And the Stanley Keg goes to...

....Team Louis! Which wasn't actually called that but I've been calling them Team Louis all day so nyeh!

I was very pleased to show up to the semi-finals and see Team Pickles (that's Vlasic) playing the Powder Blue Team and Team Louis playing.... somebody. Naturally Team Pickles won (I think it was 7-3) and they would take on Team Louis (who I'm pretty sure had at least 9 goals) for the chance to win the Keg of Doom.

The final ended up being the most exciting of the games this weekend. Lot's of action and the goalies both had some really cool saves. Mind you....It really didn't look good for Team Louis at the start as Team Pickles jumped to a 3-1 lead. Team Louis would close the gap (thanks in part to Louis, yes) and it wound up 4-4 as the final buzzer sounded (very loudly in my poor ear, too). OT solved nothing and we actually had to have a real shootout! Team Louis won without Louis' help and his goalie caught to take home the beer equivalent of the Conn Smythe *g*

Number31 took some video which you can see here. I was smartish and lugged my better camera with me and was able to take a pile of pics. The downside to this was that I just spent 6 hours going through and editing the good ones.... Hence the reason why this writeup of the games is a little... lame...

I had the goalie's dad's friend ask me to send him some of the pics I took, which totally scared the heck out of me because I had no idea of any of the pics actually came out okay. Lesson number 2254671845362: apparently using a semi-expensive camera makes people think you know what the heck you're doing.....Erm, I didn't exactly mention that I had never used this camera to take photos of hockey before...

My pics are here. I think a couple of them came out okay, so I should be saved.....

Stanley Keg

There is no hockey off-season here

(apparently I do not have a not-blurry photo of just Louis Leblanc so you'll have to settle for this. Louis just to the left of the ref)

Nope. No off-season here.

Today I went off to the Stanley Keg. Which is a mini-tournament that nobody seems to have heard of where mostly local pros play. There was a few NHLers, a lot of AHLers, some NCAAersand some people from some of the European leagues (I didn't know France actually had a league of sorts!).

I'll fully admit that I went to watch Louis Leblanc but then Sarah told me I had to go looking for Marc-Edouard Vlasic because he plays for San Jose. So I got there for the last half of the game before his game (which was before Louis' game). Vlasic's team is totally stacked with higher level players (hello Mathieu Carle so I just saw last week at the Habs' prospect camp!) and it showed as they decimated their opponents. Actually, I spent most of my time trying to find Vlasic - which i failed to do so I just took pics of everyone on his team in the hopes that I would find him later. I did manage to find him actually... YAY!

Moving on... I wandered around a bit inbetween games, ate, watched some of the other action going on in the other rinks, ate more, looked at all the hockey photos they have up at the area, then went back to watch Louis. He was very uncooperative with my camera and I now have a pile of blurry Louis photos. He was really easy to pick out as he had a Habs helmet, the ugly grey jerseys his team was given, Habs pants, and ugly maroon socks. His team completely killed the mostly EICHL (a UK league)-filled opposition. I think the final score was something like 9-2 or 9-3. Oopsies. He got into a little spat with some of the other players from the other team who were understandbly, not happy with the score *g*

Also, I could've sworn I saw Gui (Latendresse) but he wasn't on any of the rosters..... but the guy looked just like him, had a Habs helmet with the number 84 on the back.... hmm... will have to see if I can solve that one...

If you want to see quality hockey, maybe this isn't the best thing to go to (not that the quality was bad but it's obviously not top-notch players playing all out), but it's a great way to spend a July day (which was mostly crappy here anyway). I"ll take any form of hockey in the summer.

Pics can be seen here, here and here.