On to the Next Challenge

I haven't even recovered from Worlds in Vancouver and I now find myself in Calgary getting ready to play in the final of Canadian Nationals against Nomads.

I flew back to Montreal for a few days of work and then came back out west to Calgary for Nationals. I missed Thursdays games but Mephisto did what they had to do; going 2-1. Apparently it was a sloppy day but the goal is always just to get through day 1.

I was here for day two and while we got the job done again, a lot of results were going strange ways so we were doing a lot of scoreboard watching. During our last game we realized the best we could do was finish 3rd in our pool; the worst was 4th. Nomads lost a game they should have won so we had to figure out if we were better off finishing 3rd or 4th; we just didn't want to play Nomads in the Quarterfinals. We had all the math figured out so we kept Grand Trunk close to us but just behind in case we had to lose the game. Nomads did the improbable and won by enough points to finish first so we decided to win our last game and take 3rd so we would play Phoenix in the quarters.

Today we played Phoenix and got out to a good start. They had no answer to our offense and we beat them easily 15-10. Their D didn't score any points which just put a lot of pressure on their O. We did a good job of taking Swardo out of the game and forcing Derek to try to do it all and he had an off game. Well played, Mephisto.

Our Semi was against Invictus from Calgary. We came out on fire and scored the first 5 points. We had a 6-1 lead when they put a zone on us and we had a bit of trouble with it, strangely enough. Next thing we know it's 7-7 and we are fighting for half. We managed to take half but right after half Calgary came out hard and took the lead 9-8. We came back and ended up winning 12-10 in a hard fought game. It was a real nail biter but we pulled it off. Truly another epic Calgary-Montreal matchup.

Tomorrow... the finals against Nomads. Woohoo!!

DF