After months of anticipation, the third edition of the C.I.H.L finally began on October 22, 2006. The season’s first match up pitted last years Champion Sharks against best looking team on paper this season, The Bears.
After doing a great job at whipping the estimated crowd of 500 into frenzy, ICRT radio celebrity Rick Monday dropped the ceremonial puck and we were underway. Not less than 5 seconds later the Sharks looked to take an early lead as Matt Stever broke in alone only to be denied by Rookie netminder Peter Ko .
This woke up the stunned Bears as they used their size to shift momentum. They applied constant pressure for the next 5 minutes, but with no result. The net minder to good to be drafted, Justin Lewis, came up big and closed the door on the Bear attack.
Finally on a nice passing play from Stever and Kevin Kennedy, Ronan “Runway” Wilson scored the season’s first goal at 8:09 of the first period. Looking to secure a hair product sponsorship for his modeling career, Wilson is looking to be a force this year. From there on in the first period got sloppy as several players enjoyed time in the sin bin courtesy of new stringent rules that head Official Mal Turner vowed to put into effect.
Period 2 started with Justin Lewis having to turn away shot after shot as the Shark defense seemed to disappear for a while. The intensity picked up as the Bears were determined to use their size to try and out muscles the smaller Shark players. The only bright spot for the Sharks was the play of Lewis in the pipes, and the feisty speed of Lee Zhong. The diminutive Zhong used his jets to continually get around the bigger, slower Bears, but when he came up for air, and the little Shark was all alone.
Maybe the Bears stars were a little too occupied with the excitement from the “Chuck-o-Puck” during the intermission as they came out for the third flat and uninspired. Heading into the third period saw the Bears down 1-0. The crowd was waiting for last year’s points leader, Steve “The Whiner” Clark to get on the board. He did, but in the form of a tripping penalty and almost got tossed out of the game for his verbal barrage on the officials. The Sharks took advantage and scored their second goal by Chris Robison, assisted by Stever and went up 2-0.
The Bears finally realized they were in a tough game and answered back quickly with a goal from Duncan Cameron that looked a little suspicious. Net minder Justin Lewis seemed to have the puck covered only to have it smacked in while the players looked on. Perhaps after the C.I.H.L.’s plans at installing video replay, The Sharks will be able to review the goal, but they could not and now looked desperate as they started taking penalties.
The poster boy Clark did manage to get his first goal on assists by Dave “Entourage” Campbell and Bob Macleod. They quickly scored again on a tip by Campbell ( much to the delight of his personal cheering section ) , and took a 3-2 lead with time running out.
The buzzer went and Game 1 was in the books as a 3-2 win for the Bears. A good exciting start to what looks like will be another great year for the C.I.H.L.
Three stars:
1. Dave “Entourage” Campbell
2. Justin “Smokey” Lewis
3. Ronan “Runway” Wilson
-By Mark “Pulitzer” Paas
