Geez ... its going to take a Zanboni to win the best uniform contest next year.	Ass't Lisa Gutermuth fights off hand cramps to sign in over 200 entrants. Bless that Duke penmanship.
You can tell its the end of the week ... no more clean shirts.	Hey ... the Maly Hair Salon table has pretzels!

My kingdom for a bruiser ...

As you may have heard, I was absent from the 2008 Slapshot event to attend my sister's wedding. I tried to get her to move it, but "I need to preside over 200 gamers pretending to play hockey" didn't strike her as a good enough reason to reschedule. In retaliation, I told her that she was the most unpopular person in Lancaster, PA. Somehow she recovered from that indignity and went on to have a fabulous wedding anyway.

In my absence, Bruce Reiff, who most of you probably think is the GM anyway, served ably in my place, despite having to get up early for the Sunday AAR meeting the next morning. With two other board members in that Final, I wonder if anyone was awake in that meeting.

This year's Slapshot event saw a record crowd ready for fun and mayhem. The original GM of Slapshot, Joshua Gottesman, came back to see how much damage we'd done to his event. The chest-painted Rangers fans were back, giving the assembled crowd the male eye candy that this event sorely needs. Our world famous Reader of the Rules, Keith Hunsinger, was sent to the penalty box for insulting Referee Mark Yoshikawa's height. It's a good thing Mark enforced some order there; otherwise Slapshot may devolve into a chaotic mess! Lots of people came in costume or jerseys, including a whole table dressed as the Hanson Brothers from the Slap Shot movie.

Finally, the puck was dropped, and the games began. At the GM's table, it is customary to watch Lisa Gutermuth pick the CD's pocket as she torments Don Greenwood with bad trades. For the first time in living memory, Don actually won his battle against Lisa, and made the playoffs. Too late, Don realized the problem with doing well in Slapshot - the winner of the table has to stay awake for another round! Sensing an opportunity, Lisa's father Ken, who was playing Don in the playoffs, managed to convince Don to intentionally lose, so Don could go to bed, and Ken could advance. That wasn't easy, as Don's double bruiser team had reduced Ken's squad to ice shavings and was better at every position but one. Curiously, that was the position he led off with in their sudden death playoff. Justice was served in the semi-finals, as Ken could never recover from a horrible opening hand while Don was catching zzz's.

In other games, it was a bad year to be named "Mark" as Mark Mitchell managed to get pucked twice in his first three games as Keith Hunsinger won the "Voice and Referee of Slapshot table". Mark McCandless complained about "loaded dice" on his score sheet in losing to Andy Lewis. We'll have to remember to put Mark in the penalty box next year. Randall Gibson seemed to have won a table by himself, since nobody else filled out the score sheet! Maybe that's the trick to advancing.

In all, 20 winners advanced to the annual "Massively Unfair semi-final Round", where the games are quick and painful. By the time the Zamboni left, six finalists made their way to the Championship table, each with their own lucky playing piece with special meaning for them:

Sean "I have an awesome name" Druelinger, with a North Carolina quarter.
Shannon "Intimidation Factor" Keating, with a black skull bandaid.
Mark "I'm too old for this nonsense" Smith, with a cell phone.
Alex "I'm too young for this nonsense" Henning, with a Snapple cap
Rachel "Wait, what's going on?" Harley, with a Tic-Tac.
Dan "R from the chest-painted Rangers" Dolan, with "a random piece of garbage I picked up off the floor".

(I'm not sure which "R" Dan was supposed to be. Is he a leader or a follower?)

The game started with the table unanimously approving what will be now known as the "Dolan Rule"- instead of games in the regular season ending in ties, both players will play a sudden-death overtime with randomly shuffled cards. Having got his rule approved, Dan then loudly demanded the table to play games with him. Sean, Shannon, and Mark all refused, deciding to draft instead. Alex finally decided to play Dan, showing off her Superstar, then Rachel also decided to play, but played Sean instead. This game revealed Sean as the table patsy, but apparently he was too good for Dan, who decided to trade after demanding the whole table play him.

The game progressed with Alex jumping to an early lead, leading Mark to start a "Catch the Snapple" chant, and challenging Dan to play him. When Dan refused, Mark went on a long rant calling out Dan, somehow channeling Chris Farley's "Living in a van down by the river" sketch in a manner that can only be described as "surreal". Dan was probably correct to not play anyone, as his team was so bad that he won his first game only after Rachel made it to space 7. Rachel mainly got her wins by beating up on Sean five straight times. The sixth turn, she decided to draft instead, telling him to "take a breath". Meanwhile, Shannon quietly moved up the ranks, separating herself from patsies Sean and Dan.

The Final was unusual in that there were not many bruisers. The first game involved a double-bruising, but this left hardly any bruisers in play. This made it hard for the weaker teams to catch up, and so Sean and Dan were quickly left behind, and Mark, Alex, Rachel, and Shannon all made the playoffs easily.

In the first round of the playoffs, Alex defeated Shannon, and Mark topped Rachel. So Mark and Alex squared off in the Final round. Would this be a good year to be named "Mark" after all? It took just five games to put Mark down and send him home to his van down by the river.Looking at the two teams afterwards, they were remarkably similar. Both teams had a 7, two 6's and a 4. But Alex had a 5 to Mark's 3, as well as a better goalie, and that was enough to make her the champion.

The Greenville Mafia table gets infiltrated by imposters.	If the Board of Health sees this we'll be shut down for sure.
And in all of this madness some are actually trying to win a game. Here Jacob Hebner challenges Jordan Flawd.	The six finalists take their bows in the wee hours of Sunday morning. One more round to go.

GM Mark Yoshikawa drops the puck and runs for cover.	But my guy is better than his guy.

16 little hockey players vied for ice glory this year. Cassidy Mullet came out so victorious that the GM neglected to list anyone else.