Loons Tied up with Rope-a-Dope

April 11, 2025

Interim Coach (IC), Steve Olk, and General Manager (GM), Jeremy Litton, unveiled a genius plan on Friday night to face the 1st seed, ringer-laden, Fighting Loons. Backstopped by the Fleury-like sub goalie, Kyle Braveheart, the hidden Spiders waited for the crouching Loons to wear themselves out and pulled out an impressive…tie!

With the Spiders regular stalwart netminder, Ricky Tejada, MIA at a White Lotus resort, GM Litton scouted the Bob Dylan concert waiver-wire and New York City for a replacement goalie and came up with a gem. IC Olk, sensing an opportunity, constructed a line-up with a twist, inserting versatile forward/defenseman/car buyer Jim Mara halfway through the first period to throw the Loons off their game.

And their game was ON from the first puck drop. The feisty Loons controlled much of the play in the first period as the Spiders warmed up their goalie with shot after shot pummeling the Spider rookie. Welcome to the club, Kyle! Kyle bravely kept the Spiders in the game with incredible heart (sorry hockey fans, you knew this was coming).

With a D-zone face-off and only 17 seconds to go, the Spiders were feeling relieved to get out of the first period only behind by zero points. Didn’t last long. The Loons won the face off and a skittering puck found its way through several Spider wickets for a Loons goal at 12 seconds left. 0–1 Loons.

IC Olk’s strategy of letting the Loons wear themselves out started to work, however, in the 2nd period. The Spiders took advantage of the ice tilting to the left and stepped up their game, matching the Loons shot for shot and executing a few patented Mettee rush-and-tussles. The back and forth continued (without penalties!) for the majority of the period until the Spiders finally found the net at 2:52 remaining with some garbage clean-up by Pappone, apples to Ungaro and Kato. 1–1 going into the 3rd.

The Loons took advantage of the period break to regroup and tied it up early at 14:24 in the 3rd. 1–2 bad guys. Up to this point in the game the only penalties being handed out were to the Spiders, whose crime was not staying far enough away from the Loons’ bambi-like falls on the ice.

The Loons became frustrated with the Spider tit-for-tat nature, and decided they wanted a piece of the penalty action. Inspired by his father several minutes earlier, loonlet #67, one of several loon father/loonlet/ringer pairs on the team (including former Spider Brian Woods and his son, Junior Woods), goaded the calm-but-seething-under-the-surface veneer of D-man Benson into a coincidental roughhouse penalty late in 3rd. The escalating tension inspired uninspiring 4-on-4 hockey for the next several minutes, but Long did get the bench to their feet with an exciting breakaway shot that just missed the net.

As the clock ticked down, committees were formed to decide when to pull the Spiders goalie. The discussions were rendered moot (NOT “mute”) by Long, with 1:22 to go, when he finally found the net with a whirl-and-shoot shot from the slot by the Loon netminder’s foot to tie the game, 2–2. The paltry Loon crowd was stunned. Murmurs rippled through the arena.

Long decided to quiet the Loonie crowd, however, by taunting them from the sin bin 9 seconds later. The Spider’s PK, which had been stellar all night, fended off the loonlet onslaught to preserve the point — and deal a potentially fatal blow to the Loon playoff chances.

With the tie, team statistician/rogue engineer Johnson calculated that the Spiders are still mathematically in-it-to-win-it. To wit:

“Pines, Marauders, and Kan Jammers all have 2 wins. We can’t catch them so that is 3 of the 4 spots.

The Fighting Loons have 1.5 wins so they have to lose to the Spartans. The Wood Knocks have 1 win and so they would have to lose to the Wildcats. If we win and the Fighting Loons and Wood Knocks lose, we are in.”

There you have it. The Spiders just need to win tomorrow afternoon and let the after-bar Playoff Fairy deliver a berth into the championship round!