The usual large and loud crowd gravitated to ballroom B, celebrating the unofficial end to another WBC. We welcomed back the familiar voice of Slapshot, Keith Hunsinger, for the traditional reading of the rules. This year's raucous preliminaries featured the usual crazy announcements, the most exciting one was the report that Slapshot will be brought back into print in the near future. We also witnessed the debut of the Shirtless Rangers Fan Parade. If you saw it, you remember it. If you didn't, well, you're better off. Just consider yourself lucky that you don't have those disturbing images burned into your brain for the rest of your lives like the rest of us. And finally, Bruiser Bruce again tested the sturdiness of Host's chair inventory from his vantage point near the signup kiosk and pronounced the rink safe for the rest of us mere mortals.

There was yet another aspect of the Slapshot tournament that made this year's event the subject of many whispered conversations as the week progressed. Many times, you'd hear someone say "Is it true that our beloved Don Greenwood, wargamer extraordinaire, has made Slapshot his team event?" Yes, it was true, and he sat down at the table with the CABS folks, and made his first bold play - stealing the green pawn from Bruce Reiff, who always plays green in every game he plays. Bruce tried to explain this to Don, but couldn't get his green pawn back as Don evoked the heirarchy of the minions rule to send Bruce back to the bench.

Sadly, that was to be the highlight of Don's team game experience as he drew a good team, then got fleeced by Lisa Gutermuth in a trade and proceeded to trade down in every trade for the rest of the game, and generally got crushed. The table went three times around challenging Don to games, none of which he won. Sneaking to victory was Nate "triple-wood winner" Hoam, who made it into the semifinal as the table engaged in a Don-bashing frenzy.

Highlights from other first round games included Dan Dolan "losing his way into the Final" (which would become a trend for him), Tom Paruda's table having Tiny Tim scoring two overtime playoff goals, Bruce Widgor getting pucked twice, losing his semifinal game, but bruising his opponent into a loss in the Final, and Harald Henning being jeered in the Final, because he "wanted to go to bed".

The annual semifinal "lightning round" advanced six players to the Final round, each with their own lame choice of pawns:
Greg "Barrel of Monkeys Monkey" Berry
Steve "Still has a pen on Saturday night" Scott
Harald "Is that a piece of bark or are you just happy to see me?" Henning
Jeremy "Old-school red pawn" Billones
Brian "It's just a piece of paper" Mountford
Dan "Look! A dime!" Dolan

The quality of pawns has gone down from last year. I don't know whether to blame the Slapshot players as a whole, or just chalk this year's selection up to a random event.

Dan managed to survive the shirtless Ranger fan table, and make it to the Final. He must have gotten lessons from Don Greenwood, because he had a horrible team. For most of the game, he had no players higher than a 3. Whenever he drafted a new player, he ended up with someone worse. The table played-and beat-him for seven straight rounds. When Dan finally won a game, Jeremy immediately traded with him because "he must have a good team now". Needless to say, Dan went home in sixth. Brian also failed to qualify for the playoffs, leaving us with four semifinalists. Jeremy beat Steve in three straight games, but not before Steve's bruisers sent Jeremy limping into the Final. Greg swept Harald's team, only allowing one goal over the whole series. Steve's bruisers beat Harald for the third place plaque, leaving us with the Greg vs. Jeremy finale.

Greg's team was too much for Jeremy's injury-laden squad, sweeping the series in four games while only allowing three goals. The final teams had Greg with three level 4 players on offense, two level 7 players on defense, and a level 8 goalie. Jeremy had a 5, 3, and 1 on offense, a 2 and a 7 on defense, and a level 7 goalie. This made it very unlikely that Jeremy could possibly win a game.

Congrats to Greg Berry for the win, and thanks to everyone who make Slapshot such a memorable cap to a wonderful week.

 The thoughts of the lockout/strike were a distant memory for 24 "owners" in the Junior Slapshot tournament. Three prelims with eight eager players each were used to determine the top six to enter into the final. To the surprise of everybody, it seems that the kids behaved better than the adults. (There wasn't as much yelling and mischief as there was Saturday night!) No one went home empty handed for actual pucks were handed out to all of the participants. For some reason the blue pucks (Yes they do have different colored pucks!) were the most popular for there wasn't any left after the tourney.

Of the six finalists, two were from the Lewis family where Danny proved to be the top dog and was able to get his first "wood". Rumor has it, he was the only one in the family to be able to claim such a prize this year and let everyone know that he was the first one to get wood for his family at the 2005 con.

I wish to thank both Bruce Monnin and Kaarin Engelmann for their help officiating the games. Without their help I am sure that a true hockey game might have broken out.

2nd: Gino Sinigaglio

3rd: Carolyn Strock

4th: Andrew Sinigaglio

5th: Wes Lewis