A new season for the Red Liners usually brings new changes in the team. This times, the only change was the addition of Matty Easy who has been teammates with Sobo and Toto on Ignotz. The Liners came out strong in the first period but then had to remain the scoring momentum from the Fireballs before closing the door on them in a 7-3 win.
The guys and gal in red would get on the scoreboard first off a breakout pass from Bleech to Baby who froze the Fireballs’ goalie and fired the puck through his five hole. Easy would notch his first goal of his Liners career and first of his eventual hattrick as he wiggled a puck through goal traffic. But the Fireballs regroup in the closing minutes of the first period to tie up the score as the Liners allowed them to shoot in loose rebounds past Bigfield.
The remaining periods would basically be all Red Liners. Within less than a minute, the Liners would score and take the lead for good. The actual goalscorer for this goal is in dispute at the moment with all the traffic in front of the Fireball net. Dr. Watson would grab the fifth goal using his “play until the whistle blows” mentality. Mixy and B-hole peppered the Fireball net but a supposedly frozen puck was chipped into the upper Fireball net by Watson. Easy would weave his way through the Fireball D and effortlessly rifle the puck into the net as Pauly played decoy. This goal pushed the Liners lead to three goals. All of this scoring occurred before the halfway point of the second period at which point the Fireballs did score their third and last goal during a power play. The Liners D began to slow down the offensive threats by the Fireball. For example, Davy and the Spout used their own offensive threats to keep the pressure on the Fireball while in their zone.
For the third period, the Liners went further into shutdown mode with touches of offensive threats. They successfully killed two penalties. Queen Steph and RoboDan managed to wall off the Fireballs’ offensive threats. Sobo and Bleech were successful in clearing the puck off the boards and out of the zone. During the last one, Easy fought his way past the Fireball D single handedly and shoved the puck just inside the Fireball goal post by a shorthanded goal and hattrick. The icing on the cake for this win was goal in the final minute from a bouncing rolling pass to Toto from MK who passed it across the slot to a waiting Baby at the backdoor.
The first start was a little rough in the first half of the game. Perhaps, the Liners were playing down to the lower level of the Fireballs. But they regroup and executed what they do best: scoring by getting rebounds and crashing the net. In the upcoming months, they will get to see how far that strategy will take them especially against tougher teams. Their next game is against the Butchers Union C3 on Sat, Sept 14 at 12:10pm (JIH East).