Roller Coaster Ride Continues

Yellowknife (CP) The roller coaster season continues for YDP as they went 4 and 3 in their last 7 games. The high points included shutting out the Purge and stealing 2 points in the Spartacenter, while the low point was being shutout back to back by the Eagles. The four points collected by the Eagles closed the gap between to the two teams to a single point but YDP has since increased the lead to 5 with a pair of wins against the Purge and Aviators. ‘We really needed to win those games,’ said Modano, ‘but that’s in the past and we’ve got 13 games to improve our playoff position.’

Consistency has been the main concern of the YDP brass during this entire season. While this is true about the team’s play some of it can be attributed to the number of trades in key positions made by YDP. With the trade deadline now past, the players can relax a bit and focus on what’s a head of them. With 13 games remaining in their schedule including two games remaining with each of the Reapers and Defiance, YDP hold their destiny in their own hands.

‘Not only do we need to take care of business against the teams below us,’ said Hannan, ‘but we’ve gotta start taking some points away from the higher clubs too.’ YDP will play almost every other hear on out and will start off by facing the Purge at home on Thursday.

Day 94 – YDP 3 - Spartans 1
Day 97 – YDP 5 – Thundercats 3
Day 98 - T-Men 4 - YDP 2
Day 101 – Eagles 2 – YDP 0
Day 103 – Eagles 3 – YDP 0
Day 105 – YDP 5 – Purge 0
Day 106 – YDP 3 – Aviators 2
Ima Dumass (CP)

YDP grabs 2 points and a goalie.

St.Albert (CP) YDP welcomed back Ragnarsson and Bates from the infirmary just in time as the boys faced the red hot Spartans of St.Albert who were 9-1-1 in their last 11 heading into tonight’s action. St.Albert came out flying in the first holding the usually potent YDP offense to only 5 shots, but unfortunately was down 1-0 courtesy of a shorthanded goal by Shawn Bates. After kicking several garbage cans YDP picked up their game in the second out shooting the Spartans by a 13-4 margin and took a 2-0 lead into the 3rd courtesy of Rod Brind’Amour. Satan provided some additional insurance midway through the 3rd and made it 3-0 for YDP. The only question now was whether Esche was going to get his shutout, but with 3 minutes left in the 3rd Janne Niinimaa had other ideas as he ripped a slapshot passed Esche to make it a 3-1 game.
‘We’re very happy with the victory tonight,’ said Modano, ‘this is a tough building to play in and Esch-ie kept us in the game in the first.’ The win combined with a Definace tie tonight against the Eagles puts YDP within 3 points of the division lead. ‘Hey one game at a time man,’ said Fedotenko, ‘we’ve got the Thundercats in a few nights and they’ve always played us strong,’
After the game Wong informed the media scrum that YDP has just acquired Cristobal Huet and cash from the Aviators in exchange for Bryan Allen, Bruno Gervais, Enver Lisin and a second round pick in next year’s entry draft. ‘Goaltending is like pitching, you can never have too much,’ said Wong, ‘we’ve got 6 goalies in the system, of which 5 could be challenging jobs in 2 years.’ It was usual for YDP to announce a trade after a victory, but the trade itself doesn’t affect any roster players as Allen was seldom used by YDP. The boys will now take a few days off before facing the Thundercats at the Mineshaft.
Ima Dumass (CP)

57 and counting

Yellowknife (CP) With their latest victory YDP has tied a franchise record by reaching 57 points in a season. This marks the 3rd time in the 3 year history of the team that this milestone was reached. With 20 games to go, YDP is assured of passing this mark and setting a new franchise record.
After getting his first night off in over 4 weeks, Robert Esche was at it again as he started a stretch of 5 games in 8 nights, which began with a visit to the Nest, where our heroes visited the Evil Eagles of Edmonton. Both squads are in a bitter battle to secure the 3rd seen in the Premier Conference and more importantly avoid a surging Spartans squad in the 2nd round of the playoffs. YDP letd the season series 2 games to zero, but Shane Doan wand the Eagles were determined to right the ship as they dominated the scoreboard and shutout the #1 ranked offense by a 4-0 score.
Two days later YDP took their frustration out on the lowly Winnipeg Freeze by scoring 11 in two games. The Freeze held brief 1-0 leads in both games only to see YDP pile on 6 and 4 consecutive goals respectively and coast to easy 7-3 and 4-1 victories. While the wins were nice, both came with a hefty price tag as YDP lost Shawn Bates for a week with an upper body injury and Filip Kuba for 6-8 weeks with a lower body injury. ‘We’ve been quite lucky in terms of injuries this season,’ said Hannan, ‘just Filip’s luck, that the law of averages slapped him with a freak injury.’ Despite having an insanely low injury rating of 5, management was caught off guard when informed of the 40-day injury.
YDP next drew a home and home series with the Airdrie T-Men. While the T-Men showed great poise and was able to manage a tie in Airdrie, they were no match when the venue was changed to Yellowknife, where YDP pulled out a 3-1 win. Once again the injury bug hit the team as Ragnarsson sustained a sprained ankle and is listed as day to day. The injury didn’t over shadow a tremendous performance by John Grahame who let in only 5 goals in 85 shots over two games.
Brute El Honesty of the TSN (Territory Sports Network) interviewed the T-Men’s Patrice Brisebois after the game ‘your team performed admirably tonight, is your improved play due to the fact that the pressure is now off to finish higher than 2nd last in the conference?’
An annoyed Brisebois replied from a prepared statement, ‘there are no quitters in this room, we feel our chances to finish higher is still very good and we’ll take each game one at a time.’ Afterwards this report overheard Patrice say, ‘who the hell is responsible for hiring at TSN? Did the mouth part ignore the brain part? I mean honestly which reporter school did he flunk out of!’
Ima Dumass (CP)