Team Houston Hitmen

Comments 02/23/10
Last weekends quarter-final games in Dallas were exciting with 3 shutout wins and only one loss in a close shootout.

Our first game on Saturday was against our Houston rivals the BAHHA Hounds. The hounds gave the Hitmen a good game but fell to the Hitmen's better play by a shutout score of  2 to 0.  Our goalie, Tyler Bradford, was on his game Saturday morning keeping all 19 of the Hounds shots out of the net. Scoresheet

The second game against the San Antonio Thunder was also a win for the Hitmen. Fresh off of a win against the DPSC Stars earlier in the day; the Thunder played hard and tried their best to get their second win. But, their inexperience and short bench versus a dominating Hitmen team would result in another loss for the Thunder team. Hitmen win in a shutout 9 to 0 on a shot count of  50 to 16. Another shutout for goalie Tyler Bradford. Scoresheet

Game three on early Sunday morning pitted the Hitmen against the Euless DPSC Stars. After being beaten by the San Antonio Thunder on Saturday, the Stars were determined to win and played their best game all season against the Hitmen. With Hitmen goalie Quinn Noel in net fending off some excellent play by the Stars; and the Stars goalie Keenan Yarbrough in net fending off the massive volley of shots delivered by the Hitmen; the game was tied 3 to 3 at the end of regulation play with a shot count of  Hitmen's 37 to Stars' 20, Overtime also ended with the game tied at 3 to 3 leading to a shootout for the win.. In spite of Quinn's best efforts, the Stars managed to score 1 shootout goal to none for the Hitmen. This resulted in the only loss for the Hitmen in the quarter finals. Fortunately, having tied the Stars in regulation play resulted in 1 game point for the Hitmen while the Stars received 2 game points for the win. This became very important later in the day. Scoresheet

The fourth and last game pitted the Hitmen against the Dallas Penguins. Since a loss in this game amounted to sudden death for the Hitmen's remaining playoff season, the team came out ready to play. Game play was fast and tough with the Penguins determined to be the spoilers (the Penguins were already eliminated from advancement, but they could eliminate us too by winning) resulting in a game filled with far too many penalties. Fortunately for us, the Penguins earned most of them. In the end, the Hitmen came out on top 5 to 0 handing goalie Tyler Bradford his third shutout for the weekend. Scoresheet

Because the Stars lost one game to San Antonio, they ended the quarter finals with 6 game points for 3 wins. The Hitmen earned 6 game points for 3 wins and 1 game point for the tie and shoot out loss resulting in a quarter final win with 7 game points. As a result, the Hitmen will advance to the semi-finals while the other four teams: DPSC Stars, Dallas Penguins, BAHHA Hounds, and San Antonio Thunder, were eliminated. A thank you to these teams for all the good hockey games we had with them throughout the season.

Congratulations Hitmen.

Comments 02/17/10
Well the Pittsburgh Tournament is over and everyone is back home. This was a really fun tournament. The Hitmen took second place in our division losing to the Freeport Arrows from New York. The Arrows are the 1st Seed  AA Qualifiers for the New York State Eastern Zone which means they're a really good team. The Hitmen played them in two great games, but in the end the Arrows simply out-played us. Congratulations to the Arrows for their first place win.

The Hitmen did win their game against the Pittsburgh Predators on Saturday. It was a good game and the teams were very evenly matched. The Hitmen prevailed in the end by a score of 5 to 4.

A few more thoughts about the tournament:
I thought the officiating and overall tournament operation was really good. Everyone can always find something to dislike about the officiating in individual games, but on whole I thought the officiating was even handed and pretty good. Compared to our experience in Orlando last month, this tournament was fantastic and I wouldn't hesitate to take a Hitmen team there again.

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