were just never able to recover from that," said Beetle Boy, making his first appearance since suffering an ankle injury three weeks ago while playing unsanctioned floor hockey. "They just got that initial lead, got us right from the beginning and I think that was the difference."

Indeed, the game's first period resembled a game of keep-away more than a hockey game, as Kid, Cowboy, Living Legend and Scrappy passed around the ball with aplomb. And on the rare occasion they were forced to retreat into their own zone, Nibs stood strong by playing a conservative game instead of his sometimes manic attempts to headman the offense with ill-considered clearing attempts.

"Our ball possession was really great today," said Scrappy. "The score just started piling up."

But that didn't mean they could just coast to victory. In fact, with Nibs' reputation for mid-game flakiness, they couldn't afford to take any margin for granted, something his teammates and his opponents were all too aware of.

"He's just so unpredictable," said Beetle Boy. "You don't know how the hell he's going to play the game, so you just fire it. He'll make some can-can saves and then he'll jump out of the way of certain shots."

Rattling the veteran goalie's cage almost paid off. When a long shot eluded his outstretched leg late in the game, shrinking their margin to two goals, Nibs wheeled around to chastise the Colonel, who was heckling him from the sidelines. But that was as close as the game would get.

The fluke goal was a wakeup call for Nibs' defense, who wanted to ensure their goalie prevailed against his upstart protege.

"You could just see Nibs start to get a bit frustrated," said Scrappy. "You've got to check against your own laziness because when you get up that high, you tend to take your foot off the gas a little and you know they're going to come at you hard."

Posted by jaysuburb at November 16, 2008 03:29 PM