The Pictou County Pylons
For those of you who don't know, the Pictou county pylons were one of the most formidable forces ever to play road hockey. We had speed, size, skill and the determination to take the world of road hockey in Pictou County by storm. We couldn't be kept off the board and wasn't going to let anybody return the favor anytime soon......
Here's how it all started. There was a road hockey tournament in Trenton in June. About 10 teams showed up and everybody on the Pictou county pylons was there, except we were playing for 2 different teams, and our goalie was hosting the tournament and wasn't playing at all. Our teams came up somewhat short of what we wanted. Not to fear another tournament was coming up...
Richie heard there was another tournament coming up and immediately made sure a number of people were willing to be on the team. Richie was out to make a powerhouse team. We had trouble deciding on a name, so Richie sent an e-mail with four suggestions, I think almost everybody picked the pylons. Everybody wanted on the team, but we had agreed by majority to 7 seven people, and that was all we were going to have. A team could have up to nine people, a goalie and four people playing out, with four subs.
Now, there were 10 teams at the first tournament, only two showed up for this one, us and the other guys. Not that meant this was an easy proposition. The other team had done what we did. They blended some teams from the last tournament to form a superpower as well. Once we were all there we decided to play a best 3 out of 5 for the championship. We wanted to play a best 4 out of 7 at first... am I ever glad we didn't.
I am going to do a game by game after I announce the line up... note that I can't remember anything but the scores and a few events with any clarity. The games had two 15-minute halves.
The Line up
John MacLellan - Forward as well as President and CEO
Ritchie Wheeler - Forward as well as General Manager
Keith Brannen - Forward as well as President and Official Spokesperson of Team Beer Committee
Jason Pettipas - Defense as well as Director of Hockey Operations
Stephen Mackay - Defense as well as Water Boy
Some Guy - Defense as well as the guy who left before the last game
Mike Macdonald - Goaltender Extraordinaire as well as Director of Player Personnel
Samantha Rainiowski - Senior Equipment Manager
Game 1: we won the game 7-4 I think. We were playing pylon hockey, nice and smooth.
Game 2: we lost 5-2. The reason we lost was due to disorganization. One of our defensemen wanted to play forward so we switched it up, and then our lines got screwed up and we quickly got confused as to where we were supposed to be... not our finest moment.
Game 3: we won this 4-1. I remember this one because we were down 1-0 in the second half, when I suddenly scored 3 goals on three shots in a minute and a half to give us a 3-1 lead.
Game 4:Now we had a 2-1 series lead. The forwards were pretty beat, I remember that. Our defensemen were yelling at us for help as we WALKED back to our own zone. One guy from our team decided not to show up the game... which actually helped us a bit I think. We went into overtime tied at three. It was pretty exciting, especially when John passed the ball off to Richie who promptly scored and won the game and series! After the game we won medals and $90 to split between us. Richie went to a local convenience store to get the $90 split 6 ways... the shop owner wasn't pleased and gave Richie a little speech :P
Anyhow Richie wrote up a nice e-mail about each player's contribution that I thought I would share with everybody. So this next section was written by Richie:
John Maclellan:
Probably more than anyone else on our team John displayed offence creativity that was simply a pleasure to watch. Along with Keith, John made his offence presence felt in key situations. Timely goals seemed to be John’s strongest contributing factor to our success. All tournament long John did nothing short of an excellent Job creating traffic in front of our net that made subsequence shots for all other players easier and more effective. This was exactly the case in our final game in overtime where Ritchie scored to clinch the tournament. John’s presence in front of the opposing teams goalie drew the attention of their defensemen that in turn gave Ritchie a clear look at the net that he eventually scored on. In our game 1 win by the score of 7-4 John lead the way with 3 goals and 3 assists. Without John’s heroics in this game who knows how the tournament would have played out. John played well on both ends of the court and is a major reason Keith and Ritchie had room to work with.
Keith Brannen:
Keith simply filled the opposing teams net with goals. More than anyone on the roster Keith made sure our defense and goalie had the offence support they needed. Offensively Keith led the way with 8 goals and three assists. His offensive presence and knack to score goals on seemly dead plays was spectacular. In game 3 Keith pulled off the unthinkable. A natural hat trick. This is even more astounding when you consider this feat was accomplished a mere 30 seconds. Keith was especially good at digging in the corners and around the net to find loose balls and making plays allowing our defensemen and other forwards to have clear shot at the net. For this efforts Keith was runner up for Team MVP.
Ritchie Wheeler:
Ritchie admittly didn’t play as well as he is capable of doing. Despite this he was ultimately our overtime hero in the final game of the tournament. At one point in the final game knowing his team would benefit more from having John and Keith handling the duties of forwards Ritchie benched himself an entire ten minutes. This dedication to the team should not go unnoticed. Ritchie’s vision for this team was to perform at the highest possible level and win this tournament. Not having the best tournament possible Ritchie took it upon himself to offer support to his teammates and study the flow of the game and make suggestions wherever possible. What Ritchie did do well was provide the team with several much needed goals from in close. On shots from the point and our forwards, Ritchie was able to bang in several rebounds that managed to find the back of net.
Jason Pettipas:
Think of it this way. If Mike Macdonald our goalie were to get injured during play we would have a solid back up goalie in Jason. On defense playing the role of offensive defenseman Jason blocked more shots than another player and perhaps more than all other players combined. Jason stuffed a nagging injury early in the tournament but pressed on to play rock solid defense the entire tournament. Beyond his play on “D” Jason made some great shots from the point on which a few resulted in goals. His presence to know when to join the rush and when to stay back was vital to giving our forwards open space to work with. For our final and clinching game of the tournament Jason is our player of the game based simply on his efforts blocking shot after shot. Jason was never scared to sacrifice his well being to benefits the team.
Stephen Mackay:
From Steve we got exactly what we expected. A big mobile stay at home defenseman who didn’t back down. Steve was a brutal force that the opposing forwards have to deal with on every rush. Steve was also a big reason our team was able to retain a lead once we had it. In the category of playing physical Steve was definitely our leader. Standing at well over 6 feet opposing forwards nearing the end of the tournament simply accepted the reality they weren’t going to go thought or around Steve and settled to take a long shot. Most impressive about the play of Steve and the work of our defensemen in general was the amount of minutes each one logged throughout the tournament. In our final game to the understanding of the senior management staff Steve played the entire game plus overtime without coming off once. This is truly a feat that should not go unnoticed.
Mike Macdonald:
Okay its official Mike Macdonald is from another planet. His play was out of this world. I think its safe to say in all games he played Mike turned away 40-50 shots if not more. At times our forwards were tired and didn’t want to come back and our defensemen were having issues containing the big shooters of the opposing team ……..not to worry Mike shut the door. With any other goalie in nets from this tourney we would have lost without question. That is not a stab at our players but Mike was simply dominating between the pipes. There were shots that nobody else could see but Mike calmly steered these into the corner or flashed his catcher’s glove. As one point in game 2 our team went almost ten minutes without a single shot. Granted we ultimately lost that game Mike stood tall and didn’t allow a goal during this stretch thus giving the team the ‘opportunity’ to regroup and rally a comeback. In the heat of a scorching summers day (while wearing approximately 25-30 pounds of equipment I might add) Mike simply was the model of consistency. Without question near of end of every game especially in the games where we were winning Mike got inside he heads of opposing players. I am sure they asked themselves “what must we do to score??????” With such a strong force in nets every other player for our team was given creativity freedom and didn’t need to worry about making a mistake. Our forwards were able to focus on offence and our defensemen needed to only worry about clearing our zone. For this Mike wins of the honor of Team MVP.