Hockey Tournament - Huge post.

So this past weekend was the Stuttgart annual hockey tournament, as the host team, of course we hoped to do well. We do have quite a good team at the moment, so our expectations were pretty high. Here is a run down of what happened.

Game 1 - Stuttgart Broncos vs Adelberg Eisbuaba

First game was against Adelberg, the team with the ugliest unifroms and most stupid name in the tournament. Eisbuaba basically translates to "Ice-boys." We have played them before and done pretty well in general. In fact, I don't think Adelberg has ever managed to beat us, but I cannot be certain on that fact.

This time, they had no chance, we were the host team and pretty keen on making a good start to the tournament.

Final Score:

Stuttgart Broncos - 9
Adelberg Eisbuaba - 0

Yay for my shutout! Adelberg went on to finish 4th.
Game 2 - Stuttgart Broncos vs Bad Liebenzell outlaws.

This one was interesting because we had never played, nor even seen this team play before. Bad Liebenzell does play in a hobby league, so we expected they would be a little tougher. Luckily for us, our team continued to dominate both offensively and defensively.

Final Score

Stuttgart Broncos - 6
Bad Liebenzell Outlaws - 1

This put us at the top of our group on points and goals, so we moved on to the semi-final:

Game 3 - Stuttgart Broncos vs Wernau Eisritter

Wernau is a team we know very well, four or five of their players actually practice with us every Wednesday. We were calling this team "the Russian's" since it seems that all but 3-4 players were in fact Russian. The big worry with this team was their #44 player, he had just joined the team some weeks ago after leaving the Russia junior league. There was quite some debate if he was going to be allowed to play, since we are not allowed to have any professionals on the ice... Anyway, we let him play and it was pretty much the goal of our players to have two guys on top of him for the whole game. When he did manage to get a shot off, it was so fast I could barely even see the puck, never mind stop it. We did manage to struggle through and everyone did their jobs though...

Final Score:

Stuttgart Broncos - 5
Wernau Eisritter - 1


We move on to the FINAL

Game 4 - Stuttgart Broncos vs Esslingen Eisbrecher

OK, so we have played Esslingen lots and lots of times in the past, games, tournaments, friendly practices. It was really no surprise that they were in the final, they are in a league and their goalkeeper actually played as a back up goalie in the German league a couple of years ago. They are a very strong team... I like their goalie, he is a friendly guy and before the game he walked over to me and asked if we could agree to make the game a 0-0 tie. I told him I would see what I could do.

Both teams started out strong, and it was a pretty tight game, staying 0-0 until the 8th minute and then.... Esslingen got one past me. This did not last too long though, we managed to equalize a minute later. The game was getting a bit tense, this was the fourth hockey game in one day for both teams, so I think people were just getting a little tired and sloppy, and this resulted in a penalty to our team. Not good.... on the power play, Esslingen scored again, 2-1 for the Eisbrecher. Things got even worse as just before the half, they got yet another goal. We headed to the break down 3-1.
So heading back out onto the ice I bumped into the Esslingen goalie and I apologized for missing the 0-0 score, but checked how he felt about 3-3? He seemed ok with it.

When we stepped out on the ice, our bad luck continued... another penalty, followed by another power play goal for Esslingen. 4-1 and things were looking bleak. The game went on, and about 3 minutes later, we managed to get another goal, hitting the 4-2 mark. Amazingly less than one minute after that, Rasso from our team notched another, getting us within one goal at 4-3. A few more minutes went by and we scored yet again! tying it up at 4, three unanswered goals and things were looking less and less horrible. Esslingen pressed hard, trying to push ahead, but our defensive line of "the Swedish guys" were outstanding, and on the few occasions when Esslingen squeezed by, I somehow managed to stop them.

Then with 30 seconds less in the game, our big Bavarian star, Holzmann, scored his 8th goal of the tournament and won us the title with a final score:

Stuttgart Broncos - 5
Esslingen Eisbrecher - 4

So at the end of the day, we had another tournament success, I was lucky enough to have a great team standing in front of me. I finished with the best defensive record of the day, GAA of 1.5 over 4 games and the only shutout game of the tournament. So, personal success was a good feeling to accompany the tournament win.

Here is the victorious team. I am the handsome fellow in the front row #1.