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February 1, 2008 I spent the morning clearing 10 inches of snow off of my driveway.  At 1:00 P.M., I picked up my son Ken and my Grandson Jeff and headed to St. Louis, where his Huskie Midget Hockey team was playing in the Central States League play offs.  The roads were pretty clear, all the way to St. Louis where we arrived around 5:30.  Jeff had the night off, but he had 2 games on Saturday.  They played great in the morning game.  They tied the Afton Americans 4-4 on a goal by Jeff with 21.2 seconds left in the game.  Afton had the best record in the league, so that was quite an upset.  We lost the late night game, but came back strong on Sunday morning and beat the Omaha Lancers 7-3.  Jeff had the final goal in that game too with 23.4 seconds to play.  We had a great time watching the boys play.  We left St. Louis at noon and got home in time to see the Super Bowl.  We only used 8 gallons of gas getting there!  Here are some thumbnails of the pictures from our trip. Click on them to see the full image, then use your back button to return to this page.  Go to 2008 State Playoffs. 
StLouis 001.jpg (170295 bytes) StLouis 003.jpg (57152 bytes) StLouis 002.jpg (154577 bytes)
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Jeff sees an chance for a check.

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He lines him up,

StLouis 023.jpg (159407 bytes)

 then finishes him off.

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Somebody touched our goalie, so he went down too. 

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Alex, Matt and Joe

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Someone came close to our goalie, 

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so Jeff put him down too.

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We tied the game with a break away goal.

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Afton took a 4-3 lead with 3:36 left to play.

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We pulled our goalie and added a 6th attacker

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With 23.6 seconds left to play Alex Roman went behind the net and fired a pass.

StLouis 091.jpg (111963 bytes)

Jeff crashed the net and fired the tying goal past the goalie with 21.2 seconds left to play.

StLouis 096.jpg (103022 bytes) StLouis 103.jpg (104776 bytes) StLouis 105.jpg (113457 bytes)
Game 2 was in a low budget rink, so I had to shoot through the glass at floor level, so I put my camera away when the game and the parents got out of hand.  I had more fun giving the business to an opposing parent, who was upset when someone told her to shut up, when she kept yelling at the scorekeeper to go to running time.  I asked her why she would want to have running time with a 5 goal lead.  Was she afraid that we were going to score 6 goals and beat them.  Her son would have told her to shut up if he could.  I asked her who wants a short game when you drive 5 hours to get here.  She was mad, I was laughing and I didn't even have a beer!
StLouis 107.jpg (1582954 bytes) StLouis 108.jpg (78697 bytes)
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Game 3 was against Omaha, a team that beat us 4 times this season, but today we dominated them and won 7-3!

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They scored first on a power play.

StLouis 123.jpg (117189 bytes)

We got it back with a short handed goal.

StLouis 125.jpg (100692 bytes) StLouis 128.jpg (114469 bytes)

Half way through the first period, each team had 2 goals.

 
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We did a lot of hitting and soon they were watching for checks instead of pucks.

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StLouis 144.jpg (65570 bytes)

(above) Jeff asks a Lancer if he wants to dance. (right) He takes a dive.  He got 5.6 from the Russian Judge.

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We scored and bodies are dropping like flies.

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We celebrate our 3-2 lead.

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We scored again and took a 4-2 lead with 6:38 left in period 2.

StLouis 169.jpg (115727 bytes) StLouis 172.jpg (78282 bytes)

We scored to take a 3 goal lead with 3:29 left in the second period.

StLouis 174.jpg (129111 bytes)

Todd got flattened face down.

StLouis 183.jpg (115178 bytes)

It looked bad when we got 2 penalties on one break away, but Omaha got called for holding, so we only were one man short.

StLouis 184.jpg (109197 bytes) StLouis 187.jpg (68663 bytes)
StLouis 191.jpg (125133 bytes)

(Above) They pulled their goalie and we made them pay, as we took a 3 goal lead. (Right) Jeff found the open net with a wrist shot from his own blue line,  that went in on the fly.  Final Score 7-3

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StLouis 196.jpg (142030 bytes) StLouis 200.jpg (133666 bytes)
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I will add your comments if you e-mail them to me.  I can only remember Jeff's goals, so please help me out and I'll give you credit.

     

To E-mail me, just click here! greg@lopatka.net

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