The super game

No, not that one… although I will have some comments here in a bit.  My boys from Yaroslavl were at home in front of the usual packed house of 8,900 to face Dynamo Balashika, whom as I said earlier is not a real strong team.

The boys almost put it away in the first minute of the game. Dmitry Maltsev scored in a scramble just 26 seconds from the opening face-off, his 4th of the year; and off the face-off from that, two quick passes had Daniil Yerdakov out at the edge of the circle and he blasted one past beleaguered goalie Dmitry Voloshin for his fourth goal with Lokomotiv and 15th on the year, and it was 2-0 before the first minute was out.  Things settled down, relatively, until Emil Galimov scored his 8th, rolling nearly the length of the rink at 6:12 to make it 3-0; Forty-five seconds later, Oleg Yashin scored on a breakaway for his 10th of the year and a 4-0 margin.  Needless to say, at this point we bid farewell to Mr. Voloshin and greeted Alexandr Cherepenin in the Dynamo goal.  The period ended the same, with Lokomotiv scoring on 4 of 13 shots in the period- all 4 goals on just 5 shots against poor Voroshin.

In the second stanza, we upped the margin to 5-0 at 2:11 on a Rafael Akhmetov score, his 5th, on a power play.  But then with Lokomotiv a man down, Maxim Erokhin got a PP goal to put Dynamo on the board.  Then things suddenly got dicey;  Nikita Lohzkin was screened on a shot by Dmitry Goldenkov that made it 5-2, and then  Daniil Romantsev lost a pass out front and  Ivan Ivanov slammed it home to cut the margin to 5-3.  Dynamo had 16 second period shots, and what looked like a rout suddenly got scary…

…Until the third period.  Dynamo found itself getting just 5 shots on goal in the third, and Daniil Apelkov netted his 2nd with just 7 seconds left, and the boys had a 6-3 win.

After the game coach Vorobiev was interviewed.  One of the q/as was as follows:
Can I say that in VHL "Locomotive" can play at least on par with any competitor? - you can say anything. Another thing - as it happens. One game can beat any opponent, due to a crazy mood, for example, or luck. Also, any meeting can be and play - what if the opponent goalkeeper before the game something to eat. On what the team is able to show playoff games. Only they will answer the question - Does the team matured, we became man ...

The boys are off till Sunday, when they draw Kazzinc-Torpedo, with Donbass one of 2 non-Russian teams in the VHL.  The game will be played at Torpedo’s home in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere in the interview Vorobiev mentioned that the long road trip earlier in the year Left both goalies with “butterfly”.  The interviewer grilled him on bringing up a certain hot goaltender from the youth team, but Vorobiev said that it had been discussed and decided against.  Several times, in fact, as the interviewer seemed unwilling to let it go.  But this is my fourth season following Russian hockey, and one thing I learned early was that in Russian, goaltender and scapegoat tend to be interchangeable.

Next, my brief comments on the Giants’ SB win.  Once again, the officiating embarrassed itself in places.  The midfield official that looked right at that Patriot pass interference in the fourth and held his peace, if I were king of the world would have been immediately escorted from the stadium.  I thought Tom Coughlin was going to fly through the air after him!  Second, KC bugged me all day about Eli being a hall of famer.  I told him at the beginning of his late TD drive, “If he can get a TD here, I’ll agree with you.”  When Eli got them the TD, I said, “Okay, I said it, I’ll stand by it.”  Finally, my postgame post on Facebook- “Now New England goes from being ‘the team that won 4 super Bowls’ to ‘the team that got beat by Eli twice.’”

Congrats to Fumble, winner of Most Valuable Pup at Puppy Bowl VIII yesterday!  The best part of any Super Bowl Sunday is the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet.

Finally, and totally unrelated to sports in any way (except extreeeeeeeemly tenuously), I give you this late-breaking news story:

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (CN) - A college student claims he was injured when a fraternity member in a "drunken stupor" decided "that it would be a good idea to shoot bottle rockets out of his anus," and did so, "but instead of launching, the bottle rocket blew up in the defendant's rectum, and this startled the plaintiff and caused him to jump back," and fall off the fraternity's deck.
Louis Helmburg III sued The Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity Inc., of Huntington, West Virginia, and Travis Hughes, a fraternity member, in Cabell County Court.
Helmburg claims - in a statement it would be difficult to deny - that "firing bottle rockets out of one's own anus constitutes an 'ultra-hazardous' activity," which exposes both defendants to strict liability.
Okay, the lawsuit is breaking, the incident happened last May.  Get your education at the U of West Virginia, where scientific tests have conclusively proven that “firing bottle rockets out of one's own anus constitutes an 'ultra-hazardous' activity”.