My Renegades Hockey Team signed up to play in the annual Christmas Tournament out at the River Cree Casino on the Enoch First Nation. This Casino is located on the southwest boundary of the City of Edmonton. This is the third year that our team has entered. There is a $10,000 first prize, so the tournament attracts some really good teams, and some highly skilled players. In fact Ryan Smyth, now retired Edmonton Oiler, was playing on one of the teams. We don't enter the tournament with any expectation of winning anything. A Division Nine Recreational League team like ours has no chance of advancing in a tournament like this. Mostly it is just an opportunity to work of some off the food of the festive season, to get some exercise, and to stay in game shape for when our season resumes in the new year.
It's a pretty good deal, and only cost the team $500 to enter. We are guaranteed three round robin games and one playoff game. We also got $100 in coupons for the lounge in the casino.
Our first game was in the afternoon on December 27th against a team from Wabasca. These guys beat us 8-1 and ended up finishing third overall, out of 30 teams, in the round robin. Then on the evening of the 27th we played against a local team from the River Cree League. They finished near the bottom of the standings after the round robin but still managed to beat us 7-2. On the 28th we played an early evening game against at team called the Moose. There is a team called the Moose that plays in our Recreational League but I'm pretty sure these weren't the same guys. This team finished 8th in the round robin and beat us 7-0.
The three losses saw us finish last of the four teams in our pool so we were relegated to the consolation round of the playoffs. We played our first playoff game last night against a team called HC Beavers. This game was a much closer match in skill level and we really enjoyed it. We were down early but kept battling back during the game. We managed to tie the game with our goalie pulled and two seconds left on the clock to send it to overtime. Overtime was five minutes of 3 on 3 and unfortunately, though we had some chances, the Beavers scored to advance to the quarter finals.
Most of the guys from the team headed to the lounge after the game to use all the coupons that had been given to us.
I'm glad I had the opportunity to play this year. The weather has been so cold that it just ruled out any chance of doing anything outside. In fact, when I went to the game last night my truck never even warmed up to operating temperature during the drive to and from the arena. This despite the fact that I kept the block heater plugged in all day. The thermometer in the truck said -32C when I was driving home after the game, and that didn't even taken into account the wind chill effect that made it feel more like -44C. The cold snap is forecast to come to an end, but not until the beginning of January, when I have to return to work......
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