I just looked back on my Challenge 2.2 team
And I remember why I was so peeved about how the end of my season went down I couldn't even bring myself to post about
We'd had a really awesome year, finishing up taking the Conference Championship for a 3rd place seeding. We were 54-21-7 with our 109 points bettering our first year's results by thirty-one points! We'd scored, by a comfortable margin, the most goals of any team in the league.
First line of Cole Handzus Balastik rocked, as did Ekman Cullen&Belanger Doan on my second line. My third line which is a secondary checking line even put up great numbers while playing a defensive system shutting down opposing 2nd lines. My defense also contributed a lot of firepower.
Cole had 80 points, 32g 48a, Balastik struggled through a bad "sophmore slump" around mid season but still finsihed with 34 goals. Their center Handzus was spectacular with 83 points, 32g 51a.
Shane Doan had a monster year anchoring the second line with 40g and 41a (given my teams play a lot of defensive matchups Doan averaged 17 minutes of ice a game, so 81 points truly is a monster year), while winger and
late season free agent signee Nils Ekman had 48 points in 41 games: 22g and 21a.
As I mentioned, Trent Hunter worked miracles from my secondary checking line posting 32g and 28a; being the difference maker on both ends of the ice many nights.
My defense was crackin' as Andy Delmore had 62 points, 21g 41a, and his 1st pairing partner Clymer had 60 with 15g 45a. David Tanabe had an excellent 47 points from the second line/2nd PP unit.
We drew Tampa Bay; a team we'd just owned all year for our first round matchup. We won the first game huge; 6 to 3
Cole had a goal and three assists as first star and Tanabe had pumped in 2 goals from the blueline. Balastik, Hunter and Cullen rounded out the scoring. We lost the next game 5-6 in OT
and that was only the start of the bad news.
In the game Cole got hurt and would miss the next 10 days with a twisted knee
We struggled to win Game 3 by an ugly 6-4 score. Since I didn't want to break up Ekman-Cullen-Doan on the 2nd and everyone else was clicking in their roles on with two checking lines I decided to give Wolski a shot at the big time; he'd blown his knee out at Brampton but came back late in the season to post 15g and 27a in just 24 games. He did okay, with a PP assist that game but in that game Belanger (who was a Selke runner up in our first year centering Cole & Balls, but now anchored my 3rd line) went down for two weeks
I had extra guys that could fill in as checkers, but none that could take a faceoff
I decided to call up Chipchura from Lowell where he'd had 48 point in 70 games. He's got good defensive stats/mobility and a high faceoffs rating. But, he was simply not ready for the responsibility avearging a 5.5 rating in his self-shortened playoff run.
We allowed five goals in each of the next two games and scored only 5 ourselves total. Cole came back six days into his 10 game injury and gutted it out while Doan's two goals carried us to a Game 6 win!
Game 7 Wolski took over for Chipchura and played center of the third line with Conolly who had run hot and cold all year. They seemed to click with Wolski scoring a goal himself and assisting on Connolly's two goals including a goal at the 45:00 mark that tied the game up at 5-5.
We continued to have no answer to their Lecavalier-Modin-StLouis line as they posted 11 points in this one... not out of the ordinary for how they'd played all series long actually, they just killed us and we couldn't even slow 'em down
Around the 10 minute mark of OT in that 7th game Graham Mink, who we'd traded to Tampa at the deadline, sent us packing for the year
Nobody would test Tampa even as much as we had for the duration of their run to win the Cup... they beat the Sabres in six, Philly in five and the Sharks in a five game final. We weren't the only ones not able to stop their superheros line:
In 23 games:
Modin: 17g 18a, 35 points Conn Smythe Runner Up
Lecavalier: 15g, 25a 40 points Winner of the Conn Smythe
St. Louis: 12g, 19a 31 points Average rating? 8.76
Craptastic!!
](./images/smilies/wallbash.gif "Brick wall")
Having finally sorted things my team is cruising though 
should be interesting.
